Particles

08/01/2004

Compiled by Sue Forsyth

Lighthouse lives large

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Lighthouse Worldwide Solutions has moved its corporate headquarters to a larger facility here.

The new facility is located in the center of the Innovation Triangle, a technology park in Silicon Valley offering a high concentration of technology research and development facilities, office and manufacturing sites and more than 46 million square feet of space.

More memory manufacturing

AUSTIN, Tex.—Construction has begun on a 34,000-square-foot expansion at Samsung Austin Semiconductor's (SAS; www.ssi.samsung.com) memory chip fabrication plant, designed to increase capacity of nano-scale semiconductor memory manufacturing. The expansion will enable SAS to deliver 0.1-µm geometry designs down to 0.08-µm at a capacity of 50,000 wafers per month.

The outer shell and cleanroom for the new extension, begun earlier this year, will be followed by equipment set-up by July 2005. Samsung says it plans to increase employment at its Austin facility by 300 over the next three years.

Sinovac's SARS subgroups

BEIJING, China—The second subgroup of 14 volunteers in Sinovac Biotech Ltd.'s Phase 1 clinical trials of its SARS vaccine have shown no adverse reactions from their first inoculation. The inoculation process of the initial four volunteers has also been completed. Volunteers received their initial inoculation on May 22 and, after no adverse side effects were observed, they received a second inoculation on June 19.

The 18 volunteers are the first to have received inoculations out of a group of 36 participating with the company in the first human clinical trials ever performed in the development of a SARS vaccine. The Phase 1 clinical trials will help determine if the company's SARS vaccine is a safe anti-viral antigen for the human body.

Wafer washing

TOKYO—Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) is accepting orders for the Expedius 300-mm batch cleaning system. The company developed the system to provide increased productivity in cleaning demanded by the 300-mm semiconductor mass-production plants and greater flexibility to meet customers' diversified needs.

The Expedius is the successor to the UW300Z. It offers an improved transfer mechanism that reduces the time wafers are in front-opening unified pods (FOUPs) and transfer areas, thereby increasing throughput. It also reduces the process time spent in cleaning/drying units. Maximum throughput is 460 wafers/hour.

The system offers modular and standardized chemical dispensing units to enable flexible support for a variety of customer cleaning needs. It is engineered to enable simple alterations after installation to cope with changes in processes.

Self-cleaning spray solution

CHASKA, Minn.—Entegris (www.entegris.com) has introduced a clean-in-place (CIP) method designed for precise hygienic cleaning of filter housings that use the company's precision spray devices. Cleaning takes place in-line without disconnecting the filter head from the process piping system, saving processing time and costs.

The spray devices are self-draining and self-cleaning. The company says its stainless-steel devices save downtime and equipment deterioration and are suitable for pharmaceutical manufacturing, biotechnology and chemical processes.