04/25/2008 German microscopy developer Carl Zeiss SMT's new production/service/demo facility is the cornerstone of the company's nanotechnology growth strategy. It houses more than 150 staff and technologies such as Zeiss's Orion helium ion microscope -- which promises unprecedented nano-scale resolution, surface, and material contrast detail.
04/25/2008 Tohoku University has joined the network of Finland's Picosun Oy, developer of tools for the nanotechnology application of atomic layer deposition (ALD). "Our co-operation will lead to new results in implementation of ALD in nanotechnology applications and further strengthen the market position of our SUNALE ALD process tools in Japan," says Picosun. ALD, a gas phase chemical process, is used to create nano-scale thin coatings for various applications including MEMS and CMOS manufacturing.
04/25/2008 Apr. 25, 2008 - Germany's Qimonda AG and Japan's Elpida Memory have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop DRAM chips, targeting 40nm processes by 2010 and subsequently scaling to 30nm.
04/25/2008 Apr. 25, 2008 - The European Commission's 7th Framework Program (FP7) is funding a new program on maskless lithography for IC manufacturing -- MAGIC -- to explore and promote maskless lithography technologies developed by a pair of European companies, including developing infrastructure on data preparation, proximity effect corrections, and processes.
04/25/2008 April 25, 2008 -- /PRWEB/ -- SAN JOSE, CA -- Demand for faster and more economical ways to produce drugs for the pharmaceutical industry, proteomics, genomics, functional genomics, and combinatorial chemistry industries have led to the advancement of biotechnology instrumentation in recent years.
04/25/2008 April 25, 2008 -- /PRWEB/ -- SAN JOSE, CA -- Enzymes are proteins with highly specialized catalytic functions produced by all living organisms.
04/24/2008 April 24, 2008 -- /FDA/ -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has cleared for marketing the first device made from a new form of natural rubber latex, guayule latex.
04/24/2008 Mentor Graphics Corp. announced the promotion of Simon Bloch to V.P. and general manager of the Design and Synthesis Division. Bloch is responsible for Mentor Graphics' field programmable gate array (FPGA) and Electronic System Level (ESL) design and synthesis products.
04/24/2008 After a brief surge in February, when the book-to-bill ratio for North American semiconductor equipment reached .92, it has slipped back to 0.89 for March 2008, the same average as January, 2008. On the bright side, total billings for March — 1.29B — was only 1% lower than February's 1.31B, and slightly more than January's billings of 1.28B.
04/24/2008 Colibrys, supplier of MEMS motion sensors, has appointed Don Stoops to the role of VP, Global Operations. Colibrys is a world-leading supplier of standard and semi-custom MEMS-based motion sensors to the harsh-environment (military, aerospace and energy) and safety critical (industrial and instrumentation) applications.
04/24/2008 Nanotechnology developed at the University of Minnesota is enabling Rushford Hypersonic to advance industrial tooling and coating with nanoparticle film deposition. "The university worked closely with us . . . and helped structure the agreement so that we can bring these technologies to market very quickly," the company said.
04/24/2008 A landmark agreement between the Center for National Competitiveness in Nanoscale Characterization (NC3) at the state University of New York-Albany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) aims to advance the established collaboration between NIST and University's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE). The agreement is expected to help tackle critical challenges facing nanotechnology, including precise measurement at the atomic and sub-atomic levels.
04/23/2008 by Debra Vogler, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
April 23, 2008 - SEMI is set to release results of a yearlong study detailing real-world challenges that its member companies have experienced protecting their IP. WaferNEWS talks with SEMI's Vicki Hadfield to sift through the report's findings -- including why customers (i.e., chipmakers) and the North America region are high on the list for IP concerns.
04/23/2008 Apr. 23, 2008 - Taiwan's Macronix plans to push into NOR flash for handsets within the next three years, placing it in direct competition with Spansion and Numonyx, according to a local report.
04/23/2008 Apr. 23, 2008 - A pending memory recovery later this year and more migrations to smaller technology nodes will spur another round of immersion tool orders for ASML, according to an analysis from FBR Research.
04/23/2008 by Debra Vogler, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
April 23, 2008 - WaferNEWS chats with Mfg Vision CEO John O'Donnell about the significance of what the company calls the "Web 2.0" capabilities of its FloorVision enterprise yield management system, and the results being generated at Cirrus Logic.
04/23/2008 3D packaging is expected to emerge as a dominant performing solution in the electronic/chip packaging industry. Its performance promises to drive efforts across the entire supply chain to successfully deploy it, according to analysis reports from Frost & Sullivan's Global Trends in Electronic/Chip Packaging. Analysis indicates that the industry is moving beyond system on chip (SoC) to explore various forms of system in package (SiP).
