FSI International (ticker: FSII, exchange: NASDAQ) News Release - 3/8/05
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FSI Receives Follow-on Order from Asian Foundry for ZETA® Spray Cleaning System

Six Asian Foundries are Using the ZETA system Based on its Low Cost of Ownership and Flexibility

MINNEAPOLIS (Mar. 8, 2005) -- FSI International, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSII) today announced that it continues to see strong acceptance of its spray cleaning technology in Asia, as evidenced by a repeat order for its ZETA® Spray Cleaning System from an Asian foundry customer. This Asian customer again selected the ZETA system due to its process capabilities and small footprint. In addition, the ZETA was judged superior to competitive technology because of its particle removal efficiency in on-wafer performance tests. This order was received in FSI’s second fiscal quarter and the tool is scheduled to ship by fiscal year end.

“The many benefits of this tool make it an excellent fit for foundries, where a high product mix is typical and a low cost of manufacturing is critical to success,” said Don Mitchell, FSI chairman and CEO. “Due to the high concentration of foundries in Asia, we now have about 45 percent of our installed base of ZETA systems in that region. As a result of previous experience with FSI, this customer was confident in our spray cleaning technology and FSI’s Asia-based process and service support organization.“

Foundries focus on reducing their cost of manufacturing by addressing issues such as capital costs, system availability, chemical costs and throughput. The ZETA system addresses these requirements by providing: extendibility to future technology nodes; significantly higher system availability compared to the competition; low chemical use during processing; no chemical use while in idle mode (which is very important when managing utilization fluctuations); and throughput that matches or exceeds the competition.

FSI’s ZETA spray cleaning system includes fully automated configurations for 200- and 300-mm wafer sizes and semi-automated configurations for 200- and 150-mm wafer sizes. The ZETA system is proven for a wide range of applications, including FEOL resist strip and post-ash clean, back-end-of-line (BEOL) post-ash clean, salicide strip, wafer bumping and wafer reclaim. The system uses centrifugal spray technology; wafers undergo dry-in, dry-out processing in a closed, nitrogen-purged chamber. FSI's versatile chemical delivery technology prepares the chemicals at controlled composition and temperature and delivers them directly onto the wafers. ZETA systems are priced from $1.0 to $2.8 million.

FSI International Inc. is a global supplier of surface conditioning equipment technology and support services for microelectronics manufacturing. Using the Company’s broad portfolio of cleaning products, which include batch and single-wafer platforms for immersion, spray, vapor and CryoKinetic technologies, customers are able to achieve their process performance, flexibility and productivity goals.

The Company’s support services programs provide product and process enhancements to extend the life of installed FSI equipment, enabling worldwide customers to realize a higher return on their capital investment.

FSI maintains a Web site at www.fsi-intl.com.

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