AIXTRON Announces Sale of Five Additional
Production Systems To Kopin

AIXTRON AG announced that Kopin Corporation of Taunton, Massachusetts, USA has ordered five additional high volume production systems for delivery in YR2000. The three AIX 2600G3 and two AIX 2400 systems will support the production of Kopin’s advanced gallium arsenide (GaAs) HBT transistors, which are used in the manufacture of high performance circuits for digital wireless and fiber-optic telecom systems. Three of the AIXTRON systems are scheduled be installed in the first half of 2000; the remaining two in the second half of the year.

"We are very pleased to receive Kopin’s follow-on orders for our AIX 2400 and AIX 2600 production systems," stated Dr. Holger Juergensen, AIXTRON President and CEO. "Kopin is by far the world’s leading provider of advanced HBT transistor wafers and this demanding customer has selected our systems for their robustness, throughput, uniformity and the associated low cost of ownership. We look forward to supporting Kopin’s infrastructure build-out as they continue to drive HBT technology into new programs and applications."

"AIXTRON and Kopin have had an excellent working relationship during our capacity expansion," said Dr. John C. C. Fan, Kopin President and CEO. "Kopin’s engineering and manufacturing teams require the best high volume platforms for the production of our advanced HBT transistors. The addition of these new systems will enable Kopin to further build up our four and six inch transistor wafer production capacity as well as accelerate our development on new, exciting HBT transistor products."

Kopin’s high performance transistors are used to produce circuits for CDMA, TDMA and GSM digital PCS handsets, as well as for broadband OC-48/192 SONET systems, which form the backbone of the highest speed fiber optic systems.

AIXTRON’s AIX 2400 is a highly-proven production system which can process five four-inch wafers per run. The AIX 2600G3 has a flexible design which handle five six-inch or eight four-inch wafers per process run. The G3 design includes the automated wafer-handling tool which enables lower cycle times by allowing full cassettes of wafers to be used without operator assistance. AIXTRON offers a wide range of epitaxial systems for MOVPE, VPE and LPE from R&D-oriented systems up to large-scale Planetary Reactorâ production systems for up to 25x4-inch or 9x6-inch wafers. The company has installed over 300 systems worldwide, provides an extensive service and support network for maintenance and upgrading and is represented in over 15 countries.