AIXTRON was founded as a spin-out industry from RWTH Aachen University in 1983. The company listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange's now-defunct Neuer Markt, in November 1997. Since going public the company has made several acquisitions, with the Scientific Equipment Division of the British company Thomas Swan & Co. and the Swedishchemical vapor deposition equipment maker Epigress AB both purchased in 1999. The company completed a €118 million merger with American rival Genus, Inc. in March 2005 and bought British nanomaterial developer Nanoinstruments Ltd., a company spun out from the University of Cambridge, in 2007. In December 2010 the company converted from a GermanAktiengesellschaft to a Societas Europaea to reflect its European and international nature. In October 2016 China’s Fujian Grand Chip Investment Fund LP made a bid to purchase Aixtron. The proposed acquisition was tainted by collusion; shortly before Fujian Grand Chip made its public takeover bid, San’an Optoelectronics canceled a critical order from Aixtron on dubious grounds, sending its share price down for Fujian Grand Chips to make a less-expensive offer. As a result, Germany’s economics ministry withdrew the approval of the takeover. In November 2016 the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States recommended both sides to drop their plan, because of national security concerns. In 2017 AIXTRON sold its ALD/CVD Memory Product line, produced in Sunnyvale to Eugene Technology from South Korea. AIXTRON said it continues to execute restructuring measures as well as to seek the establishment of partnerships for its OLED business in order to return to profitability in 2018, and to this end in October 2017 the OLED business became a separate company - APEVA SE. On 24 October 2018 AIXTRON announced that it had signed a joint venture agreement with Korean company IRUJA Co. Ltd. to invest in APEVA, AIXTRON's subsidiary for OLED deposition technologies. Closing of the joint venture agreement is expected during 2018.
Operations
In 2018, 54% of AIXTRON's revenues come from clients in Asia, with around 26% coming from Europe and the remaining 20% from the United States. The company produces metalorganic chemical vapour deposition equipment, used for making a range of electronic and opto-electronic products containing compound, organic as well as nanotubes and nanofibers. Many AIXTRON systems use a "planetary reactor" process whereby gaseous semiconductor substances are deposited on revolving wafers, while others utilise a Close Coupled "shower head" method of deposition. Manufacturing sites are located in Herzogenrath near Aachen in Germany, and Cambridge in the United Kingdom.
