Intevac Joint Development Agreement for TRIO System to Provide Glass and Glass Ceramic Materials

Intevac, Inc. signed a joint development agreement with a major provider of glass and glass ceramic materials.

“For decades, Intevac has provided the materials science expertise and high-productivity manufacturing platforms that have deposited ultra-durable and highly-precise coatings onto several billion glass substrates in the hard drive industry. Our expertise in producing rugged and highly-precise coatings in high-volume manufacturing environments is well-suited to enable mass production of thin film technologies for the consumer device market,” said Nigel Hunton, president and CEO. “We offer the engineering know-how, manufacturing capacity, and financial footing to deploy our TRIO platform on a global scale in support of this new partnership. Today marks a key turning point in the future growth trajectory of Intevac, and we are pleased to announce the completion of the definitive agreement, as promised before year-end 2022.”

While specific details of the terms of the partnership will remain confidential, the definitive agreement signed includes a 5-year period of exclusivity for this key customer, who will deploy the TRIO for consumer electronics applications. In order to maintain exclusivity of the TRIO platform for this market, there is a minimum revenue requirement of approximately $100 million in system sales to Intevac over the 5-year period. The selling price and gross margin profile of the TRIO is similar to that of its 200 Lean system. The company will continue to develop additional customer relationships for the TRIO for other glass coating applications, such as in the automotive and point-of-sale display markets.

About TRIO

Click to enlarge

The firm’s TRIO manufacturing platform leverages over 3 decades of materials science expertise in high-productivity manufacturing environments to integrate the most advantageous qualities and features of both linear vacuum process systems and drum coating systems, delivering a highly flexible and versatile platform for mass production of highly precise and durable coatings. The flexibility offered by TRIO is due to its modular and expandable architecture that enables continuous processing of multiple substrates of almost limitless form factors. Utilizing the company’s decades of know-how integrating high-productivity transport systems in the HDD industry that accommodate various-sized substrates and materials, the TRIO platform is applicable to multiple end-market thin film coating applications, including consumer devices, automotive, and semiconductor advanced packaging.