03/02/2004  The day after HP's "n is for nanotechnology" commercial ran during the U.S. Open tennis tournament in September 2003, Fred Filler's phone started ringing. The marketing manager with book publisher Wiley & Sons had long been telling colleagues that nanotechnology was a subject they'd be hearing more about. Today, Wiley is one of several publishers with a growing focus on small tech titles.

02/17/2004  February 17, 2004 - Nanometrics Inc., Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to integrate its NanoOCD/DUV 9101b film thickness mapping module into Lam's CMP tool.

02/06/2004 

01/23/2004  JAN. 23--MINNEAPOLIS--August Technology Corp., a supplier of inspection and metrology solutions for the microelectronic industries, announced the expansion of their Taiwan operations in Hsinchu to better serve the growing number of customers in this region.

01/21/2004  January 21, 2004 - Nanometrics, Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to supply metrology units to be integrated into Tokyo-based Hitachi High-Technologies' (HHT) semiconductor inspection products.

01/21/2004  January 21, 2004 - August Technology, Bloomington, MN, a provider of automated inspection and metrology equipment, is expanding its service and applications operations in Hsinchu, Taiwan.

01/15/2004  January 15, 2004 - Nanometrics Inc., Milpitas, CA, has signed a deal to supply integrated metrology units to Japan's Ebara Corp. for use with its CMP products.

01/09/2004  A new model for collaboration is one that involves industry more directly in education. State governments are competing to attract high-tech activities and this means building upon research universities. And industry is becoming more heavily involved at educational institutions. These are signs that the U.S. educational system is evolving to meet these new challenges.

12/16/2003  December 16, 2003 - Dutch firm PANalytical, a supplier of analytical devices for x-ray diffraction and x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry, says it has developed a method that doubles the detection capability of XRF wafer analysis of boron concentrations for thin-film semiconductor wafers.

12/10/2003  December 10, 2003 - The past week has been busy for high-k materials, with three separate announcements from companies and organizations detailing the progress of their research.

12/10/2003  Texas Instruments Inc. is working with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne on a chip combining standard semiconductor and single-electron transistors (SET) that could shrink the size and power consumption of computing devices, according to a news release.

12/04/2003  November 28, 2003 - International Sematech, Austin, TX, plans to form a new consortium of fabs and chipmakers to focus on manufacturing infrastructure, methods, standards, and productivity.

11/12/2003  Carbon nanotubes are a hundred times stronger than steel, right? That factoid has been reported so often that few realize that such superstrength is predicted by calculations, not by any direct measurement. Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology is working on developing standards and road maps for nanoelectronics.

10/24/2003  October 23, 2003 - Micronic Laser Systems AB, Taby, Sweden, has introduced a new registration measurement system for TFT-LCD photomasks.

10/20/2003  October 17, 2003 - Rudolph technologies, Flanders, NJ, has introduced a wafer-bow/stress metrology tool for measuring stress that develops during thin film deposition.

10/08/2003  More than 90 percent of nanotech researchers expect spending on nanotechnology tools and other capital equipment to stay the same or increase in the first half of next year, compared to the second of this year, according to a new report.

10/01/2003 

09/19/2003  Sept. 19, 2003 – Veeco Instruments Inc., a Woodbury, N.Y., provider of metrology products and process equipment tools, filed a lawsuit against Asylum Research Inc. of Santa Barbara, Calif., according to a Veeco news release.

09/11/2003  September 9, 2003 - Schlumberger Technologies, Inc. has transferred its verification systems unit, which develops metrology capital equipment, to Soluris, Concord, MA, a new company formed by the division's management team.

09/11/2003  September 9, 2003 - Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA, has unveiled a new tool for 65nm-generation mask metrology, adding to its line of pattern generation, etch, and inspection tools.