07/05/2005 July 5, 2005 - Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. plans to reduce the number of domestic workers engaged in semiconductor development and production by 1000, or 6%, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Sunday, citing company sources.
07/05/2005 July 5, 2005 - Worldwide sales of semiconductors declined slightly in May to $18.05 billion, a sequential decline of 0.5% from the $18.14 billion reported in April, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported on July 2. May sales were up 4.1% from the $17.34 billion reported in May 2004.
07/05/2005 (July 5, 2005) San Jose, Calif. — Worldwide semiconductor sales declined slightly in May to $18.05 billion, a 0.5% sequential decline from April's $18.14 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reports. However, May sales were up 4.1% from the $17.34 billion reported in May 2004.
07/01/2005 (July 1, 2005) Austin, Texas — Freescale Semiconductor has recently joined NANOCMOS, an integrated project funded by the European Commission's Information Society Technologies Program that breaks new ground in materials, processes, device architectures, and interconnections to push performance and density limits of semiconductors. Freescale's participation was approved by the project partners during the NANOCMOS general assembly, and was validated by the European Commission.
07/01/2005 July 1, 2005 - Nikon Corp. said yesterday that it has developed a stepper capable of fabricating semiconductor chips with a linewidth of 50nm or smaller, for launch late this year, according to JIJI and other press reports. The NSR-S609B, an ArF immersion scanner with an NA projection lens of 1.07, is targeted at mass production of 55nm and development of 45nm devices.
07/01/2005 July 1, 2005 - The US government's Naval Air Warfare Center (NAVAIR), under DARPA sponsorship, has granted JMAR Technologies Inc. a two-year extension valued at $7.5 million to its existing three-year $10 million contract to continue development of sub-100nm feature x-ray masks for next generation lithography and production of Zone Plate optics for x-ray microscopes and nanoprobes.
07/01/2005 SACRAMENTO, Calif.-What was once simply known as California’s state capital, where most employees worked for the government, Sacramento today is home to academic research and myriad public companies that increasingly implement cleanroom technology.
07/01/2005 Veeco Instruments Inc. announced the promotion of Jeannine Sargent to the position of executive vice president, general manager of its Research Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) business unit.
07/01/2005 Five years ago companies developing MEMS-based solutions for use in optical networking appeared to be on the road to riches. Over the next 18 months, a few may finally reach the entrance ramp.
07/01/2005 AUSTIN, TX-With the second quarter of 2005 already underway, research consortium SEMATECH (www.sematech.org) is looking ahead to technical challenges facing the semiconductor industry in 2006. From lithography and various device components to metrology, manufacturing effectiveness, and environment, safety, and health (ES&H), the consortium sees significant contamination-control concerns-particularly with lithography and new materials.
07/01/2005 WASHINGTON, DC-National Institutes of Health (NIH; www.nih.gov) scientists have recently discovered that prion proteins become toxic when they latch on to the outside of cell membranes, and if a method can be found to break the fatty bond, effective treatments for such prion-induced diseases as human mad cow disease could be forthcoming.
07/01/2005 The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) is responsible for the origination, publishing and revision of approximately 35 Recommended Practices (RPs) on topics of interest and of value to the contamination-control industry. Several years ago, the need for an RP covering basic cleanroom operation and personnel practices was identified as one of these topics.
07/01/2005 NASHUA, NH-Dr. Hans Schicht, internationally recognized contamination-control expert, will keynote two day-long CleanRooms conferences this fall for the Latin American and Caribbean markets. CleanRooms Brazil will be held November 14 in São Paulo, while CleanRooms Puerto Rico will take place November 17 in San Juan.
07/01/2005 ROCKVILLE, Md.-In hopes of assuring safe, contamination-free use of human cells and tissue in medical procedures, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA; ww.fda.gov) has put into effect a series of new rules for “Good Tissue Practice” (GTP)-including the methods, facilities and controls used to manufacture such products as corneas, heart valves, musculoskeletal tissue, and cellular therapies.
07/01/2005 July 11 marks the opening day of the 35th annual SEMICON West conference and exhibition focusing on the technology trends, market drivers, and challenges affecting the semiconductor industry.
07/01/2005 MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.-Recent independent testing of filter technology developed by Donaldson Company Inc. (www.donaldson.com) offers optimism in the battle against sulfur-dioxide (SO2) contamination in semiconductor manufacturing.
07/01/2005 As an end user, you may not always get what you ask for when you engage a team to design a cleanroom for your facility. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
07/01/2005 The need for stricter contamination-control practices and procedures for the compounding of sterile pharmaceutical preparations has long been a topic of discussion in the pages of CleanRooms. But, as of January 1, 2004, good advice and recommendations have been transformed into the first official and enforceable sterile preparation compounding requirement in the U.S.-the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Chapter 797.
07/01/2005 The cleanroom industry is difficult to define because in many respects it is an artificial creation around results and not specific products.
07/01/2005 USP 797 was introduced in January 2004 as an enforceable regulation, and the document was a surprise to many involved in the compounding of sterile preparations. General chapter <797> Pharmaceutical Compounding-Sterile Preparations addresses the compounding of sterile products in any setting, including healthcare institutions, pharmacies, physician practices and other facilities in which sterile preparations are compounded.
