08/15/2011 

SEMI appointed Dennis P. McGuirk as president and CEO. He replaces Stanley T. Myers, who is retiring. McGuirk comes to SEMI from IPC -- Association Connecting Electronics Industries, where he led a globalization effort.

08/15/2011 

Applied Materials said it will acquire Varian Semi in a $4.9B deal. VSEA stockholders have now approved the buy.

08/11/2011 

Nordson MARCH and Science College of Donghua University, Shanghai, China launched a joint laboratory for plasma research and education. The college and supplier will share equipment, research projects, personnel resources, and additional resources as needed.

08/10/2011 

University of Nottingham scientists have developed a method to manufacture nanowires using carbon nanotubes (CNT) to host chemical reactions.

08/10/2011 

The University of Waterloo, Ontario, through the Applied Research and Commercialization Initiative, is supporting several companies researching and developing new products. One company receiving aid from the school is Microbonds, maker of semiconductor bonding wire.

08/10/2011 

Multitest launched a 16-site tri-temp pick-and-place handler, the MT9510 x16. The platform can be kitted to test a range of semiconductor packages.

08/09/2011 

Syn: Robert Newcomb from Qcept Technologies discusses non-visual defects in today's wafer fab processes, at 22nm, and in the advanced nodes below 22nm. As nodes shrink, more defects will escape optical metrology, he predicts.

08/08/2011 

Industry efforts to transition from gold to copper wire are accelerating as prices for gold continue to spike to near record levels, notes TechSearch International in a new report.

08/07/2011 

Nomura Principal Finance Co. Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Nomura Holdings Inc., transferred all the shares it owns in Eastern Co. Ltd. to Eastern.

08/05/2011 

sp3 Diamond Technologies' Dwain Aidala explains how the move to Cu CMP and caustic slurries are driving interest in diamond pad conditioners, and also as a potential SOI layer for high-power applications. He also addresses a shift in how R&D funding has changed as external capital has become scarce.

08/03/2011 

Nujira opened an IC Design Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, with the help of

08/02/2011 

IC maker Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. acquired Grandis Inc., a Silicon Valley maker of spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM).

08/02/2011 

Data I/O Corporation (NASDAQ: DAIO) debuted the RoadRunner3 in-line programming system, a just-prior-to-placement programming tool with modules to automate processes and eliminate operator interventions.

08/02/2011 

The University of Louisville worked with IBM (NYSE:IBM) to double the school's high-performance computing power as part of a $1.8 million investment in its research supercomputing system.

07/29/2011 

Sapphire Materials Company (SMC), a subsidiary of Silicon Chemical Corporation (SCC), completed Phase I of its sapphire manufacturing business. Initial shipments of sapphire product will begin this November.

07/28/2011 

Purdue University researchers have created an ultrapure gallium arsenide (GaAs) semiconductor crystals that capture new states of matter, with potential applications in future high-speed quantum computing.

07/28/2011 

How can we become more productive? Provide more of our goods or services for the same or less cost? The typical answer is automation. However, automation is not the panacea today's businesses need to cure lack of competitive products or services.

07/27/2011 

EV Group (EVG), wafer bonding and lithography equipment supplier, began a manufacturing capacity expansion at its Austrian headquarters, adding floorspace, equipment, worker comforts, and a state-of-the-art visitor area. EVG will hire about 100 new staff members as part of the expansion.

07/27/2011 

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.55 billion in orders in June 2011 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.94, according to the June Book-to-Bill Report published by SEMI.

07/22/2011 

Nippon Micrometal Corporation (NMC) licensed their single-layer-palladium (Pd) coated copper (Cu) bonding wire for LSI packaging to Tanaka Denshi Kogyo K.K., bonding wire manufacturer and traditionally a competitor.