12/31/2003 (December 31, 2003) Research Triangle Park, N.C.—Unitive has completed its $12.6 million financing to fund a major expansion that will add die-level processing to the company's service offerings for companies in the wafer-level chip scale packaging market.
12/31/2003 A handful of nanotech stocks rose dramatically early this week after ZackÂ’s Investment Research issued a news release commenting favorably on two of them. While the rally might have signified nothing for the companies concerned, the episode does suggest that nanotech investors possess plenty of appetite for speculation.
12/30/2003 Invitrogen Corp., a Carlsbad, Calif., provider of pharmaceutical and biotech research products and services, announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire BioReliance Corp., a contract test, development and manufacturing service provider for drugs and other products.
12/30/2003 Hitachi's Advanced Research Laboratory is getting ready to commercialize a low-cost "nanostamp" technology for medical applications. The company's process creates "nanopillars" with extremely high aspect ratios (narrow relative to height), a feature that the company believes will prove useful for biochips.
12/29/2003 December 29, 2003 - Singapore's ST Assembly Test Services Ltd. and Simmtech, Milpitas, CA, have signed a deal regarding substrates for printed circuit boards.
12/29/2003 December 29, 2003 - Technology dreamworks and Xerox subsidiary PARC has produced another brainchild: a prototype flat-panel display circuit, using a modified inkjet printer and a new polymer-based semiconductor "ink."
12/29/2003 (December 29, 2003) Tokyo, Japan—Fujitsu Ltd.
and Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. recently announced that they have reached a basic agreement to create a joint venture that will consolidate the operations of Fujitsu Quantum Devices Ltd. with the electronic devices business of Sumitomo Electric's compound semiconductor operations.
12/29/2003 December 23, 2003 - For its new 32-bit processor which will replace its Xeon processor trend, Intel Corp.'s development center in Bangalore is doing end-to-end development, not just design -- a trend that's gaining momentum in India.
12/29/2003 December 29, 2003 - Semiconductor equipment sales and orders in November stayed above the parity mark for consecutive months for the first time since August 2002, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
12/29/2003 December 29, 2003 - Worldwide manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted their third consecutive month of parity in November, according to VLSI, leading the firm to significantly boost its projections for the coming year.
12/29/2003 (December 29, 2003) Singapore—ST Assembly Test Services Ltd. (STATS), an independent semiconductor test and advanced packaging service provider, has announced the formation of a strategic alliance with SimmTech Co. Ltd., a provider of semiconductor substrate material and telecommunications-related printed circuit boards (PCB) for substrate support and technology.
12/29/2003 Cool Chips is looking for some cold cash. Since its founding in 1996, the Gibraltar-based company has been funded by parent company Borealis Exploration Ltd. But Cool Chips' chief executive said the company is now looking for more than $10 million to speed its "smaller, cheaper" cooling system toward commercial production.
12/29/2003 Harris & Harris Group Inc. announced a follow-on offering last week. The company will sell 2 million shares of its common stock at $8 per share.
12/26/2003 December 26, 2003 - Renesas, the JV of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric, plans to invest another 33 billion yen ($307.7 million) to help boost monthly production capacity of AG-AND flash memory.
12/24/2003 Larta, a Los Angeles-based technology business think tank, announced it has received a grant from the U.S.-Israel Science & Technology Foundation to promote biotechnology collaboration between the two countries.
12/23/2003 (December 23, 2003) Washington, D.C.—The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently designated a 13-member national consortium as the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), creating the world's largest and most accessible nanoscale laboratory.
12/23/2003 (December 23, 2003) Palo Alto, Calif.—Convergent technology is one thing, but using your computer's printer to make a new TV screen? Not quite, but close. In a breakthrough for low-cost electronics manufacturing, researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Xerox subsidiary, have successfully created a transistor array of the type used to control a flat-panel display using a modified ink-jet printer and semiconductor "ink."
12/23/2003 Zyvex Corp., a Richardson, Texas, developer of nanotechnology tools and devices, announced the release of its, a manipulation and assembly tool that is used with a scanning electron or optical microscope.
12/23/2003 Sometimes the fiercest of competitors can be the closest of allies – that is, when they have something in common. Apparently, that's the case with the biggest companies in the U.S. chemicals industry. And what they have in common is the promise of nanotechnology, the threat of foreign competition and a tough message for academia.
12/22/2003 (December 22, 2003) Norwalk, Conn.— A soon-to-be-released report from Business Communications Company Inc., entitled "RGB-283 Tools and Instrumentation for Nanotechnology," reports that the worldwide market for nanotechnology instruments and tools is estimated at $199.2 million in 2003. Expected to grow at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 28.6 percent, this market is expected to cross $700 million by 2008.
