Issue

Several factors are creating the need for greater diversity in process tools, and those toolmakers that recognize emerging requirements are making changes to their designs that should pay off in the future.

A group of scientists from the University of Aarhus in Denmark, in collaboration with CEMES-CNRS in Toulouse, France, ....

Several presentations at Semitool's Peaks in Packaging 2002 conference focused on the industry's readiness with lead-free bumping technology for wafer-level packaging, where the current choice is between electrochemically deposited near-eutectic SnAg, SnCu, and SnAgCu.

After years of skepticism over its unusual plan to make spherical semiconductors, Ball Semiconductor is about to start shipping real product to real customers. But it won't be a tiny ball-shaped semiconductor device after all.

For 22 years, semiconductor engineers from both sides of the Pacific have met at the IEEE VLSI Technology and Circuits Symposia, mostly in Hawaii.

A heated debate by attendees of the recent International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC) and International Sematech's Ultralow-k Workshop did not give supporters of either SOD dielectric films or CVD films a definitive victory.

E-beam seems to look a lot better from the Japanese side of the Pacific. The approach shared attention with 157nm technology at Selete Symposium 2002, the consortium's annual update on the progress of its research programs.

Japan officially opened its government-funded research fab in Tsukuba on June 17, planning to run the first wafers last month. The 22,000m² facility, with a staff of 400, will serve as a pilot line to link Japan's labs and fabs.

The photomask industry is between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

Enhancing overall operational efficiency in today's fabs hinges strongly on the ability to predict maintenance needs and rapidly diagnose faults on key systems.

In semiconductor wafer fabrication, as much as 10% of wafer production costs are associated with spare parts. Automated control of parts and associated logistics can help manage this manufacturing cost component and provide better maintenance technician productivity.

Ion implantation in production wafer fabrication requires on-going qualification of several process parameters.

The influence of selectively implanted fluorine in the silicon substrate prior to furnace gate oxidation is experimentally shown to increase thickness, create an improved Vbd in DMOS capacitors, and allow for the simultaneous growth of gate oxides at various thicknesses.

Semiconductor manufacturers still lag behind other industries in multitool process control and information-gathering capability, particularly for chemical handling.