Tegal announces sale of nanolayer deposition patent portfolio

PETALUMA, USA: Tegal Corp. announced that it has awarded patents to multiple bidders for three of the four bid lots of Tegal’s NLD Patent Portfolio recently offered for sale for an aggregate consideration of approximately $4 million. To date, approximately $3.6 million has been received.

Tegal sold over 30 patents from the NLD portfolio—which includes more than 35 U.S. and international patents in the areas of pulsed-chemical vapor deposition (CVD), plasma-enhanced atomic-layer deposition (ALD) and NLD. NLD is a process technology that bridges the gap between high throughput, non-conformal chemical vapor deposition and lower throughput, highly conformal atomic layer deposition (ALD). Tegal offered the patent portfolio for sale earlier this year in an effort to complete the divestment of its semiconductor capital equipment assets.

In March 2010, Tegal sold its legacy thin-film etch and physical vapor deposition (PVD) product lines to OEM Group, Inc. of Gilbert AZ, and in February of this year, sold its deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) assets to SPTS of Newport, Wales, UK.

The company reports that discussions are ongoing for placement of Lot 4 of the portfolio, which applies to copper barrier and low-k dielectric technology. “Interest in Lot 4 is coming primarily from IC device manufacturers, reports Robert Ditizio, Tegal’s chief technologist, whereas interest in Lots 1 through 3 was driven largely by equipment manufacturers.”