08/21/2007 Among the literally hundreds of presentations lined up for this week's American Chemical Society fall national meeting (Boston, MA, Aug. 19-23) are talks about chemical advancements in nearly every field imaginable, from medicine to petroleum and agriculture, and materials science. Here's a quick rundown of several papers of interest to the semiconductor industry, including research into nanoimprint lithography, porous low-k dielectrics, and photovoltaic cells.
08/21/2007 Traditional scanning electron microscopes (SEM) provide essential information for both R&D and quality control in semiconductor manufacturing, but are generally slow and sensitive and ultimately become R&D bottlenecks. Perusing the aisles at SEMICON West, I ran across FEI's new Phenom, which is the size of a coffeemaker and costs a third of traditional SEMs. Note to academia and fab engineers: you'll want one, and here's why.
08/21/2007 August 21, 2007 - The acquisition of DFM darling ClearShape shows Cadence is finally getting serious about DFM, according to analyst and EDA guru Gary Smith. Although there are still some areas to address, he says, the DFM market now seems to be a two-horse race until competitors answer back.
08/21/2007 August 21, 2007 - Execs from Cadence Design Systems and Clear Shape Technologies talked about their proposed M&A deal with WaferNEWS and Microlithography World, hinting that integration will soon go deeper than just an interface, and what other applications besides litho are in the pipeline.
08/21/2007 August 21, 2007 - TSMC says it has qualified and begun production of its "fully logic compatible" 0.13-micron embedded flash process, the first version to use copper wiring.
08/21/2007 August 21, 2007 - LSI Corp., the merged entity of LSI Logic and Agere Systems, is selling its mobility products business to German chipmaker Infineon Technologies for $450 million plus a $50M performance-based bonus, in its latest efforts to carve out noncore operations and transform into a fabless manufacturing business model.
08/21/2007 Qimonda and Chinese foundry SMIC have extended their commodity DRAM partnership with a deal to move manufacturing to 80nm DRAM trench at SMIC's 300mm fab in Beijing, with an option to go down to 75nm.
08/21/2007 Buildup of chemical residues inside an ion implanter limits the tool's overall utilization efficiency. WaferNEWS talks with Atmel Corp. about the results from its evaluation of a new in situ chemical cleaning technology from ATMI that reduces such deposits and achieves greater predictability for source change-outs.
08/21/2007 August 21, 2007 - Intel says it will move to 65nm process technologies for its embedded NOR flash products to maintain "price/performance balance and ensure support for extended product lifecycles," with first samples expected in 1H08.
08/21/2007 Phiar Corp. has filed for a U.S. patent for a monolithically integrated analog front end and antenna structure that promises enable multi-gigabit data transmission for consumer electronics. The company has also won a DARPA award for using nanotech to solve speed and power limitations.
08/21/2007 The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded Endicott Interconnect Technologies, Inc. (EI), a $19 million contract modification to existing work, requiring additional multi chip module (MCM) assemblies and equipment. EI provides fully assembled MCMs for a high-reliability, high-performance DoD computing application.
08/21/2007 IPC — Association Connecting Electronics Industries commissioned in-depth market studies on strategies for global expansion and microelectronics trends and technologies. BPA Consulting (Dorking, Surrey, U.K.) and Prismark Partners (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.) will conduct the research. IPC's Executive Market Forum oversees the project, and will publish the final reports.
08/20/2007 August 20, 2007 - HelioVolt aims to use its newly nailed-down $77M in Series B financing to help achieve its goal of a first factory, a proposed 20MW site in the US with room to expand capacity as needed, according to company CEO B.J. Stanbery, in an email Q&A with WaferNEWS.
08/20/2007 ICI acquired Advanced Applied Adhesives (AAA — San Diego, CA) to expand its electronic materials (EM) group. AAA and sister company Designer Molecules, Inc. (DMI), offer die-attach adhesives for power applications and other packaging materials. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
08/20/2007 August 20, 2007 - Taiwan's memory chipmakers are in a heated race to upgrade to the next technology node, relying on international partners to gain access to leading-edge technology and boost capacity, according to a recent report by the Taiwan Economic News.
08/20/2007 August 20, 2007 - Israeli foundry Tower Semiconductor says it will use an "inventory lifecycle" program to manage its spare parts for chipmaking tools, in an effort to streamline its parts usage, help raise capacity, and ultimately save millions of dollars over the next several years.
08/20/2007 DEK introduced a regional-content feature to its website, enabling visitors to view product, process, and company information in local languages and tailored to the production parameters of a region. Users select Asia, Europe, or U.S. content when entering the site.
08/20/2007 August 20, 2007 - Entegris says it has acquired assets of Surmet Corp.'s high-purity semiconductor coatings business for an undisclosed amount.
08/20/2007 August 17, 2007 - Technologies and Devices International Inc. (TDI) says it is now producing indium-gallium-nitride (InGaN) substrates for packaging GaN-based high-brightness LEDs and blue and green laser diodes, targeting volume production for early 2008.
08/20/2007 August 20, 2007 - IBM Corp. and TDK Corp. have formed a joint R&D program to develop high-capacity MRAM (magnetic random-access memory) technology utilizing "spin momentum transfer effect" to create memory devices with a much more compact memory cell than current approaches.
