09/28/2011 

Both graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNT) suit applications from flexible displays to silicon-replacing transistors. In a relatively short time, graphene has emerged as a low-cost, tunable material for all kinds of electronics. Will graphene overtake CNTs as the nanomaterial of future devices?

09/27/2011 

New York State has entered into agreements for $4.4 billion in investments over the next 5 years from Intel, IBM, GlobalFoundries, TSMC, and Samsung to create a 450mm consortium and manufacturing center there.

09/27/2011 

SEMICON Europa is coming up fast (Oct. 11-13), and SST (and some friends) will be reporting on-scene. Here's a summary of the presentations we're looking forward to, from the Fab Managers' Forum to conferences on test, packaging, MEMS, and hot topics including 3D ICs and 450mm.

09/27/2011 

In a podcast interview with ElectroIQ.com, Ziptronix president & CEO, Daniel Donabedian, and company CTO, Paul Enquist, discussed both the Ziptronix wafer bonding technology and their partnership with Sony.

09/26/2011 

Fabless wireless semiconductor companies are putting out new chips and breakthrough technologies, adding "growth momentum" to the semiconductor industry value chain as a whole, according to CyberMedia Research. TSMC and Amkor benefit the most from the rise of fabless companies.

09/26/2011 

Brookhaven National Laboratory scientists discovered a new kind of quasiparticles in three-layer graphene sheets. These quasiparticles have mass dependent on their velocity and could be channeled into new spintronics devices.

09/26/2011 

Invensas president Simon McElrea explains the company's new wire bond-based multi-die face-down (xFD) packaging technology, demo'd at this year's Intel Developer Forum, and its advantages in terms of performance and manufacturing cost reductions.

09/26/2011 

Crossing Automation Inc. launched its 450mm sorter, the Spartan 450. A leading semiconductor manufacturer has ordered the sorter, Crossing Automation reports, planning the install in Q1 2012.

09/23/2011 

Adding to the growing chorus of semiconductor industry downgrades, Gartner analysts are raising another red flag: semiconductor inventories are at "worrisome" levels given market conditions and softening end-markets.

09/23/2011 

Macroeconomic factors will tug down global electronics demand in 2011, said IHS, which lowered its semiconductor revenue growth forecast for 2011. While the slowdown comes at a bad time -- pre-holiday sales season -- lessons learned in 2008 could shorten the down period significantly.

09/22/2011 

University of Washington materials scientists are working on a field-effect transistor (FET) that uses protons to communicate, rather than electrons.

09/22/2011 

Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. started up its Line-16 memory semiconductor fabrication facility, calling it the

09/21/2011 

Synopsys enhanced its TetraMAX ATPG and Yield Explorer to improve volume diagnostics flow and speed up yield ramp for IC manufacturing. Flow in TetraMAX ATPG and Yield Explorer is automated with a new direct connection between the two products.

09/21/2011 

InstruTech released its Cold cathode Ionization vacuum gauge CCM501, which the company is calling its Hornet module. The CCM501 is a rugged Cold Cathode gauge based on double inverted magnetron technology. It measures pressures from 1 x 10^-8 to 1 x 10^-2 Torr.

09/21/2011 

Reporting from this week's SPIE BACUS Photomask Technology conference, Franklin Kalk from Toppan Photomasks picks through the "10 best" papers that were to have been presented at Photomask Japan earlier this year.

09/20/2011 

D2S announced a mask-wafer double simulation accelerated workstation, TrueMask DS, for R&D exploration, bit-cell design, hot-spot analysis and mask defect categorization. Aki Fujimura, CEO, D2S, speaks with ElectroIQ's Debra Vogler about the technology, and what makes 20nm different.

09/20/2011 

Rice University researchers devised a method to grow high-quality bilayer graphene on a functional substrate, circumventing the transfer step from catalyst to insulator substrate.

09/20/2011 

Brion Technologies, a division of ASML, uncrated Tachyon MB-SRAF (Model-Based Sub-Resolution Assist Features) for its Tachyon computational lithography platform.

09/19/2011 

North America-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers posted $1.18 billion in orders in August 2011, which led to a book-to-bill ratio of 0.80, according to SEMI's August Book-to-Bill Report.

09/19/2011 

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) joined the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fund $20 million for 12 four-year grants on nanoelectronics research, aiming for the "new transistor" from American innovation.