10/28/2011 

Two Wall Street analysts report their impressions from last week's EUV Symposium (Oct. 17-19 in Miami), where companies in the EUV supply chain reported their latest results and planned progress through 2012. And don't look now but there's a competition brewing in source power.

10/28/2011 

Stefan Wurm, director of SEMATECH's lithography program, relayed highlights from last week's EUV Symposium (Oct. 17-19 in Miami), including results in defects (mask blanks and substrates) and an update on SEMATECH's EUV Mask Infrastructure (EMI) program.

10/28/2011 

ACM Research Shanghai Ltd. will install its Ultra C 12" (300mm) single-wafer megasonic cleaning tool at a leading Korea-based memory manufacturer. The tool will be implemented as part of the customer

10/28/2011 

ACM Research Shanghai, Ltd., introduced the integrated Ultra iSFP stress-free polishing (SFP) semiconductor manufacturing tool for 65-45nm copper (Cu) interconnects, improving through silicon vias (TSV) with better heat dissipation.

10/27/2011 

The GSA released its September statistics for monthly, year-to-date, and year-over-year semiconductor funding, initial public offerings (IPO), and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

10/26/2011 

Paul Fego from Texas Instruments, a keynote speaker at ISMI Manufacturing Week (Oct. 17-21, Austin, TX), summarizes how TI's collaborative culture can address specific semiconductor manufacturing challenges -- notably the ramps of its 300mm analog fab and assembly/test factory.

10/25/2011 

Xilinx Inc. (Nasdaq:XLNX) began shipping its Virtex-7 2000T field programmable gate array (FPGA), a programmable logic device with 6.8 billion transistors: 2 million logic cells, a die-stack architecture, low power consumption, and a more flexible design than large ASICS and monolithic FPGAs.

10/24/2011 

The 2012 Symposia on VLSI Technology & Circuits, to be held in Hawaii, June 12-14 (Technology) and 13-15 (Circuits), will accept innovative, original work on microelectronics, ranging from gate stacks and advanced lithography to 3D packaging.

10/24/2011 

A highly engineered lanthanum and strontium compound material could form the basis of spintronics devices, report Argonne National Laboratory and NIST researchers.

10/24/2011 

Imec and Lam Research have developed a quantitative evaluation method for wafer drying techniques. Silicon nano-pillar test structures with high aspect ratios (up to 28) demonstrate the mechanisms of pattern collapse and sticking in the wafer drying step.

10/21/2011 

Awaiting "stability in the overall economic outlook," semiconductor device makers spent 40.4% less with North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment year-over-year in September 2011. The September book-to-bill ratio published by SEMI fell to 0.75.

10/20/2011 

Materion Advanced Materials Technologies acquired EIS Optics Limited, adding a 97,000sq.ft. manufacturing site in Shanghai, China for optical coatings. EIS Optics makes optical thin film filters, glass processing, lithography and optical subassemblies.

10/20/2011 

Brewer Science Inc. and EV Group (EVG) will both commercialize ZoneBOND technology for temporary wafer bonding, thin wafer processing, and debonding applications.

10/20/2011 

Entegris, Inc. (Nasdaq:ENTG) opened a manufacturing and research facility in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, for advanced filtration and materials handling components for the semiconductor industry and other high-tech industries.

10/19/2011 

Mattson Technology Inc. (NASDAQ: MTSN) won acceptance for its Helios XP rapid thermal processing (RTP) system for process of record from a major Asian foundry.

10/19/2011 

Nanotech accelerator SVTC Technologies, wet chem equipment maker Amerimade Technology, and chemicals company Shanghai Sinyang Semiconductor Materials will collaborate on electroplating processes for TSV that are production-ready for advanced packages and MEMS.

10/19/2011 

MIT researchers developed a glass-stamp-based technique that helps fabricate lab-on-chip sensors at a lower cost than e-beam lithography and in a more reproducible manner than nanoimprint lithography.

10/19/2011 

JSR Micro and CEA-Leti will partner to develop sub-20nm next-generation lithography materials and processes, focusing on pitch division in 193nm optical lithography for <20nm logic applications and on direct-write maskless lithography (ML2) technology.

10/18/2011 

DRAM shipments for smartphones will grow 157.2% year-over-year in 2011, a surging sector of a slumping DRAM industry, shows IHS. By 2015, DRAM for smartphones will be a 13.9 billion unit business, and 16% of total DRAM shipments.

10/18/2011 

Once you've chosen an outsourcing partner, focus on the details. Mark Danna of Owens Design shares how to write a project specification that is adaptable and designed to bring a project in on time and on budget.