05/08/2007  SEMI, the global semiconductor industry association, has been keeping a spreadsheet of who's doing what in nanotechnology that will impact the electronics and energy industries specifically.

05/04/2007  NaturalNano, Inc., a materials science company, has entered into a joint development agreement (JDA) with Cascade Engineering, a developer and manufacturer of plastics products. This is the second JDA that NaturalNano has announced in the second quarter of 2007.

05/01/2007  The IEEE's "Nanoelectronics Standards Roadmap (NESR)" suggests five standards for 2007, involving conductive interconnect nanomaterials, organic sensors, and nano-scale devices. With industry approval, the group plans to complete seven nanomaterial and five nanodevice standards for 2008.

05/01/2007  In the March 2007 cover story, we asked the industry about the demands that new packages placed on sockets, lead-free issues, standards, cost control, fine pitch, and the overall consensus on the Burn-in & Test Sockets Workshop (BiTS) where users talk to suppliers.

05/01/2007  The safety (toxicity) of nanoscale materials is largely an unknown. This is a significant knowledge void that should be considered and rectified.

05/01/2007  Managing industrial innovation is a challenge, whether in a corporate setting or in research.

05/01/2007  Institutions that teach skills and nurture innovation: A guide for students, researchers, inventors, and CEOs

04/30/2007  The IEEE is inviting feedback on its newly completed Nanoelectronics Standards Roadmap. The roadmap establishes a framework for creating standards to help commercialize nanotech-based electronics applications.

04/25/2007  Gerald K. "Skip" Fehr, Ph.D., joined Mirror Semiconductor's technical advisory board (TAB), to develop the company's wire-bonding designs, named Mirrored Pinout. Fehr, an industry consultant in San Jose, has served at Fairchild Semiconductor, Intel, LSI Logic, and Texas Instruments (TI).

04/25/2007  The Pennsylvania NanoMaterials Commercialization Center has announced its first round of funding for three commercialization projects in nanomaterials. The Center targets partnerships of researchers from universities, small companies, large companies and entrepreneurs, and funds projects that have commercial or defense applications.

04/25/2007  In series D funding, Lamina Ceramics, Inc., raised $7 million to fund expansion of its high-brightness, high-power LED business. Easton Capital Investment Group (New York and Florida) led the round.

04/23/2007  Akita Elpida Memory, Inc., developed a 1.4-mm-thick multi-chip package (MCP) encompassing 20 thinned and stacked die. The company plans to incorporate processes used on this 20-die package to improve performance and manufacturability of more widely used 5- to 7-die-stack 3D packages.

04/23/2007  Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has developed an all-DRAM stacked-memory package using through-silicon vias (TSVs) housed in aluminum pads to avoid performance slow-downs caused by the redistribution layer. The company applied a proprietary wafer-thinning technique to eliminate warped die in the low-profile package.

04/20/2007  April 20, 2007 - Semiconductor equipment demand was essentially flat in March vs. the previous month, and year-on-year sales and orders of chipmaking tools rose very little, according to data from SEMI.

04/20/2007  April 20, 2007 - Rohm and Haas Co. has agreed to acquire Kodak's light management films business, which produces films to improve brightness and efficiency of LCDs, as first step in a wide-ranging plan to identify and invest in growth opportunities.

04/20/2007  North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers posted $1.42B in orders and billings in March, generating an even book-to-bill of 1.00, according to SEMI's monthly book-to-bill report. Bookings improved slightly while billings remained at February levels. The book-to-bill had dropped slightly below parity in February at 0.98.

04/20/2007  The Civil Society-Labor Coalition has rejected what it referred to as the "fundamentally flawed DuPont-Environmental Defense proposed framework" for voluntary risk assessment of nanotechnology. Small Times' Sarah Fister Gale reports.

04/18/2007  SEMI released corrections to its January and February book-to-bill estimates for the North America semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry, lowering the ratios to 1.00 and 0.98, respectively. SEMI blames a data-input error for the incorrect averages initially reported.

04/17/2007  By Françoise von Trapp, managing editor

Tessera Technologies, Inc., launched an interconnection platform intended to address technical limitations of current-generation packaging technologies, such as pitch, profile, performance, reliability, and test capacity. The company expects this technology to become a fundamental building block of next-generation mobile, computing, and consumer electronic products.

04/17/2007  The Materials Research Society's (MRS) spring meeting in San Francisco last week informed a record number of attendees on near- and far-term possibilities for process technology, showcasing research results in electronic materials development: CMOS high-k gate dielectrics, nano-imprint lithography, organic semiconductors, quantum dots, and nano-tubes -- and wilder technologies like neuro-prosthetic interfaces and designs based on structures created by Mother Nature.