More than a dozen attendees of MEPTEC’s MEMS packaging symposium, held May 17-18 in San Jose, CA, met with SEMI staff at the end of the symposium to discuss hermeticity standards. Issues included defining a hermetic seal and specifying test methodology and structures, beginning with existing standards and adapting them to MEMS packages.

Your editorial on the term “nanotechnology” did not go as far as it could in highlighting the ambiguity of the current usage of the “nano” prefix. I have always grudgingly accepted the definition containing features in the 1-100-nm scale as a useful first step in describing what it is we do to a layman. I am surprised to find that the U.S. Nanotechnology Initiative has used this infantile definition in setting out guidelines for what constitutes nanotechnology.