, or TEL, is a Japanese electronics and semiconductor company headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan. The company was founded as Tokyo Electron Laboratories, Inc. in 1963.
TEL is best known as a supplier of equipment to fabricate integrated circuits (IC), flat panel displays (FPD), and photovoltaic cells (PV). , or TED, is a subsidiary of TEL specializing in semiconductor devices, electronic components, and networking devices. As of 2011, TEL is the largest manufacturer of IC and FPD production equipment.
On September 24, 2013 Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials announced a merger, forming a new company to be called Eteris. Eteris would have been the world's largest supplier of semiconductor processing equipment, with a total market value of approximately $29 billion. On 26 April 2015, the merger was cancelled due to antitrust concerns in the United States.
Origins
On November 11, 1963, Tokyo Electron Laboratories Incorporated was founded by Tokuo Kubo and Toshio Kodaka, largely funded by Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), with a capital of over five million yen. Later that year, their office opened in the TBS main building and began manufacturing thousands of quality-control and importing diffusion furnaces made by Thermco and selling Japanese-made car radios.
In 1965, the company approached a rapidly growing business in the market, Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation and agreed to serve as a sales agency for them, increasing their capital to twenty million yen and began exporting IC testers, IC sockets, IC connectors, and other similar computer components.
The company opened an office in San Francisco, California and their new branch, Pan Electron in 1968 established themselves as the only stocking distributor of imported electronic components in the region.
One year later, they opened their Yokohama office and established Teltron, a major manufacturer and distributor of car stereos, expanding their headquarters to fill the entire TBS-2 building and raising their capital to 100 million yen.
Products
Semiconductor Production Equipment (SPE) TEL produces Semiconductor Production Equipment (SPE) for the following purposes: Thermal processing Deposition of thin layers of dielectric material between transistors onto the silicon wafer surface in a heated low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) or oxidation process Photoresist coating/developing Photoresist coating and developing to project a microscopic circuitry pattern on the wafer in photolithography Plasma etching
Wet surface preparation
Wafer surface cleaning to remove foreign particles or contaminants such as dust
Single wafer chemical vapor deposition
Deposition of thin layers of various materials, such as tungsten, tungsten silicide, titanium, titanium nitride, and tantalum oxide Wafer probing Wafer probers for testing the functionality and performance of each die on the wafer Material modification/doping Surface modification and doping using gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) technology Corrective etching/trimming Corrective etching and trimming of thin films such as silicon, silicon nitride, silicon dioxide, aluminum nitride, and metals Integrated metrology (co-developed by TEL and KLA Tencor) Advanced Packaging
Group companies
The Tokyo Electron Group consists of TEL and the following subsidiaries: TEL Epion Inc. TEL FSI, Inc. TEL Solar TEL Technology Center, America, LLC TEL Venture Capital, Inc. Tokyo Electron Device Limited Tokyo Electron Yamanashi Limited Tokyo Electron Tohoku Limited Tokyo Electron Kyushu Limited Tokyo Electron Miyagi Limited Tokyo Electron Technology Development Institute, Inc. Tokyo Electron Software Technologies Limited Tokyo Electron FE Limited Tokyo Electron BP Limited Tokyo Electron PV Limited Tokyo Electron TS Limited Tokyo Electron Agency Limited Tokyo Electron U.S. Holdings, Inc. Tokyo Electron America, Inc. Tokyo Electron Europe Limited — Head Office (Crawley, England) German Branch Italian Branch Netherlands Branch Irish Branch French Branch Tokyo Electron Israel Limited Tokyo Electron Korea Limited Tokyo Electron Korea Solution Limited Tokyo Electron Taiwan Limited Tokyo Electron (Shanghai) Limited Tokyo Electron (Shanghai) Logistic Center Limited Tokyo Electron (Kunshan) Limited Timbre Technologies, Inc.