"The Brooks vacuum automation platform is an important enabler for STS, allowing us to focus our R&D investments more efficiently on our core process technologies," commented Leslie Lea, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technical Officer at STS.  "By utilizing the Marathon Express from Brooks as the backbone for our tool design, we immediately have a proven, world-class platform upon which to quickly bring to market our leading etch and deposition technologies for key emerging industries such  as MEMS, compound semiconductors, photonics, wafer-level packaging and data storage."

STS's , latest tool is called CPX, that enables multiple process chambers to share a common wafer transport  system. Designed to reduce the cost for mass production of devices used in end markets such as printer inkjet heads and wireless communications,

CPX provides a single wafer automation platform to service up to four STS plasma process modules, thus reducing the overall cost of the system by reducing fab footprint, operator cost and equipment cost, according to the company.