II-VI Advanced Materials and Lasertec Corporation Announce the Purchase of a SICA88

PITTSBURGH, July 15, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Advanced Materials Division of II-VI Incorporated IIVI, a world leading supplier of SiC substrates, and Lasertec Corporation (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6920) announced today that II-VI has purchased a SICA88 SiC inspection & analysis tool manufactured by the Lasertec Corporation.  This new tool will be installed at II-VI's SiC substrate manufacturing facility in Starkville, MS.

"This purchase enables II-VI to gather data to further its already state-of-art SiC substrate technology.  The SICA88 provides advanced sensitivity and analysis capabilities that II-VI can utilize to improve the quality of our SiC substrates.  The addition of the SICA88 in our production line will allow II-VI to find and analyze substrate and surface defects more efficiently and effectively, in order to enhance our defect reduction efforts, provide customer support to enable higher device yields, and to continue advancing our ongoing efforts to make SiC based devices more cost effective," commented Dr. Gary Ruland, General Manager of II-VI Advanced Materials.  "In addition, the SICA88's new photoluminescence capability will enable us to detect other defects important to our epi and device customers such as substrate stacking faults," added Dr. Ruland.

"SICA is designed to help fab engineers accelerate yield improvements by providing high sensitivity, high throughput defect inspection and highly accurate on-the-fly defect classification along with a fully automated defect review feature.  SICA enables SiC substrate and device manufacturers to take corrective action sooner and improve their yields more quickly. The tool's user interface provides an intuitive graphical method for creating inspection recipes, further increasing its ease of use for automated reporting.  Lasertec will continue to pursue the development and advancement of defect inspection technologies in order to facilitate the further enhancement of power device quality and productivity," said Hirokazu Seki, General Manager of Lasertec's Technology Department 1.

About II-VI Advanced Materials

The Advanced Materials Division of II-VI Incorporated's IIVI Performance Products Segment is a leading global supplier of high quality single crystal SiC substrates and CVD-grown polycrystalline diamond materials.  These products are key components "Enabling Tomorrow's Technologies" across a wide variety of fast growing markets including mobile communications infrastructure, RF and high-power electronics and semiconductor equipment manufacturing.  The group enjoys a large and worldwide customer base with its headquarters in Pine Brook (NJ) and other manufacturing facilities located in Starkville (MS) and Saxonburg (PA).  The international network of II-VI technical and sales offices enables timely communication, service and feedback with our customers and partners around the globe.  Visit the II-VI Advanced Materials web site at http://www.iiviadvmat.com and the II-VI Incorporated web site at http://www.ii-vi.com for more information.

About Lasertec

As a leader in metrology and inspection tooling, Lasertec Corporation has been serving the needs of semiconductor, compound semiconductor, renewable energy, FPD and other high technology industries for many years.  Since its beginning in 1960, Lasertec has been evolving and growing to keep pace with the world's rapidly expanding and changing high technology manufacturing requirements.  In addition to the innovative technologies, Lasertec's global support infrastructure assures customers full satisfaction through high tool availability that maximizes the capital investment and device yield.  For more information, go to www.lasertec.co.jp/en.