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In the early eighties virtually every company was
seeking entry into the equipment business, or expanding into it via
acquisitions. It was the same with Veeco, the Vacuum Equipment
Company. It already supplied vacuum equipment and power supplies as
well as power semiconductors. Having recently come off an
acquisition of ion implanters (Accelerators Inc) and still funding
an e-beam direct exposure system research effort through SRI
International (formerly known as Stanford Research Institute), it was ready for more.
And with talk of lights-out-fabs and fully integrated systems, it
was only natural that Veeco would now fill in the missing pieces, so
it acquired Macronetics Inc., a small photoresist equipment supplier
who was having difficulties both financially and service-wise. Ed
Braun, Vice President, was just about to be promoted to executive
vice president to head up the Industrial Equipment Division where he
had been General Manager. The division included all semiconductor
capital equipment efforts by Veeco. Ed would eventually become the
chairman and CEO. In 2004, he was awarded SEMI’s prestigious Bob
Graham Award for Marketing Excellence.
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