Issue

Furnace-cooling brochure; Temperature products catalog; Vacuum products catalog; And more

The drama was intense in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was torn down. TV and media images of the crumbling stone wall offered visible evidence of the collapse of the Iron Curtain

Continued optimism rules the day as tool bookings reached a record $2.3 billion and front-end fab utilization remained steady in February, according to the latest figures from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Semi) and market researcher VLSI Research

Nitrogen put in GaAs for solar cells; NIST's Potzick plans neolithography consortium; Successful ellipsometry at 157nm; And more

That are the ultimate limits of light for lithography, what technology might eventually replace it, and at what node?

ISS Europe: Prosperous times for European semiconductor market; ECSI launches System Design Industrial Council; After rebound, ESEC again focused on core bonder market

Japan sees rising demand for LCD driver ICs; Selete, International Sematech join on 300mm software issues

The front-end equipment market for copper processing of IC interconnects grew slightly more than 36% in 1999, according to our recent analysis.

Die attach system; Spin processor for 300mm; Automated mask aligner; And more

Surface/Interface Inc. (S/II), Sunnyvale, CA, has appointed Jim Owens president and CEO. Before joining the company, Owens was president of Verdant Technologies, a division of Ultratech Stepper

Collaboration between Nikon and IBM has demonstrated the feasibility of an electron optical system for an electron-beam stepper based on the PREVAIL technique. This system differs from conventional direct-write electron-beam because it projects and demagnifies reticle patterns while scanning the reticle and wafer, very similar to optical exposure lithography tools. The promise here is throughput at >40 (200mm) wafers/hr while manufacturing ICs with <100nm minimum features.

While the 1999 ITRS is a Roadmap for sustaining IC progress, the needed underlying manufacturing capability is based on solutions from equipment and materials suppliers.

More than 450 semiconductor professionals paid $150 each to attend the official release of the 1999 International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) in Tokyo last November. Expectations were high that it would chart the future of lithography more accurately than previous Roadmaps.

Directional plasma etching of low dielectric constant materials presents a rich spectrum of challenges owing to the multitude of inorganic, organic, and mixed organic/inorganic low dielectric constant materials being considered for multilevel interconnection applications

With the implementation of copper (Cu) in advanced microelectronic interconnect manufacturing, a complex of new contamination control challenges emerges on various levels.

The wafer-level fabrication of liquid crystal on silicon microdisplays is attractive because it leverages existing equipment and processes created for the semiconductor and flat panel display industries. A ferroelectric liquid crystal technology enables microdisplays to be constructed directly on advanced low-voltage CMOS ICs, and this process flow is described in detail.