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02/01/2007  The pharmacy services department of Brigham and Women’s Hoa comprehensive USP <797> compliance program, the experiences of which stand to greatly benefit spital (BWH), a major urban hospital in Boston, MA, has initiated many other hospital pharmacy facilities and managers.

02/01/2007  When it comes to next-generation lithography, the semiconductor industry may be doing a double take-and that could mean double duty for contamination control.

02/01/2007  News snippets from the world of contamination control.

02/01/2007  In 2005, Technical Committee (TC) 229, Nanotechnologies (ISO/TC 229), was established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) with the British Standards Institute (BSI) serving as the secretariat and Dr. Peter Hatto of the United Kingdom as the chairman.

01/31/2007  January 31, 2007 - Japan's Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. has signed a deal to offload design-to-manufacture services to Taiwan foundry UMC and partner fabless ASIC house Faraday Technology Corp., focusing on 90nm- and below process technologies, deepening ties originated four years ago between Oki and UMC's Japan unit. Faraday already offers Oki design services for 130nm and 90nm.

01/31/2007  January 31, 2007 - Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) says it swung to a $1.2 million net profit in 4Q06, vs. losses of $35.1 million in the prior quarter and $15.0 million a year ago, as it looks to maximize profits with finer-linewidth processes and control expenditures.

01/31/2007  A major Korean semiconductor manufacturer placed an order with the SEZ Group for Da Vinci systems, to be used for back-end-of-line (BEOL) polymer removal. The four systems will perform aluminum/copper polymer cleans on 300- and 200-nm DRAM memory devices with sub-90-nm process technologies.

01/31/2007  David Bernard, Ph.D., product manager of X-ray systems at Dage Precision Industries, will staff the Process Advice and Defect Clinic held during IPC Printed Circuits Expo/APEX/Designers Summit, February 20–22 in Los Angeles.

01/31/2007  January 31, 2007 - Qimonda AG is evaluating various locations across Asia for a proposed 300mm wafer fab, including Taiwan, Singapore, and mainland China, which would expand the company's operations outside Europe and the US, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

01/31/2007  PolyFuel, Inc., a Mountain View, Calif. company engineering fuel cell membranes for the portable electronic and automotive industries, announced today the appointment of Mr. Don MacDonald to the company's board of directors, effective March 1st, 2007.

01/31/2007  Integrated Sensing Systems, Inc. (ISSYS), an Ypsilanti, Mich. MEMS design and fabrication company, announced the launch of its embedded density and chemical concentration sensor. The main application is methanol concentration measurement for Direct Methanol Fuel Cell (DMFC) portable batteries.

01/30/2007  Building on its venerable Surfscan unpatterned-wafer inspection legacy, the new SP2^XP system from KLA-Tencor Corp. is designed for the 45nm IC manufacturing requirements for all types of bare wafers. The company claims the system can detect all major types of defects of interest, and quickly group wafers into defect-free, reworkable, and scrap categories.

01/30/2007  Caution, even fear, is the feeling of many executives as they plan for a slowdown in 2007 -- the global economy is of major concern because it's tracked much more closely now by the semiconductor industry due to consumerization. Are we heading into a recession with the US dollar slumping and the stock market plunging? No way, suggested Nobel economist Edward Prescott of Arizona State U., in his opening talk at the recent Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) in Half Moon Bay, CA.

01/30/2007  A minor update to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors was released in December, before next year's full ITRS revision. An examination of the new content in the assembly and packaging chapter illuminates concerns about package substrates keeping up with advances in silicon technology, as well as a variety of challenges in thinned-die packaging.

01/30/2007  After attending a demo at Intel HQ the day before the big announcement, SST Senior Technical Editor Mark Levenson thinks achieving first production as scheduled in 2007 would have been a significant technological milestone by itself -- but getting the first design, first mask set, and first silicon all working properly was stunning.

01/30/2007  Ottawa-based companies, researchers, and scientists formed part of a Canadian delegation to Photonics West, held January 23–25, 2007, in San Jose, CA. The Canadian Photonics Pavilion represented the first booth dedicated to Canadian exhibitors in the show's history. Photonics West is a global platform, said Greg Bell, VP of marketing at Lumenera Corporation in Ottawa.

01/30/2007  January 30, 2007 - Count one more chipmaker that's decided to get out of the leading-edge R&D rat-race. Cypress Semiconductor Corp. says it is selling its Silicon Valley Technology Center (SVTC) 65nm process R&D shop to a pair of private equity firms for approximately $53 million in cash.

01/30/2007  Intel Corporation is using new materials to build insulating walls and switching gates to enable 45-nm transistor technology. The hafnium-based high-k gate dielectric and metal-composite transistor gate electrode will be incorporated into a product family codenamed Penryn.

01/30/2007  A team of Northeastern University researchers received a $1.2 million, 2-year grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation to develop an innovative multifunctional nanochip with the long-term goal of it being used as a powerful nanobiosensor and drug delivery system, able to identify antigens in body fluid or tissue and release specific drugs and dosages in real-time, based on what is detected.

01/30/2007  BioForce Nanosciences, Inc announced that it exceeded its 2006 goal for shipping up to 20 of its cutting-edge Nano eNabler™ molecular printers to research institutions across the globe.