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TAP TIMES -28- FEBRUARY 2022
Guilty verdict (from 27)
First tool arrives at
Intel’s Ireland Fab 34
LEIXLIP, Ireland Intel Ireland
chalked up a milestone in its $7 bil-
lion Fab 34 construction project in
January:
Nanotainers, part of the Theranos blood analysis arma-
mentarium. (Theranos)
Intel workers move a resist track into the Leixlip plant. (Intel)
A team rolled in the new plant’s first huge
chipmaking tool. The machine, a lithogra-
phy resist track, arrived by truck at Intel’s
A Theranos technician displays the small vial that fits into
the Theranos machine. (Theranos) Leixlip, Ireland plant after a flight across
the Atlantic Ocean from an Intel Oregon
joined the company. Schultz stayed for plant.
only eight months, and quit in April 2014
to become a whistleblower. A crown jewel
Ireland’s new lithography tool runs in con-
“Skunked” junction with an extreme ultraviolet (EUV)
During Theranos’ glory days, thanks to scanner, a crown jewel in Intel’s manufac-
the company’s hyper-active PR machine turing capability.
and Holmes’ fresh-scrubbed, girl-next-
door-wholesomeness, she skunked almost The new tool provides precision coating of
every business publication. silicon wafers before alignment and ex-
posure inside the EUV scanner. The wafer
Her face appeared on the covers of then returns to the lithography tool for a
Forbes, Fortune and Inc. among several series of precision oven bakes, photo de-
other publications, with stories lauding velopment and rinsing.
Holmes’ and her brilliant business and sci-
entific acumen. A typical Intel fab contains about 1,200
advanced tools, many of them costing
Now, instead of being one of Silicon Val- millions of dollars apiece.
ley’s richest CEOs, she is likely left owing
a small fortune to the lawyers who de- Work on Fab 34 began in 2019. The facil-
fended her case in court. — Ron Iscoff ity is set to go online in 2023. intel.com
