6-minute read - by Sander Hofman, May 7, 2021
May 9, 2021 marks 30 years since the first-ever PAS 5500 platform was shipped. PAS 5500 shaped ASML’s market success and technology leadership – becoming our longest-lived lithography platform and one of our most versatile product lines.
The PAS 5500 is the platform that made ASML’s name. Before its launch, ASML was a distant third in the lithography market, behind the giants Nikon and Canon. But the success of the PAS 5500 platform soon moved ASML up to second and laid the foundation for its growth to become the global leader in lithography.
After three decades, it would be fair to say that each PAS system has its own unique story to tell, as it moved through decades of semiconductor manufacturing. Like the 25-year-old PAS 5500/275 system that, after many years in memory and radio frequency (RF) module production, was recently refurbished and resold to start a new life at the forefront of the virtual reality boom.
The story of this system and many others proves how relevant PAS 5500 continues to be for the semiconductor industry. TWINSCAN is now the platform of choice for high-volume semiconductor manufacturing and at the leading edge of Moore’s Law. And although the PAS 5500 is no longer made as new, its low cost, small size, simplicity and robustness mean that a refurbished PAS 5500 is often the preferred option in various niche applications. In fact, it’s still so relevant to chip manufacturing that ASML has extended the customer service of its oldest product line to 2030 and beyond.
Success from the start
The PAS 5500 comes from a long line of systems initiated by researchers at Philips in the 1970s. The name of the platform itself speaks to its legacy and our long relationship with Philips: the Philips Automatic Stepper (PAS).
Longtime employee and current manager of Mature Product Sales at ASML, Ted Shafer has been closely involved with this breakthrough platform for his whole career.
Loading component...
As the PAS 5500 evolved so did Ted’s career with ASML, but the platform was never far away. By 1996, Ted had moved into sales where, among many other things, he was involved in selling some of the first PAS 5500/200 systems with an ‘i-line’ light source to Micron. It was one of these systems that 25 years later, after refurbishment and upgrade, would begin its third life helping to realize virtual reality technology.
Life at the cutting edge
Micron is one of the world’s largest producers of computer memory and storage. It was also ASML’s largest customer at that time and therefore instrumental in the PAS 5500 platform’s success.
