07/17/2000  SEMICON West '00--July 14,2000--Semitool's Paragon line of electrochemical deposition tools will include Royal Phillips Electronics new integrated metal-film metrology system, say the companies.

07/12/2000  SEMICON West '00--July 12, 2000--In San Jose, Cal., today, Teradyne Inc. introduced a VLSI test system that the company says will allow a full range of test capability without requiring hardware changes or system upgrades.

07/12/2000  SEMICON West '00--July 12, 2000--Boxer Cross unveiled a new metrology solution today in San Francisco, Calif. at the company's private exhibit at Zeum, the new art and technology center.

07/10/2000  SEMICON West '00.--July 10, 2000--In San Francisco, Calif. Schlumberger Semiconductor Solutions today introduced the next evolution of its sub-micron metrology tool, the IVS 135.

07/07/2000  Sunnyvale, CA--July 7, 2000--Nanometrics Inc. has introduced the NanoSpec 9100, an automated, non-contact film metrology system designed to measure films on substrates used in wireless, optical telecommunication IC manufacturing and other semiconductor devices.

07/07/2000  GENEVA, Swizerland--July 8, 2000--STMicroelectronics has announced that it will team with Nortel to develop optical network technology.

06/30/2000  SAN JOSE, Calif.--June 30, 2000--KLA-Tencor Corp. has introduced a new generation of in-line CD scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) for next-generation lithography and etch applications. The tools are designed for use as a fab transitions to 0.13-?m node and 300-mm manufacturing.

06/28/2000  MUNICH, Germany and SOUTHBOROUGH, Mass.--June 28, 2000--Karl Suss has announced a new tool capable of measuring thick and thin films used in a wide range of applications.

06/28/2000  SUNNYVALE, CA--June 27, 2000--An automated 300-mm film metrology system designed for measuring next-generation materials and processes has been introduced by Nanometrics.

06/22/2000  SANTA CLARA, Calif.--June 21, 2000--Applied has positioned two new metrology systems, Compass and Excite, as products that increase fab production efficiency.

06/14/2000  SUNNYVALE, Calif.--June 14, 2000--Nanometrics Inc. has developed a Windows NT based software for the film metrology equipment market that takes advantage of the operating systems support of multi-tasking functions.

04/01/2000  The NanoMapper metrology tool provides whole wafer topology data for 200-mm and 300-mm wafer sizes using non-contact optical measurement to quantify nanometer scale surface height variations. It responds to process development needs for leading-edge semiconductor devices down to 0.1 micron. Tracking the phase of the optical signal using proprietary interferometric technology results in the sub-nanometer resolution of the measurement.

04/01/2000  WOBURN, MA— ONE DOWN, 10 TO go.
That's one way to sum up the draft process for new cleanroom standards that are being hammered out by Technical Committee 209 of the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO; Geneva).

01/05/2000  In a move that will allow it to bolster offerings with integrated metrology capabilities, ASM International N.V., Bilthoven, The Netherlands, has purchased a 24% interest in NanoPhotonics AG, a Mainz, Germany, maker of precision thin film metrology tooling. The firm also plans to deliver its first 300mm vertical furnace equipped with integrated metrology early this year.

01/04/2000  Following the sale of its real estate and shoe division, Oerlikon-Buhrle Holding AG (OBH) is focused on cutting a path for itself in the semiconductor industry and hopes that its newest acquisition of Plasma-Therm, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, will lead the way.

11/02/1999  The economics of 300mm wafer processing will demand more effective process control of equipment and tools, according to William Rozich, IBM's director of equipment technology. Improved overall equipment efficiency (OEE) will be essential to cover the higher cost of wafers and the tools needed for 300mm production. Rozich points out that the area of a 300mm wafer is 2.25 times larger than that of a 200mm wafer, but the raw material is expected to cost three times as much.

11/01/1999  The complexity of semiconductor manufacturing and its wealth of data provide an ideal environment for the application of data mining to discover patterns of behavior leading to knowledge.

09/01/1997  Bob Mielke was the Institute`s technical vice president of the Contamination Control Division, completing a two-year term just ended on July 1. A senior metrology engineer for Abbot Laboratories, he`s been involved in the Institute`s standards and practices program since its inception in 1982. He was the chairman of Standards and Practices for the Contamination Control Division from 1987 to 1995 and is also the secretary for ISO TC209, the International Organization for Standardization`s Technic

06/01/1997  Spectel announces the availability of the SEM Monitor, a diagnostic tool known as "Sharpness Analysis," integrated into a turnkey workstation to meet the semiconductor industry`s need for analysis of production metrology scanning electron microscopes (SEMs). The tool`s analysis capability was developed for use as an on-line instrument diagnostic and for tool-matching in a production environment. It provides a quantitative framework based on fourier transform feedback for monitoring SEM resolutio

05/01/1997  The Institute of Environmental Sciences, Secretariat for ISO/TC 209 has announced the availability of ISO/DIS 14644-1, Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments -- Part 1: Classification of airborne particulates. The document is the first Draft International Standard (DIS) produced by ISO Technical Committee 209, Cleanrooms and Associated Controlled Environments. Descriptors of this DIS include cleanrooms, air pollution, particulate air pollutant, and classification. This first ISO clea