Category Archives: Materials and Equipment

The stack was achieved with grinding, handling, and placement technology for 30-&#181m-thick die, attached with 40-&#181m low-loop wire bonds and overhang wire-bond technologies using gold wire. Elpida optimized back-grind conditions and improved the thin-wafer handling process to enable the 20-die stack. The company also set die-bonding condition with minimum stress on the silicon. A process for injecting resin into a narrow gap is part of the assembly procedure.

(April 24, 2007) MUNICH, Germany and WESTFORD, MA &#151 Zuken is supporting free footprint data for Texas Instruments’ digital signal processor (DSP) products to CR-5000 users. The engineering consulting firm’s Japanese, European, and American operations joined the TI DSP Third Party Network, increasing customer access to DSP designs.

(April 23, 2007) SEOUL, South Korea &#151 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has developed an all-DRAM stacked-memory package using through-silicon vias (TSVs) housed in aluminum pads to avoid performance slow-downs caused by the redistribution layer. The company applied a proprietary wafer-thinning technique to eliminate warped die in the low-profile package.

(April 23, 2007) AKITA, Japan &#151 Akita Elpida Memory, Inc., developed a 1.4-mm-thick multi-chip package (MCP) encompassing 20 thinned and stacked die. The company plans to incorporate processes used on this 20-die package to improve performance and manufacturability of more widely used 5- to 7-die-stack 3D packages.

April 20, 2007 – Semiconductor equipment demand was essentially flat in March vs. the previous month, and year-on-year sales and orders of chipmaking tools rose very little, according to data from SEMI.

The new figures incorporate revised data from SEMI, which earlier this week fixed inaccuracies to show that actual levels of demand in both January and February were significantly lower than previously reported, off by as much as 10%-15% vs. earlier estimates.

Worldwide billings for North American-made semiconductor equipment stayed about flat at $1.42 billion in March vs. February, and were 6.0% higher than March 2006. Bookings rose just 1.4% sequentially and 2.3% year-on-year to roughly $1.42 billion. The resulting book-to-bill ratio (B:B) of even-parity 1.00, improved from 0.98 in February, means that $100 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

The updated figures “show relative equilibrium of orders and shipments over the past few months, reflecting continued market stability for North American providers of chip making equipment,” said SEMI president Stanley Myers, in a statement.

Looking at SEMI’s (revised) data for the first three months of the year, orders for chip tools in 1Q07 declined about 5% from 4Q06, but were up 10% from the same quarter a year ago. Sales were similarly slower during the first quarter sequentially (-6%) and higher than a year ago (~9%).

North American equipment bookings, billings — Jan 2006-Feb 2007

Month…….Billings…….%M-M………%Y-Y……….Bookings……..%M-M……..% Y-Y………B:B
………… (3-mo. avg.)……………………………………(3-mo. avg.)……………………………………..

Mar’06…………..1338.7…….4.3%………5.2%……….1385.3……..7.1%…….40.2%……..1.03
Apr’06…………..1448.5…….8.2%……..16.9%……….1602.4…….15.7%…….60.4%……..1.11
May’06…………..1452.6…….0.3%……..19.8%……….1619.0……..1.0%…….59.5%……..1.11
June’06………….1557.4…….7.2%……..35.2%……….1782.3…….10.1%…….71.7%……..1.14
July’06………….1637.9…….5.2%……..51.9%……….1734.6…….-2.7%…….72.2%……..1.06
Aug’06…………..1742.8…….6.4%……..65.1%……….1729.7…….-0.3%…….69.6%……..0.99
Sep’06…………..1672.8……-4.0%……..53.7%……….1639.2…….-5.2%…….66.6%……..0.98
Oct’06…………..1562.9……-6.6%……..36.4%……….1468.6……-10.4%…….34.3%……..0.94
Nov’06…………..1486.1……-4.9%……..26.0%……….1426.5…….-2.8%…….30.5%……..0.96
Dec’06…………..1482.3……-0.2%……..21.1%……….1497.2……..5.0%…….31.0%……..1.01
Jan’07…………..1448.0……-2.3%……..15.0%……….1445.8…….-3.4%…….17.9%……..1.00
Feb’07 (f)………..1423.0……-1.3%……..11.3%……….1398.1…….-3.1%……..8.3%……..0.98
Mar’07 (p)……..1418.9…….0.3%………6.0%……….1417.4……..1.4%……..2.3%……..1.00
1Q07 (e)………..4289.9……-5.3%……..10.5%……….4261.3…….-6.0%……..9.1%……..0.99

WaferNEWS source: SEMI

April 20, 2007 – Rohm and Haas Co. has agreed to acquire Kodak’s light management films business, which produces films to improve brightness and efficiency of LCDs, for an undisclosed amount. Rohm & Haas’ electronic materials unit is expected to take on all employees of the business, which has operations in Rochester, NY, as well as overseas offices in Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and China.

The deal “is an exciting first step in building our flat-panel display technologies business,” noted Yi Hyon Paik, VP and business group director, Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials. He noted Kodak’s display films have made initial inroads into Asia — “the technology pipeline is deep and well positioned to meet emerging display requirements, especially in the fast-growing LCD TV market,” he said in a statement.

Pierre Brondeau, EVP in the company’s electronic materials and specialty materials group, noted this is the first stage of the “Vision 2010” initiative, launched last year, to accelerate and invest in growth and improve profitability. “We have pledged to aggressively grow our Electronic Materials business over the next several years, and this acquisition is the first of many steps we’re pursuing to meet that objective,” he stated.

The Kodak technology, placed as one of several layers in a typical LCD application, randomly arranges millions of individual lenses on a polycarbonate film to improve brightness, color consistency, and viewing angle, as well as reduce moire interference patterns.

By Sarah Fister Gale, Small Times’ contributing editor

In an open letter to the international nanotechnology community at large, the Civil Society-Labor Coalition recently rejected what it referred to as the “fundamentally flawed Dupont-Environmental Defense proposed framework” for voluntary risk assessment of nanotechnology.

The group, which is made up of 20 public interest, non-profit and labor organizations, including Friends of the Earth, The Center for Food Safety, United Steelworkers of America and Greenpeace, contends that “any process in which broad public participation in government oversight of nanotech policy is usurped by industry and its allies is flawed.”

George Kimbrell, Staff Attorney for The International Center For Technology Assessment, says that the Coalition opposes any voluntary regulation as a means for oversight, both in general and specific to nanotechnology. “Voluntary regulations have often been used to delay or weaken rigorous regulation and we feel it will delay or forestall necessary oversight.”

The Coalition also feels that the nanotech industry should have no part in developing the framework, Kimbrell says. “Many groups involved with the letter felt the framework was wrongheaded from the beginning. Environmental Defense and Dupont are not the place to begin discussions and they do not represent us. We feel it should be a public process involving the EPA the FDA and their sister agencies.”

The letter goes on to state that the members of the group made the decision not to engage in the process — which called for public comments after the framework was drafted — out of: “well-grounded concerns that our participation — even our skeptical participation ¿ would be used to legitimize the proposed framework as a starting point or ending point for discussing nanotechnology policy, oversight and risk analysis.”

The Coalition intends to release its own suggested model for oversight of nanomaterials later this year in hopes of influencing the debate and adjusting the regulatory framework to adhere to its concerns.

Mark Mansour, partner in the D.C. law firm Foley & Lardner LLP says, “No-one wants to put out a product without verifying its safety,” he says. “The industry wants a framework for oversight, however we can never achieve the kinds of safety that some of these groups insist on.”

Many of the groups in the Coalition are calling for a complete moratorium on all products using nanotech materials, while others want much stricter product testing and labeling prior to market release.

Mansour, who has been involved with regulatory work in biotechnology and emerging technologies for 15 years, feels that it is unreasonable to demand that the industry not be involved with developing a framework for health and safety risk assessment of nanomaterials. “These are the people who have the greatest knowledge about nanotechnology,” he says.

He also notes that while the coalition wants federal agencies to develop and conduct the oversight of nanotechnology, these agencies don’t have the funding to do what the coalition is asking them to do. “They have a wish list of things that seem designed to ensure the failure of the industry, which is poking holes in their sincerity,” Mansour says.

He admits that it is unlikely that industry and the members of this coalition will ever come to a complete agreement but that they will likely find some common ground. “The battle line has been drawn, and they have made their position clear,” he says. “This letter is not going to change the way industry does business but it will start a lot of discussions about how to maintain health and safety, which is a good thing because it is something that we are all concerned about.”

March Book-to-Bill Even


April 20, 2007

Bookings gained 1% over February 2007; billings did not gain or lose, remaining at $1.42B. Year-to-year, bookings increased 2%, and billings climbed 6% over March 2006. The book-to-bill has hovered around 1.00 since December 2006, though bookings and billings have seen seasonal declines in the first quarter of 2007. The semiconductor equipment market is stable, said Stanley T. Myers, SEMI president and CEO, with an equilibrium of orders and shipments for more than three months.

(April 20, 2007) SANTA BARBARA, CA &#151 Innovative Micro Technology (IMT) began offering getter deposition services of wafer-level packaging (WLP) of MEMS devices, and other components requiring a hard vacuum. In testing, IMT reportedly demonstrated vacuum levels below 10 mTorr for inorganic devices &#151 equal to or better than industry standard.

January showed a three-month average of $1.45B for bookings and for billings, lower than the $1.67B and $1.60B SEMI originally announced. The book-to-bill was revised from 1.04 to parity: 1.00. In February, the semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry posted $1.40B in bookings, below the preliminary $1.65B estimate. Billings equaled $1.43B, also below the preliminary $1.57B estimate. SEMI has adjusted the February book-to-bill from 1.05 to 0.98, a dip below parity that may indicate slower growth in the second half of 2007.

(April 18, 2007) CROLLES, France &#151 Tronics Microsystems SA expanded its characterization, assembly, packaging, and testing capabilities with additional space and tools. The expansion will support design-to-manufacturing services, and support its MEMS device supply chain.

Tessera Technologies, Inc., launched an interconnection platform intended to address technical limitations of current-generation packaging technologies, such as pitch, profile, performance, reliability, and test capacity. The company expects this technology to become a fundamental building block of next-generation mobile, computing, and consumer electronic products.

(April 18, 2007) SAN JOSE, CA &#151 SEMI released corrections to its January and February book-to-bill estimates for the North America semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry, lowering the ratios to 1.00 and 0.98, respectively. SEMI blames a data-input error for the incorrect averages initially reported.

by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor

The Materials Research Society’s (MRS) spring meeting in San Francisco last week informed a record number of attendees on near- and far-term possibilities for process technology, showcasing research results in electronic materials development: CMOS high-k gate dielectrics, nano-imprint lithography, organic semiconductors, quantum dots, and nano-tubes — and wilder technologies like neuro-prosthetic interfaces and designs based on structures created by Mother Nature.

IP Piracy


April 17, 2007

Central to the outsourcing debate is the issue of protection for intellectual property (IP). Multinational companies (MNCs) must often accept the trade-off of low labor costs for engineering and component packaging, and lax IP-protection legislation in a given outsourcing region. This month, President Bush announced that the U.S. will bring copyright and IP violation charges against China to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Two major cases, focused on entertainment commodities, argue that China lacks the necessary legal structure to enforce copyrights and related trademarks, reports National Public Radio (NPR) correspondent Adam Davidson. This battle highlights the struggle between industry groups and the outsourcing strategies that maintain the electronics industry.

(April 18, 2007) SAN DIEGO &#151 StratEdge released “Power Packages,” a package series that incorporates beryllium oxide (BeO) ceramic and a copper-composite base to provide thermal management for high-frequency, high-power chips. Package construction directly affects chip performance, said Jerry Carter, senior applications engineer, adding that the series is constructed for design engineers considering performance and reliability of their chips.