08/24/2009  August 24, 2009: Carbon nanotube developer Surrey NanoSystems says it has secured a second round of funding totaling £2.5M (US $4.2M) to help commercialize its low-temperature growth process for carbon nanotubes, targeted for use as a replacement for copper interconnects in semiconductor devices.

08/24/2009  August 24, 2009 -- SVTC Technologies was chosen by technology startup siXis, Inc. to supply silicon manufacturing services for their compact, high-speed embedded computing modules that bridge the gap between programmable devices and costly, customized semiconductors.

08/20/2009  The good news: semiconductor equipment sales, and especially orders, soared in July to re-achieve parity for the first time in two and a half years. The bad news: the balanced levels are still a third of what they were then.

08/19/2009  August 19 -- IBM researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), have made an advancement in combining lithographic patterning with self assembly

08/18/2009  Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) joined Endicott Interconnect Technologies (EI) officials to announce that he's secured a $6 million federal investment for the company to develop state-of-the-art microelectronic chips for the U.S. military that will safeguard against foreign tampering of weapons.

08/17/2009  Researchers at IBM and the California Institute of Technology say they have come up with a solution to problems looming for future semiconductor manufacturing beyond the 22nm node: a combination of lithographic patterning and self-assembly that arranges DNA structures on surfaces compatible with current manufacturing equipment.

08/17/2009  Scientists at IBM Research and the California Institute of Technology announced a method for structuring DNA shapes to help build miniaturized computer chips well beyond 22-nm processes. The research claims that chips will be more energy efficient and suited to mass production.

08/13/2009  August 12, 2009: With economic pressure on so many firms, and a not insignificant number folding in various industries, here's some rare positive news: Arrowhead Research Corp., a firm with subsidiaries involved in carbon nanotubes and bioscience/medicine, has regained compliance with NASDAQ regulation

08/12/2009  Cu wiring based on dual damascene is beginning to hit fundamental limits of current via-first, trench-last (VFTL) integration, but thicknesses of films in the lithography stack for trench patterning can't scale as rapidly. This article outlines a novel approach for eliminating these variations using existing processes and equipment.

08/11/2009  August 11, 2009: Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have created a platform that uses lipid-coated nanowires to build prototype bionanoelectronic devices. The work shows promise for enhancing biosensing and diagnostics tools, neural prosthetics (e.g., cochlear implants), and even future computers.

08/11/2009  August 10, 2009: Researchers at Brown U. are offering more evidence about the hazards involved with carbon nanotubes, showing how exposure to them might be fatal to fruit flies.

08/05/2009  Building on its Galaxy imaging platform, DEK has used the foundation of the technology's supreme accuracy and precision to develop a system specifically for processing thinned silicon wafers.

08/05/2009  August 5, 2009: A pair of university spinoffs in Pennsylvania are receiving funding from the Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center to help their work in nanopolymers and nanofibers.

08/03/2009  August 3, 2009: Carbon nanotube maker SouthWest Nanotechnologies (SWeNT) and nanomaterials consultancy Chasm Technologies have established an application development center in the Boston area to help demonstrate for customers the feasibility of carbon nanotube coatings and printing applications.

07/27/2009  Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Industry Consortium, gave SST previews a new study that compares the manufacturability, performance, and cost of 3D transistors using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) vs. bulk. He also discusses the group's new "Simply Green" initiative to help emphasize SOI's power benefits vs. bulk Si.

07/27/2009  Matthias Meier, manufacturing engineering & automation at the Fraunhofer Institute, discusses his role as "coach" of the PV Equipment Standards task force in an interview at SEMICON West. SEMI's newly released PV2-0709 standard, which focuses on data acquisition and access, is expected to be widely adopted.

07/22/2009  The 6th Annual International Wafer-Level Packaging Conference (IWLPC), October 27-30, 2009, Santa Clara, CA includes tutorials, expert panel discussions, Dr. Rao Tummala keynoting, and 18 tech sessions.

07/17/2009  At SEMICON West, SAFC Hitech unveiled details of its six-year-out (through 2014) materials roadmap for metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes on silicon semiconductor substrates, outlining development paths for advanced memory and logic including barrier layers, interconnects, dielectrics and metals.

07/16/2009  Semiconductor equipment manufacturers posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.01 in June, according to VLSI Research. It was the first increase above parity since July 2008. Although bookings and billings remain well below normal levels, business activity is beginning to improve. Back-end suppliers are seeing a considerable pick up in business activity amid soaring utilization rates at the subcontractors.

07/15/2009  Jan Vardaman discusses alternatives to 3D/TSV technologies for cost-sensitive applications, and makes the case for additional work to develop design guidelines and software, and test methodologies for 3D/TSV technologies.