Category Archives: Materials and Equipment

September 14, 2006 – Researchers at Arizona State U. and Motorola Labs have developed a method for applying peptides to single-walled carbon nanotubes in field-effect transistors, creating sensors that can identify the presence of specific metals in water or air.

The peptides, made of ~20 or so amino acids, are selective to specific compounds — e.g., one peptide has been developed to detect nickel and blind to all other heavy metal ions (e.g. copper, lead, or zinc) passing over the carbon nanotubes. Changing the sequence of the amino acids making up each peptide allows researches to “tune” them to recognize different compounds.

The sensors were shown to detect the presence of heavy metal ions in water down to parts-per-trillion levels, but the platform can be applied to other areas, such as sensing toxic chemicals in the air, or as biosensors in medical applications, according to researcher Nongjian Tao, an electrical engineering professor at Arizona State U. Erica Forzani, an ASU assistant research professor in electrical engineering, noted that “with a very simple device that does not require sophisticated electronic circuitry, you can detect very low concentrations of analytes.”

The research will continue to investigate the use of the sensors on biological molecules, such as RNA sequence detection.

September 14, 2006 – Ponte Solutions Inc., Mountain View, CA, has appointed James Hogan as chairman of its board of directors. Hogan has three decades’ experience in the semiconductor, EDA, and venture capitalist industries. His contributions to the board will include providing strategic advice in strategy, fundraising, and personnel issues, according to company CEO Alex Alexanian.

Hogan previously held several executive positions at Cadence Design Systems, including SVP of business development and member of the office of the CTO. He also has held management positions at National Semiconductor and Philips Semiconductor, and was COO of semiconductor equipment automation firm Smart Machines Inc.

“The dust is settling in manufacturing-aware design technology, and working with Ponte Solutions will provide a front-row seat in seeing a new birth of EDA innovation,” said Hogan, in a statement.

AAA Names Reps


September 14, 2006

(September 14, 2006) SAN DIEGO &#151 CAPLINQ Nederland became Advanced Applied Adhesives’ (AAA’s) representative in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and Europe, replacing the now-defunct Norel. Located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, CAPLINQ was founded by Christopher Perabo, who previously held a field applications engineer post with Henkel’s Semiconductor Materials division.

September 13, 2006 – Specialty chemicals firm AZ Electronic Materials says it will invest over 50 million euros (US $63.4 million) over the next 15 months to increase production capacity.

The investments include 13 million euros (~$16.5 million) to expand manufacturing capacity for polysilazane (PHPS), a new dielectric for shallow trench insulation used in sub-80nm semiconductor manufacturing, marketed as a cheaper and more effective alternative to CVD technology.

As part of the PHPS expansion, AZ is adding a filling station in Shizuoka, Japan, expanding labs including a defect tool for quality control and a new reactor.

Small Times

Sept. 12, 2006 — Surface Technology Systems plc (STS), a developer of plasma process technologies required in the manufacturing and packaging of MEMS and advanced electronic devices, announced the development of a new Deep Reactive Ion Etch (DRIE) plasma source which is compatible with 300mm silicon wafers commonly used in the large scale manufacturing of silicon-based integrated circuits.

The DRIE process is a key silicon micromachining technique invented by Robert Bosch GmbH, developed by STS and used in the manufacturing of MEMS for the past 10 years. As circuit complexity and device speed increases it is becoming increasingly necessary to stack thinned wafers or chips rather than integrate all the required functional elements into a single, two-dimensional system-on-a-chip (SoC).

As the number of stacked die and their I/O count increases wire bonding technologies become increasingly complex and costly. STS says through-wafer interconnects offer other advantages over wire bonding, including reduced die footprint, shorter interconnect distances and vias that can be positioned within the die rather than only at the edges.

With the launch of its Pegasus DRIE source in 2005, STS demonstrated higher silicon etch rates, which made the fabrication of the through-wafer via solution more attractive to IC manufacturers. The company says this created a demand for the same process capabilities on a 300mm platform.

SUSS Chooses ULCOAT for C4NP


September 11, 2006

(September 11, 2006) MUNICH, Germany &#151 At SEMICON Taiwan, SUSS MicroTec, Inc., announced that it has selected a potential commercial source for controlled collapse chip connection &#150 new process (C4NP) glass molds. The glass MEMS division of ULVAC Coating Corporation, based in Saitama, Japan, demonstrated trial production of the reusable glass molds needed to bump wafers using IBM’s C4NP process. The molds would be incorporated into SUSS C4NP processing equipment. Glass mold performance is a critical aspect for this bumping technology, said Emmett Hughlett, Ph.D., vice president and C4NP business manager at SUSS MicroTec, adding that SUSS found ULVAC highly qualified.

(September 8, 2006) TOKYO &#151 Oki Electric Industry Co., with OKI Printing Solutions, developed a thin-film bonding technology to connect dissimilar materials. Epi film bonding (EFB) eliminates wire bonding and die bonding by exploiting a intermolecular bonding force.

By Elizabeth Gardner
from the Sept/Oct 2006 issue of Small Times magazine

You could say Morinobu Endo is one of the fathers of the carbon nanotube. Even though he didn’t call his intellectual offspring by that name, he began working with carbon nanotubes and related materials in the mid-1970s, back when the “micro”-scale was still the latest thing. He published a seminal paper in 1976 that explained how to make them.

He’s been playing with them ever since, figuring out how to manufacture them more rapidly and cheaply and how to integrate them into useful objects. His research has resulted in ten-fold annual increases in the quantity of nanotubes that can be made with his process and also in vast quality-control improvements.

His publication list contains page after page of papers on various aspects of nanotube manufacturing with forays into application areas as well. One recent publication focused on using nanotubes in medical catheters. Without his work nanotubes might be just another carbon oddity rather than the intriguing and promising material they’ve become.

But Endo’s nanotubes might not have happened without the right sandpaper. Back in the 1970s, Endo was experimenting with making carbon deposits through chemical vapor deposition. To save time between experiments, he tried to clean the resulting soot off the substrate with sandpaper rather than washing it and drying it for two days. To his surprise the sanded substrate produced carbon fibers the next time it was used.

But not always. Black silicon carbide paper didn’t yield anything, yet the fibers grew splendidly on a substrate treated with brown sandpaper containing iron oxide particles. Each tube had an iron oxide particle at one end. He realized it was a critical catalyst for forming the nanotubes. Endo later developed a more efficient method of seeding the substrate with iron oxide particles, which yielded a bumper crop of tubes. Unfortunately the technique was expensive — the tubes cost about $2,000 per kilo.

The real manufacturing breakthrough came when Endo read a newspaper article about an influenza epidemic in Tokyo and the dangers of coming within range of a sneeze from an infected person. It occurred to him that the iron oxide nanoparticles were lighter than the flu viruses that floated so well in the air, and that the particles would suspend in air even better. It turned out that the floating particles produced nanotubes just fine and in much higher volume than previous methods. That development led to commercialization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes nicknamed “Endo fibers,” which are used in lithium-ion and other batteries to prolong their lifetime.

An engineering professor at his alma mater, Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan, Endo today runs a research group whose work runs the gamut from basic science to applications. Not surprisingly the group’s work includes carbon nanotubes, new forms of carbon and graphite, nanoporous carbons, lithium-ion batteries and electric double-layer capacitors. He has authored or co-authored more than 40 textbooks and 250 papers in prestigious journals including Nature, Science and Physical Review. He chairs the Japan Carbon Society and serves on the advisory board of Carbon Journal. He has received a long list of awards and honors, both in Japan and internationally, including the 2004 American Carbon Society Medal.

Sept. 7, 2006 — Motorola Labs, the applied research arm of Motorola Inc., and Arizona State University announce a key advancement in the use of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) in field effect transistors (FETs) to sense biological and chemical agents.

Together, the research teams have developed a method to functionalize SWNTs with peptides to produce low-power SWNT-FETs that are highly sensitive and can selectively detect heavy metal ions down to the parts-per-trillion level.

“Integration of nanosensors into devices and sensor networks will enable the detection of biological and chemical agents at very low concentrations, which could be vital in the areas of public safety and homeland security,” said Vida Ilderem, vice president of embedded systems research labs in Tempe, Ariz., in a prepared statement. “In the future, these sensors could be integrated into devices to produce a powerful network that can seamlessly communicate environmental changes to people or other devices.”

Researchers have successfully tuned SWNT-FETs to sense specific agents by applying a peptide-functionalized polymer coating that does not affect their ability to transmit electrical signals. This developing sensor technology could be used to monitor a host of environmental and health issues including air and water quality, industrial chemicals and biological agents.

The work is reported in a paper coauthored by Arizona State University and Motorola titled “Tuning the Chemical Selectivity of SWNT-FETs for Detection of Heavy-Metal Ions” that will be published in the journal Small.

September 7, 2006 – The Dow Chemical Co. has signed a licensing deal to transfer development, manufacturing, and sales and marketing for spin-on silicon containing its “Ensemble” dielectric coatings to Brewer Science, Rolla, MO. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The move is part of Dow’s efforts to focus on expanding its core business for dielectric materials for wafer-level chip-scale packaging, integrated passives, and SiLK dielectric materials, according to the company.

Dow began development of the Ensemble coatings several years ago, targeting multiple applications in semiconductor processing, including pre-metal dielectric, hardmask, and shallow trench isolation applications. Since 2004, the two companies have been working to develop and market coatings for lithographic applications, and claim “process of record” wins at a major Asian chipmaker for advanced photolithography applications, and an early POR for an immersion process at a major US manufacturer.

Dow and Brewer position the Ensemble line as applicable for a variety of areas, including: immersion lithography processes, double patterning, low-k dielectrics, shallow trench isolation, CMP, hardmask applications, and pre-metal dielectric processes. Combining the spin-on silicon with an antireflective coating results in reduced etch complexity compared with CVD films, easier resist re-work, better photoresist compatibility, and longer shelf life than other spin-on silicon-based coatings, according to Brewer.

Marvin Bourelle, global commercial manager of Dow’s advanced electronic materials business, stated that Brewer’s expertise and reach in antireflective coatings for semiconductor applications is a good fit with the Ensemble dielectric coatings. “Now that we have licensed this technology more broadly, we intend to develop it further to increase and broaden the total value it offers our industry,” added Andy Waite-Wright, executive director, marketing and sales for Brewer Science, in a statement.