Jordan Valley Semiconductors (Migdal Ha’Emek, Israel) and Nikon Precision Inc. (Tokyo) are the winners of the prestigious “SEMICON Best of West” award. These awards, presented Wednesday at the SEMICON West 2010 exhibition, are given based on the products’ financial impact on the industry, engineering or scientific achievement, and/or societal impact.
“Our judging panel was impressed with the products from this year’s finalists,” said Tom Morrow, vice president, global exhibitions and marketing of SEMI. “All of these products are worthy of recognition by the industry, and we had to make a very difficult choice. It’s also a testament to the breadth of the industry that we had finalists from around the globe showing such technical innovation.”
Jordan Valley’s winning product is the JVX7200 SiGe Metrology Tool, which, according to the company, combines advanced high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) and X-ray reflectivity (XRR) channels to provide composition, thickness, strain, relaxation characterization and metrology for epitaxial layers such as SiGe and SiC, which are required for strained silicon processes. Additionally, the XRR channel can provide valuable information on other thin films, such as those found in high-k gate stacks. The tool is capable of providing rapid, in-line measurements and analysis on both blanket and product wafers.
Isaac Mazor, CEO, Jordan Valley Semiconductors Ltd.“Long ago, we had the vision to see the importance of the strained silicon process,” said Isaac Mazor, Jordan Valley’s CEO. “Our engineers were able to bridge the metrology gap for this process by building the most advanced platform for the most advanced technology available today. We thank the judging panel for this award, and we honor all the finalists for their achievements.”
Nikon Precision’s award-winning product is the NSR-S620D Ultra-High Productivity Immersion Scanner. According to Nikon, this tool incorporates the Streamlign platform and a 1.35 numerical aperture (NA) lens to satisfy the aggressive demands of double-patterned lithography at 32 nm, with extendibility to 22 nm applications. The S620D targets 200 wph, maximizes yield with 2 nm overlay and superior critical dimension uniformity (CDU), and enables rapid installation.
Stephen P. Renwick, principal engineer, Nikon Precision Inc.“It’s great to be recognized by this distinguished panel of judges for our tool,” said Stephen P. Renwick, principal engineer with Nikon Precision. “We think this is the right product for our customers, and we’re looking forward to great success. We think our engineers did an outstanding job, and they deserve a lot of credit.”
Before the 2010 award presentation, Jacob Mor, president and co-founder of Nano Green Technology, said, “Receiving this award in 2009 changed our company’s life. We immediately gained respect from the industry, and this award contributed to our success. We mentioned this award in sales meetings, in our product literature, and on our website, and we received orders for 70 of our units within the year.”
The selection of finalists was made by a prestigious panel of judges representing a broad spectrum of the microelectronics industry, academia and media. The judges were William Chen, senior technical advisor, ASE Group; Dao Giang, manager, external opportunities, Intel; Octavio Martínez, senior director, engineering, CDMA technologies, Qualcomm Inc.; Godfrey Mungal, dean, school of engineering, Santa Clara University; Mark Osborne, editor-in-chief, Semiconductor Fabtech; David Ridsdale, editor-in-chief, EuroAsia Semiconductor; and Pete Singer, editor-in-chief, Solid State Technology/SmallTimes.
— Steven Buehler, Global Communications, SEMI