Tokyo Electron Limited

Akasaka Biz Tower
Native name	東京エレクトロン株式会社
Romanized name	Tōkyō Erekutoron kabushiki gaisha
Formerly	Tokyo Electron Laboratories, Inc. (1963–1978)
Company type	Public KK
Traded as	TYO: 8035 Nikkei 225 component TOPIX Core 30 component
Industry	Electronics Semiconductors
Predecessor	Sakura Yoko KK founded on April 6, 1951
Founded	November 11, 1963; 60 years ago (1963-11-11) (as Tokyo Electron Laboratories, Inc.)
Founder	Tokuo Kubo Toshio Kodaka Tokyo Broadcasting System, Inc.
Headquarters	Akasaka Biz Tower 5-3-1 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-6325 , Japan
Area served	Japan Taiwan North America South Korea Europe Southeast Asia China
Key people	Yoshikazu Nunokawa (Chairman), Toshiki Kawai (President & CEO)[1]
Products	Production equipment for integrated circuits Production equipment for flat panel displays and photovoltaic cells Networking devices and electronic components
Revenue	¥1.13 trillion (2020)[2] ¥1.28 trillion (2019)
Operating income	¥237.29 billion (2020)
Net income	¥185.21 billion (2020)
Total assets	¥1.28 trillion (2020)
Total equity	¥829.69 billion (2020)
Number of employees	12,742 (2020)[2]
Parent	TBS Holdings, Inc. (4.67%)
Subsidiaries	26 Group companies, including Tokyo Electron Device (TYO: 2760)
Website	tel.com
Footnotes / references [3][4][5][6]

Tokyo Electron Limited (Japanese: 東京エレクトロン株式会社, Hepburn: Tokyo Erekutoron Kabushiki-gaisha), or TEL, is a Japanese electronics and semiconductor company headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.^[4] 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).^[4] Tokyo Electron Device (東京エレクトロンデバイス株式会社, Tokyo Erekutoron Debaisu Kabushiki-gaisha, TYO: 2760), or TED, is a subsidiary of TEL specializing in semiconductor devices, electronic components, and networking devices.^[4] As of 2011, TEL is the largest manufacturer of IC and FPD production equipment.^[4]

On September 24, 2013 Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials announced a merger,^[7] forming a new company to be called Eteris.^[8][9] 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.^[10]

Company history

On 11 November 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.^[11]

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.^[11]

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.^[11]

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.^[11]

Products

Semiconductor Production Equipment (SPE)

TEL produces Semiconductor Production Equipment (SPE) for the following purposes:^[4]

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^[12]

Photoresist coating/developing

Photoresist coating and developing to project a microscopic circuitry pattern on the wafer in photolithography^[13]

Plasma etching^[14]

Wet surface preparation

Wafer surface cleaning to remove foreign particles or contaminants such as dust^[15]

Single wafer chemical vapor deposition

Deposition of thin layers of various materials, such as tungsten, tungsten silicide, titanium, titanium nitride, and tantalum oxide^[16]

Wafer probing

Wafer probers for testing the functionality and performance of each die on the wafer^[17]

Material modification/doping

Surface modification and doping using gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) technology^[18]

Corrective etching/trimming

Corrective etching and trimming of thin films such as silicon, silicon nitride, silicon dioxide, aluminum nitride, and metals^[19]

Integrated metrology (co-developed by TEL and KLA Tencor)^[20]

Advanced Packaging^[21]

Group companies

The Tokyo Electron Group consists of TEL and the following subsidiaries:^[3][22]

• 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.

Research and development

TEL's Leading-edge Process Development Center is located in Nirasaki, Yamanashi. TEL also has the Kansai Technology Center in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture and the Sendai Design and Development Center in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. TEL Technology Center, America, LLC in Albany, New York is the R&D center in the United States. TEL is one of the partners of IMEC, a microelectronics and nanoelectronics research center in Leuven, Belgium.^[3]

In July 2014 TEL announced the establishment of joint assembly lab with Institute of Microelectronics in Singapore. The lab is focused on the research and development of Wafer Level Packaging and assembly, to address the need of Internet of Things with devices of high performance and low power consumption.^[23]

Sponsorships

TEL supports association football in Japan by sponsoring the J. League as a whole and the football club Ventforet Kofu based in Kofu and Nirasaki as well as the rest of Yamanashi Prefecture.

The company has acquired naming rights of two multipurpose halls:

• "Tokyo Electron Nirasaki Ars Hall" (ja:韮崎市文化ホール) owned by Nirasaki City
• "Tokyo Electron Hall Miyagi" (ja:宮城県民会館) owned by Miyagi Prefecture (currently closed due to the heavy earthquake damage)