01/01/2008  Current methods of monitoring wire bond quality for both heavy and fine wire applications fall short of enabling the goal of 100% yield.

01/01/2008  I always associate quality with building a house. Because my dad was a contractor, each of his children learned about reading blueprints, controlling construction costs, choosing compatible materials, and measuring more than once before doing anything.

01/01/2008  According to a subcommittee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Science Board, the nation’s food supply is at risk, as are the regulatory systems that oversee the nation’s drug and device supplies. In a report presented in December, the subcommittee attributed the deficiencies to increased demands on FDA and resources that have not increased in proportion to those demands.

01/01/2008  Medical diagnostics account for just 1% of healthcare spending, yet it is the basis for 60% of all healthcare decision-making.

01/01/2008  A new AFM mode enables improved nanoscale characterization.

12/28/2007  George Gruner, founder of Unidym Inc., has been selected as a visionary Technology Pioneer for 2008 by the World Economic Forum and has been invited to speak at the upcoming WEF Technology Pioneers Conference in Davos, Switzerland, this January.

12/20/2007  ; Rudolph Technologies Inc. has signed an agreement to acquire the net assets of the semiconductor business of Applied Precision LLC, a provider of precision wafer probe card metrology systems and wafer probe process management systems to semiconductor final manufacturing facilities. Applied Precision will become part of Rudolph's newly-formed Probe Card Test and Analysis Division.

12/19/2007  CVD Equipment Corp. has signed a contract to purchase a 13,300 square foot facility in Ronkonkoma, NY for expansion of its First Nano Laboratory in Q1, 2008. The larger facility will enable First Nano, a division of CVD, to work with multiple startup and established companies in the nano, solar, energy and semiconductor fields for commercialization of their intellectual property.

12/17/2007  Bayer MaterialScience AG (BMS) has entered a distribution agreement for its carbon nanotubes, BayTubes, with Brenntag Schweizerhall AG.

12/17/2007  December 16, 2007 - At this year's IEDM, NEC and NEC Electronics unveiled new design technology to optimize ultrashallow-junction channel structures in 32nm-and beyond LSIs, as well as a new composite film to enable a "full low-k" Cu interconnect structure with k reduced nearly a third compared to conventional barrier dielectrics.

12/14/2007  by George A. Riley, Contributing Editor
Nanotechnology is alive and creeping closer in university and industry research labs. Last month's Boston meeting of the Materials Research Society included 91 sessions with the term "nano" somewhere in the title. While most addressed material characteristics and laboratory techniques, two focused on carbon nanotube (CNT) large scale integration (LSI) device interconnections and related issues.

12/11/2007  December 11, 2007 - In a move that combines two of the most frequent semiconductor process steps (etch and clean), Lam Research has agreed to acquire Austrian firm SEZ Group for $568M in cash.

12/11/2007  Over 1600 technologists are gathered in Washington, DC, to explore a wide range of innovative ideas at the 2007 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). While current mainstream CMOS approaches, using strain engineering and metal/high-k dielectric gates, are covered extensively, a wide range of further out alternatives suggests that darts have been tossed at periodic table charts all over the world.

12/11/2007  December 10, 2007 - The Formosa Plastics Group is spending about $4.6M on R&D of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) film, a packaging material for solar cell modules, in a bid to develop a high-margin business in a high-growth domestic sector, notes the Taiwan Economic News.

12/10/2007  December 10, 2007 - IBM and JSR Micro say they will worth together to explore new technologies for emerging semiconductor materials and processes, targeting next-generation lithography as well as self-assembly applications.

12/10/2007  Following its release last year of a nickel standard stamp for cost-efficient nanoimprint lithography, NIL Technology has introduced stamps in quartz (fused silica) and silicon with features as small as 50 nm.

12/10/2007  Intel execs revealed highlights from select papers the company will be presenting at IEDM, including some details about its 45nm HK+MG transistors that incorporate a redistribution layer as part of a 9-layer copper interconnect. Also featured is the company's success in mitigating process variation to the extent that results in variation at 45nm is comparable to that achieved at 130nm. Additionally, quantum well FETs may be ready at ~2015 to extend Moore's Law scaling.

12/07/2007  Xidex Corp.'s project for the Department of Energy aims to significantly improve the imaging resolution, SNR, and processing speed of SEMs and TEMs. "This project will have a huge impact on all areas of electron microscopy," for materials science, nanotech, and other applications, the company says.

12/06/2007  December 5, 2007 - C. Uyemura & Co., an Osaka-based supplier of metal plating chemicals, has developed an additive that prevents formation of "tin whiskers" on circuit boards and other electronic components, according to the Nikkei Business Daily.

12/05/2007  December 5, 2007 - ATMI and IBM have agreed to jointly develop and demonstrate advanced chemical formulations for highly implanted photoresist strip applications targeting 45nm, 32nm, and 22nm chipmaking processes.