The system features side-to-side recirculation is said to enhance temperature uniformity, and convection efficiency that reduces zone temperature set points. The Pyramax 75A features user-friendly Windows-based WINCON oven control software, parts-identification software, options for flux management, advanced conveyor solutions and smart tracking SMEMA, optional barcode reader, as well as a comprehensive warranty backed by BTU’s product and technical support. BTU International North Billerica, MA www.btu.com Stand #7-207
Category Archives: Materials and Equipment
May 16, 2008 — CVD Equipment Corporation — designer, manufacturer and supplier of equipment for use in manufacturing nanotechnology such as carbon nanotubes and nanowires, as well as semiconductors and solar cells, and for surface mounting of components onto printed circuit boards — has announced record first quarter revenues and its fourteenth consecutive profitable quarter.
Revenue for the first quarter ending March 31, 2008 was approximately $4,043,000, compared to $3,811,000 for the quarter ending March 31, 2007, an increase of 6.1% “as we continue to experience an increasing demand for our products,” the company said.
The overall gross profit percentage decreased to 30.1% for the current quarter compared to 33.0% for the same period one year ago. The firm says the decrease is a result of adding engineering and production personnel necessitated by the increase in orders, the expansion plans with its recently announced First Nano Laboratory, and new product development in the nanomaterials, solar, energy and semiconductor fields.
As of March 31, 2008 the company’s backlog was approximately $3,364,000, a decrease of $1,723,000 or 33.9% compared to $5,087,000 at December 31, 2007. Timing for completion of the backlog varies depending on the product mix, however, there is generally a one to six month lag in the completion and shipping of backlogged product. Backlog from quarter to quarter can vary based on the timing of order placements and shipments.
Leonard Rosenbaum, President and CEO stated, “Our record first quarter revenues and quotation activity show a strong acceptance of our equipment platforms. The additional sales, engineering and manufacturing expenditures we are currently incurring will further broaden the First Nano and CVD product lines. The First Nano Laboratory expansion will enable us to further demonstrate our new and existing equipment platforms, processes and IP. In addition, the programs we are developing with universities and industry for next generation products in the Nano Technology, Solar, Energy and Semiconductor fields will provide for our long term continuous growth. These factors will keep us on track with continued revenue growth in 2008 and provide a steady increase in revenue and profitability for future years.”
May 16, 2008 — Researchers at the National Science Foundation’s Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) at Northeastern University — with partners UMass Lowell and University of New Hampshire — say they have discovered “an innovative technology that will have a tremendous impact on the nanotechnology industry.”
Under the direction of Ahmed Busnaina, Ph.D., researchers developed a technique to scale-up the directed assembly of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) networks, from microns to inches, creating a viable circuit template that can be transferred from one substrate to another (say, silicon to polymer) in continuous or batch processes. According to CHN, devising methods to create nanoscale structures, and to mass-produce those them while ensuring reliability and cost-effectiveness, are top priorities for the nanotechnology industry. The center’s approach for assembling nanoelements (nanotubes, nanoparticles, etc.) into structures will lead to the production of devices such as biosensors, batteries, memory devices and flexible electronics quickly and efficiently and with minimal error, they say.
“This technology is a platform for many applications, and the fact that it is scalable makes it easier to bring to market,” said Busnaina, William Lincoln Smith Professor and Director of the CHN. “The cost of current nanomanufacturing techniques is sky high, and our product has the potential to increase productivity tremendously without sacrificing reliability.”
Concurrently, researchers at the CHN are investigating the environmental and biological implications to ensure that these devices and techniques are safe for people and for the environment.
The work will be on display at Booth #211 at the upcoming NSTI Nanotech 2008 conference in Boston, June 1-5, 2008. For more information about SWNT research at Northeastern, contact Jenny Eriksen.
May 15, 2008 – The acquisition of DFM firm Ponte Solutions by EDA firm Mentor Graphics not only takes one of the last pure DFM companies off the table, it also answers the question about what side of the chipmaking wall DFM belongs, and terminates an inflection point that might not be seen again for a decade or more.
“In a way this is the end of the DFM dream,” according to analyst Gary Smith, in an e-mail exchange. “When DFM first came on the scene there was a lot of uncertainty over where it belonged: Was this a semiconductor equipment play? Would the foundries control its destiny? Or did it belong in EDA?” And if EDA was the right answer, was DFM a “once every 10-15 year inflection point” that could change the EDA playing field? The latter seems to have come true, Smith noted, but the impact wasn’t enough to hoist a pure DFM firm into the top ranks of EDA companies. “DFM tools had to be integrated into the design flow which tied it back to the router, so it became a big company game,” he said.
Along with Blaze, Ponte was one of the last substandial DFM vendors standing, and “it was a matter of time before Ponte would be acquired,” Smith told WaferNEWS. [Ed.: This statement has been corrected to list Blaze as still a standalone DFM firm, not “bought out” through its merger with Aprio. We apologize for the error.] He cited the Mentor-Ponte combination as “a good fit,” though its technology is only “additive” to Mentor’s in-house capabilities.
More broadly from a strategic market perspective, buying Ponte cements Mentor’s claim as the top EDA/DFM firm, with access to both “keystone” DFM tools, Smith noted: its own DRC engine, and the IC Router which Synopsys/Magma/Cadence have (and Mentor obtained through last summer’s purchase of Sierra Design Automation, which debuted the first DFM router). Now, “chances are good that one of them will drop out,” Smith said of the three other EDA firms, with the survivors left to try to take marketshare in DRC. “I would say Mentor would have to screw up pretty badly to lose this one, and they haven’t been screwing up much this century,” he quipped.
This might be the end of consolidation in DFM/EDA (Blaze is now the “lone ranger” in the segment, noted Smith), but hardly the end of DFM technology innovation. “Each node brings new challenges, so we have a lot of work ahead of us” until the next projected inflection point ~2020, he pointed out — at which point bigger issues loom: whether CMOS, and possibly silicon itself, may have run out of steam. — J.M.
May 7, 2008 – Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments were roughly the same in 1Q as they were in 4Q, reflecting the industry’s overall conservative environment, according to data from SEMI.
Total silicon area shipments totaled 2163 millions of sq. in. (MSI) in 1Q08, down -1.0% from the prior quarter and up 3.0% from the year-ago quarter. The numbers do not include any shipments destined for solar applications.
That Q-Q decline is “consistent with the conservative industry sentiment,” though 300mm wafer shipments continue to rise, said Kazuyo Heinink, chairwoman of SEMI SMG and VP of new product marketing for MEMC Electronic Materials, in a statement.
May 7, 2008 — VT International Corp. says it has completed its acquisition of Nanotailor Inc. in a stock-for-stock, tax free exchange transaction. Nanotailor licensed the rights to a manufacturing process, developed at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, to create single-walled carbon nanotubes. The inventor of that process retired from NASA and is now employed exclusively by Nanotailor.
“We believe the acquisition of Nanotailor will bring good value to our shareholders. We are excited about Nanotailor’s potential,” commented Michael S. Williams, President of VT International Corp., who resigned effective with the closing of the acquisition. “We also believe Nanotailor’s technology has potential across multiple industries. With their advantages, we believe Nanotailor has the opportunity to really stimulate the development of exciting leading edge technologies.”
The Nanotailor management team is working to trade on the public markets within the foreseeable future. Next week, VT International Corp. expects to file Articles of Merger in Arizona and Delaware to merge with and into a new Delaware corporation with the purpose of carrying on the Nanotailor name (“New Nanotailor”). Upon acceptance of the filings, New Nanotailor will be the Surviving Corporation domiciled in Delaware but will continue the company’s capital structure. Company shareholders may, but will not be required, to exchange their Company shares for New Nanotailor shares. New Nanotailor will also be seeking stockholder approval to affect a reverse stock split of its common stock outstanding. Peacock, Hislop, Staley & Given, Inc., a Phoenix, Arizona-based licensed broker-dealer has agreed to file a Form 211 with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority to seek trading of Nanotailor’s common stock. Upon completion of an audit, expected within 30 days, Nanotailor will then file a Form 10 Registration Statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a fully reporting company.
According to Ramon Perales, President and CEO of Nanotailor and now the Chief Executive Officer of the new company as well, “Having access to public capital will further assist us in solidifying relationships we have been courting with global companies and government organizations and accelerate our commercialization plans.”
Further details regarding Nanotailor becoming a publicly traded company will be posted on Nanotailor’s website as more information becomes available.
Carbon nanotubes (“CNTs”) are nanoscopic building blocks comprised of geometrically aligned carbon atoms, which give the CNTs their extraordinary properties. Of all CNTs, Single-Walled CNTs have superior mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties that lend themselves to wide array of applications and industries.
May 5, 2008 – A new technique to literally melt away defects in etching microchip structures, and significantly reduce line-edge roughness (LER), has been revealed by scientists at Princeton U.
“What we propose instead is a paradigm shift: Rather than struggle to improve fabrication methods, we could simply fix the defects after fabrication,” said Chou, adding that fixing the defects could be “automatic, a process of self-perfection.”
Their method, dubbed “self-perfection by liquefaction” (SPEL), selectively melts nanostructures for hundreds of nanoseconds while applying a set of boundary conditions to guide the flow of molten material to resolidify into desired shapes, while natural forces (e.g. surface tension) smooth the structures into geometrically accurate shapes (e.g., straighter lines and rounder dots).
Simple melting by direct heat works with plastic but not high-melting-point metals in semiconductors — everything around the chip would melt too, and the process would widen and round off top and side surfaces. To address the first concern, they applied an excimer laser to heat only a very thin surface of the material for a millionth of a second, to melt only semiconductor and metal structures
To address the second issue (rounding), a flat plate was placed on top of the melting structures to guide the flowing liquid, preventing the molten structure from widening and keeping the top and sides flat and vertical.
A flat plate is used to guide the process, increasing sidewall slopes, flattening top surfaces, and narrowing the width while increasing the height. In contrast to conventional approaches, the guided melting process fixes all defects in a single, quick and inexpensive step.
They claim the SPEL process improved smoothness of 3-LER of 70nm wide chromium grating lines by 5x (see Fig. 1) — from 8.4nm to <1.5nm, "well below the 'red zone limit' of 3nm" laid out by the ITRS. Silicon linewidths were reduced from 285nm to 175nm, while height was increased from 50nm to 90nm.
Fig. 1. Electron microscope images show before (left) and after (right) examples. (Credit: Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)
Another benefit, dubbed a “surprise”: when the guiding plate is placed above the molten structures and not in contact with them, the liquid material rises up to touch the plate by itself — causing line structures to become taller and narrower (see Fig. 1). This creates “dramatically altered aspect ratios,” notes Donald Tennant, director of operations at Cornell U.’s NanoScale Science and Technology Facility, in a statement.
Fig. 2. The “Open” method involves using a laser to briefly melt defects, which self correct before cooling. The “Capped” method prevents the technique from rounding off the structures. The “Guided” version causes the structures to grow toward a nearby plate, causing them to become not only smoother, but also taller and thinner. (Credit: Stephen Chou/Nature Nanotechnology)
The researchers say the SPEL process can be extended to other metals and semiconductors, dielectrics, and large-area wafers. Chou and his group next plan to demonstrate the technique on 200mm wafers, saying that “several leading semiconductor manufacturers have expressed keen interest in the technique.”
The work, supported by DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, is discussed in the May 4 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Kurt Trippacher, Head of Oerlikon Esec and Segment CEO, who spoke at the ceremony, said the first machines are producing in high volumes at customer locations in Europe and in Asia.
By Daniel F. Baldwin, Ph.D. and Paul Houston, ENGENT, Inc.
Current 3D packaging solutions involve a mix of high density circuit boards with stacked ICs using wire bond interconnect. With advances in wafer-thinning technology, 3D packaging now provides a robust platform for achieving high levels of integration, small package footprints, and thin package profiles. For emerging applications, further component miniaturization with the added benefit of 3D integration can be realized by face-to-face bonding of fine-pitch flip chip components and low-profile passives onto a redistribution layer (RDL) of another silicon component (a wafer level chip scale package
Hysol FF6000, from the electronics group at Henkel, is a reflow curable material formulated to provide flux for lead-free solder joint formation and, when cured, delivers protection against mechanical stress. Unlike traditional capillary underfill processes, this material enables an in-line alternative that affords thorough device protection as well.
April 29, 2008 — /PRNewswire/ — ST. LOUIS, MO — SAFC Hitech(TM), a focus area within SAFC(R), a member of the Sigma-Aldrich Group, today underlined its commitment to the electronic materials markets with the opening of a $9 million state-of-the-art cleanroom located on the company’s Sheboygan Falls, WI campus. The 5,000-sq.-ft. facility consists of an ISO 4 cleanroom, a distillation suite, and office space.
The new facility, which became fully operational in late April, provides in-house trace metals analysis and the capability to clean and fill containers in a tightly controlled environment. The Sheboygan campus was selected as the site for the new cleanroom as it already provides large-scale manufacturing of products for the material science industry for SAFC, which supports the silicon semiconductor, compound semiconductor, and performance materials markets.
The extension of the Sheboygan campus enables SAFC Hitech to produce, package, and analyze its products in one location, completing the total supply chain, eliminating the need to use outside facilities, and ensuring customers an uninterrupted supply of the highest quality materials required for advanced semiconductor manufacturing.
“One of SAFC’s primary business objectives is to continue to build the SAFC Hitech segment into a global leader in the supply of ultra-pure, high-quality materials and technical solutions to the electronics industries we serve,” says SAFC president Frank Wicks. “As the demand for new and increasingly efficient materials continues to grow, so does the need to attain higher and higher levels of quality and dependability from our products.
“This cleanroom investment complements existing manufacturing and extensive research and development sites at Sheboygan and will help us to achieve our objectives, essentially providing a ‘one stop shop’ for manufacturing, analysis, and packaging. As a result, SAFC Hitech customers will benefit from high-quality products that meet or exceed specifications, feature significantly reduced quality variations and are delivered on time.”
Looking ahead, Geoff Irvine, director, commercial development & marketing, SAFC Hitech, believes the Sheboygan facility can act as a blueprint for future expansion in overseas markets. “In 2007 we announced long-term plans for the expansion of our manufacturing footprint in both China and South Korea,” Irvine says. “We expect to be able to use the construction and operational experiences gained from Sheboygan and apply it to future, similar developments serving other markets, thereby expanding our global presence using tried and tested methodologies.”
About SAFC Hitech
SAFC Hitech provides a unique chemistry service translating application understanding into performance materials worldwide. Through collaborative partnerships and an integrated approach from research and development, process development, and scale-up to commercial manufacturing, SAFC Hitech invests in innovation and manufacturing enabling current and future technology needs.
Visit www.safchitech.com
About SAFC
SAFC(R) is the custom manufacturing and services group within Sigma-Aldrich that focuses on products and services for high technology applications, cell culture products and services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, biochemical production and the manufacturing of complex, multi-step organic synthesis of APIs and key intermediates. SAFC has manufacturing facilities around the world dedicated to providing manufacturing services for companies requiring a reliable partner to produce their custom manufactured materials. SAFC has four focus areas — SAFC Pharma(TM), SAFC Supply Solutions(R), SAFC Biosciences(TM), and SAFC Hitech(TM) — and had annual sales of nearly $600 million in 2007. SAFC is one of the world’s 10 largest fine chemical businesses.
Visit www.safcglobal.com
About Sigma-Aldrich
Sigma-Aldrich is a leading life science and high technology company. Its biochemical and organic chemical products and kits are used in scientific and genomic research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development, the diagnosis of disease, and as key components in pharmaceutical and other high technology manufacturing. The company has customers in life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals, and industry. More than one million scientists and technologists use its products. Sigma-Aldrich operates in 36 countries and has 7,900 employees providing excellent service worldwide. The company is committed to accelerating customers’ success through leadership in life science, high technology, and service.
Visit www.sigma-aldrich.com