06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 - Worldwide demand for semiconductor manufacturing was notably soft in 1Q08, with bookings down >20% from a year ago, but some regions are clearly working through the downturn better than others, according to the latest data from SEMI.
06/17/2008 TO-250-type hermetic microelectronic packages from CPS Technologies, Inc. were developed for military, electronics, satellite, and aerospace markets, and can be manufactured in a variety of combinations. Products consist of a cold rolled steel frame with hermetic seals made with alloy #52 or copper-cored alloy #52 pins in a compression glass seal or ceramic terminal. Bottom choices can be OFHC copper, copper moly, copper tungsten or glidcop. Braze material is 72% Ag / 28% Cu (BT braze).
06/17/2008 Systems combining multiple inspection tasks in one tool such as frontside, backside and edge inspection traditionally can run only one wafer lot at a time. With Vistec's software package option, Parallel Job Control for LDS3300 C, it is possible to run multiple control jobs at the same time, rather than have single modules sitting idle without measuring a wafer, while other modules are continuously scanning wafers.
06/17/2008 The WS 3840, Rudolph Technologies' latest addition to the Wafer Scanner product family for inspection and metrology, integrates the company's laser triangulation technology for 3D bump metrology and sensitive 2D image-based macro defect inspection on the same wafer handler platform that is used by all of its advanced inspection and metrology tools. Laser triangulation reportedly allows for fast and accurate measurement of bump height and coplanarity.
06/17/2008 MT-431, from Lord Corporation, is a non-silicone thermal die lid attach (TDLA) adhesive that was reportedly developed to replace two material processes, with a single effective solution. The material is formulated with thermal and adhesion properties that perform well enough to replace both typical thermal interface materials (TIMS) and lid attach adhesive.
06/17/2008 Megamax, the latest addition to Wentworth Laboratories, Inc.'s vertical probe card line addresses major probe card challenges encountered when probing high power flip chip devices such as microprocessor units (MPU's), graphics processing units (GPU's) and System on Chip (SoC's).
06/17/2008 When Advanced Packaging magazine covered MEPTEC's first MEMS Symposium in 2003, MEMS was a technology with potential that needed to move from a technology-driven to a market-driven approach to succeed commercially. This year's symposium on May 22, 2008 was subtitled "MEMS Market Evolution — From Technology Push to Market Pull," suggesting that the potential has been realized.
06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 - At this week's VLSI Symposium (July 17-20, Hawaii), IMEC says its researchers say they have improved performance in planar CMOS using hafnium-based high-k dielectrics and tantalum-based metal gates for the 32nm node, reduced inverter delay by 33% (15ps to 10ps) and simplified the HK+MG process from 15 steps to nine.
06/17/2008 One of the papers being presented by Intel at this week's VLSI Symposium describes fabrication of the smallest reported floating body cell planar devices, seen as a potential replacement for standard transistor cache memory. Functional devices have been made measuring down to 30nm gate lengths, with a possible introduction at the 16nm node.
06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 -- Carbon Nanoprobes (CN Probes), a start-up focused on commercializing advanced nano imaging technology, has selected First Nano's applications laboratory to complete one of the most critical stages of development before the launch of CN Probes flagship product, a carbon nanotube probe tip, for use in Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM).
06/17/2008 Presto Engineering, Inc., a provider of product engineering services to the semiconductor industry, and iRoC Technologies Corporation, a provider of soft error solutions for semiconductors, announced that Presto will serve as the exclusive North American sales distributor for iRoC Soft error rate testing (SERTEST) service.
06/17/2008 Carl Zeiss, a provider of microscopy solutions for research, clinical and industrial applications, now offers the Axio Scope.A1, a flexible, high-performance modular microscope platform specially designed for routine applications in materials microscopy.
06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 -- Seashell Technology, a nanotechnology development company, has successfully scaled manufacturing processes for silver nanorod and nanowire production to kilogram scale quantities.
06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 -- Unidym Inc., a manufacturer of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), has received a $2 million strategic investment from Entegris Inc. Arrowhead Research Organization, of which Unidym is a wholly owned subsidiary, made a $2 million matching investment.
06/17/2008 June 17, 2008 - A day after its $400M-$500M offer for ASMI's ALD/PECVD units was rebuffed -- but with an asterisk -- Applied Materials has pitched a new proposal: buying all of ASMI's frontend business activities, with help from Francisco Partners.
06/17/2008 June 16, 2008 - Unisem Berhad and subsidiary Unisem-Advantpack Technologies (UAT) have agreed to license FlipChip International's wafer bumping and wafer-level packaging technologies, in exchange for a stake in UAT. The deal is seen as expanding Unisem's technology offerings, while broadening FlipChip's customer reach.
06/17/2008 June 16, 2008 - Foreign ownership of Japanese frontend process semiconductor equipment firms rose in the fiscal year ended in March, while the opposite was true for domestic firms serving the backend of the manufacturing line, noted the Nikkei daily.
06/16/2008 June 16, 2008 - Toshiba and SanDisk say they are ramping down flash memory output on 200mm wafers to about 60% of current capacity, a move that includes ending production at their NAND JV FlashVision Ltd.
06/16/2008 June 16, 1008 - Gartner recently came out with its latest figures for the silicon wafer market, which it calculates grew 22.5% in 2007 to $12.5B, the 2nd straight year of >20% growth. Drivers include continued rising demand for 300mm wafers and generally higher wafer prices due to a shortage of polysilicon. Shipments rose 8.1% to 8.9B square inches.
06/16/2008 June 16, 2008 - In a scenario reminiscent of the recent Axcelis/Sumitomo public M&A tussle, ASMI board members say they aren't interested in selling their ALD and/or PECVD businesses to Applied Materials "as such" though the firm "is willing to explore and discuss [...] any alternative arrangements" that could be beneficial to the company and its shareholders.
