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16 I-CONNECT007 MAGAZINE I OCTOBER 2026 M KS I N C. Q & A Optimizing the Interconnect With Dr. John T.C. Lee When Dr. John T. C. Lee talks about the evolution of electronics, he keeps coming back to the intercon- nect. As President and CEO of MKS Inc., he saw growing complexity in the connections between in- creasingly powerful devices as both a manufactur- ing challenge and a business opportunity. That thinking helped drive the MKS acquisition of Atotech in 2022, bringing process chemistry and electroplating together with MKS' existing strengths in lasers, optics, and precision motion, and giving substance to a strategy the company calls Optimize the Interconnect ® . Several years later, AI, advanced packaging, and high-perfor- mance computing are putting unprecedented demands on those interconnections. We talked with Dr. Lee about what he saw coming, how that vision has shaped MKS' Atotech, and its strong position to address the tech- nology challenges being faced. When MKS announced the Atotech acquisition in 2021, you described the interconnect as the "next frontier for miniaturiza- tion and complexity." What were you seeing at that time? Even before AI became the domi- nant conversation in our industry, we could see a fundamental shift underway. For decades, semiconductor performance advanced primarily through transistor scaling. Howev- er, as Moore's Law began to slow, the industry increas- ingly relied on system-level innovation to continue de- livering performance improvements. We observed that future gains would depend less on individual transistors and more on how effi- ciently chips, memory, interposers, package substrates, and advanced circuit boards are integrated and interconnected. The inter- connect was becoming the critical link between all these technologies. That insight was one of the driving forces behind the Atotech acquisition. Bringing together MKS' expertise in lasers, optics, motion control, vacuum technologies, and photonics with Atotech's leadership in process chemistry and electroplating allowed us to address manufacturing challenges across the entire interconnect stack. Looking back, AI and high- performance computing have accelerated this trend even faster than many expected. Today, packaging and interconnect technologies are among the most impor- tant determinants of system