The Fine Print

Carl Zeiss SMT (Oberkochen, Germany) recently designated Schott Lithotec (Jena, Germany) as its latest Supply Chain Partner. The official press release talked about what the new status meant: “expanding our long-term relationship and business”, “we will jointly fine tune our technologies”, and strengthening the “historic business relation”. But, particularly with Schott Lithotec’s highly pivotal role in the viability of high-index immersion lithography, I was curious to know what the Partner designation really meant.

There were a few key points in my head when I approached Schott on the topic:

• Schott and Carl Zeiss are actually already sister companies, both belonging to the Carl Zeiss Foundation, according to Markus Wiederspahn, who’s in charge of public relations for Carl Zeiss SMT.
• Schott Lithotec is the fifth company to be designated a Carl Zeiss SMT Supply Chain Partner — its predecessors including glass makers Corning, Heraeus Quarz Glass and Asahi Glass — despite Schott’s decade-long relationship and sibling status with Zeiss.
• So, then, what changed now to bring Schott into favor with Zeiss? Did it have anything to do with the LuAG materials Schott is developing?

Well, it would appear that, when all is said and done, it doesn’t mean a whole lot more than what it sounds like. “This of course is an honorary designation, but includes an even closer collaboration as before,” Wiederspahn said. “This comprises an in-depth exchange of market insights, forecasts, product development roadmaps and so forth.”

Zeiss is likely just trying to line up its key suppliers, and Schott is happy to receive the honor. “It’s a thing a lot of companies are doing today — that they don’t want millions of suppliers; that they want to focus on some big suppliers which are their main partners for development,” commented Peter Krüll, vice president for Schott Lithotec, who also noted, “This is also an honor for us.”

Pictured during the nomination ceremony are (from left) Peter A. Krüll, vice president of Schott Lithotec, Peter Schlindwein, director supply chain management at Carl Zeiss SMT, Johannes Hain, executive vice president Schott Advanced Materials, and Jürgen Krause-Bonte, vice president laser optics at Carl Zeiss SMT.

The sister company status, by the way, is apparently in name only — what Krüll calls “more of a legal thing.”

Nonetheless, the two companies have been working together closely for more than a decade, Krüll said, and will likely work even more closely now, in more of a development and innovation partnership. Schott has indeed been working in very close cooperation with Zeiss to develop LuAG and other high-index materials, but the glass maker has also been working closely with other tool manufacturers, Krüll said. By the same token, when calcium fluoride (CaF₂) was being developed for 157 nm lithography, Zeiss was one of the main drivers and key accounts for Schott, he added.

“Especially for the LuAG project, I think, we cannot say that there is a deeper connection with Zeiss than with the other players,” Krüll noted.