Lam Research AutoEtch 480

Lam Research’s AutoEtch 480 was a landmark in the history of plasma etchers. It one of the first single wafer, load-locked plasma etchers. And its market success made it one of the best etchers. Introduced in 1981, just a year after the company’s founding, this would be one of the key products to build Lam into a giant in the semiconductor industry, while displacing the existing market leaders. It marked a substantial divergence from what was available at the time. As Lam put it, “AutoEtch 480 has been created by Lam Research experts from “the ground up’’ to be uniquely different from other plasma etching systems. The system combines the very latest plasma etching technology with the most recent microcomputing and airlock wafer transfer techniques.