06/12/2007 The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has notified NVE Corporation, Eden Prairie, Minn., of the expected grant of a patent titled "Thermomagnetically Assisted Spin-Momentum-Transfer Switching Memory," relating to magneto-thermal and spin-momentum transfer MRAM inventions.
06/12/2007 A roundup of news from the past week in Japan finds PC makers turning to flash, chemical makers opening their wallets, new silicon transport components, and a behemoth of a CMOS image sensor prototype.
06/11/2007 June 11, 2007 - Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), George Mason U., and Korea's Kwangwoon U. have fabricated a hybrid memory device incorporating both silicon nanowires and nonvolatile semiconductor-oxide-nitride-oxide-semiconductor (SONOS) technology, which they suggest is more reliable than other nanowire-based memory devices.
06/11/2007 June 11, 2007 - STATS ChipPAC Ltd. says it will sell certain assembly and test assets for its discrete power packages to China's Ningbo Mingxin Microelectronics Co. Ltd., following a similar transaction a year ago to farm out some work to mainland China in order to pursue better growth opportunities in areas such as system-in-package, flip-chip, and 3D technologies.
06/11/2007 June 11, 2007 - Mentor Graphics has acquired Sierra Design Automation for $90 million in a half-and-half cash/stock deal, bolstering its design offerings. Mentor says the deal will be "slightly accretive" for FY07 (ending Jan.31 2008), and shave about $0.02 off of its anticipated FY08 earnings.
06/11/2007 Synova and Disco Hi-Tec Europe will partner to develop a hybrid dicing tool that uses both Synova's Laser Microjet (LMJ) water-jet-guided laser technology and the latest-generation blade-saw dicing systems for advanced dicing applications. The resulting tool is expected to allow semiconductor manufacturers to achieve a high throughput while minimizing damage to silicon and advanced-material wafers of any thickness.
06/11/2007 Moore's Law is about to be tested — again. Tessera Technologies added to its wafer-level technology portfolio with the unveiling of the OptiML WLC, a wafer-level camera technology that will reportedly advance the integration of miniaturized cameras in cell phones, personal computers, security cameras, and other electronics.
06/11/2007 Nanocoating and ultra thin film deposition technology is expanding from industrial applications to semiconductors, photovoltaic cells, magnetic memory, and space exploration. Small Times' Hugh Willett reports.
06/11/2007 ViRexx Medical Corp., a company focused on immunotherapy treatments for certain cancers, chronic hepatitis B & C and embolotherapy treatments for tumors, has signed collaboration agreements with the National Research Council (NRC) Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and Defence Research and Development Canada Suffield (DRDC Suffield) with networking and financial contribution from NRC-Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP).
06/08/2007 Engineers from Stanford and the U. of Southern California have devised a method to design circuits containing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) that should work even when many of the nanotubes are twisted and misaligned.
06/08/2007 June 8, 2007 - Intel Corp. appears to be pushing out all orders and shipments for equipment relating to the upgrade of its fab in New Mexico from 200mm to 300mm-compatible, just three months after announcing it would make that facility into its fourth 45nm production site, according to an analyst report.
06/08/2007 June 8, 2007 - New orders for more of TSMC's 65nm capacity from Qualcomm Inc. and Broadcom Corp., which are eyeing increased demand from the mobile phone market, puts TSMC even further ahead of rivals seeking to add customers for their leading-edge offerings, according to the Taiwan Economic News.
06/08/2007 June 8, 2007 - Yet another move in a busy spring has left Nanometrics Inc. feeling better about its positioning in the market with a core group of metrology technologies, after the recent sale of two tangential product lines, the company says.
06/08/2007 Oleg Khaykin, chief operation officer (COO) and executive VP of Amkor Technology, Inc., will keynote the International Wafer-level Packaging Conference (IWLPC), September 17–19 in San Jose. The event, co-sponsored by the SMTA, also hosts workshops, panels, and technical presentations.
06/08/2007 Octillion Corp. says that in early models of its photovoltaic NanoPower Windows product, scientists have successfully engineered and assembled a mechanically stable, visually transparent prototype that achieves optically active down-conversion and displays good electrical properties with no electrical shorts. This marks a significant breakthrough in development of a working prototype capable of generating electricity from sunlight without losing significant transparency.
06/08/2007 Aerotech's new ABRT rotary air-bearing stage series is designed to meet the exacting requirements of MEMS/nanotechnology device fabrication, wafer inspection, and high-precision metrology.
06/08/2007 Okmetic Oyj, supplier of silicon wafers for MEMS sensors, says it has transferred highly homogeneous silicon on insulator (SOI) wafers into production. The new material reportedly enables greater sensitivity.
06/08/2007 Millennium Research Group (MRG) says, in its US Markets for Dental Implants 2007 report, that prominent dental implant manufacturers are incorporating nanotechnology into their dental implant surface designs because the technology is purported to cut healing time in half and improve
osseointegration.
06/07/2007 June 7, 2007 - Tronics Microsystems SA and Alcatel Micro Machining Systems (AMMS) say they will jointly develop deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) systems for "extreme-performance" MEMS.
FEI Company's next-generation DualBeam product, the Expida 1255S, integrates wafer-level STEM (scanning/transmission electron microscopy) sample preparation with ultra-high-resolution imaging and analysis.
Aerotech's new ABRT rotary air-bearing stage series is designed to meet the exacting requirements of MEMS/nanotechnology device fabrication, wafer inspection, and high-precision metrology.