08/24/2009  August 24, 2009: Carbon nanotube developer Surrey NanoSystems says it has secured a second round of funding totaling £2.5M (US $4.2M) to help commercialize its low-temperature growth process for carbon nanotubes, targeted for use as a replacement for copper interconnects in semiconductor devices.

08/24/2009  August 24, 2009 -- SVTC was chosen by technology startup siXis, Inc. to supply silicon manufacturing services for their compact, high-speed embedded computing modules that bridge the gap between programmable devices and costly, customized semiconductors.

08/21/2009  August 21, 2009: In what seems to be a bid to expand beyond its auto position into an increasingly crowded (and promising) consumer sphere, Robert Bosch's US division is acquiring MEMS microphone maker Akustica.

08/20/2009  With the move towards fabless models and the use of double-patterning, it is critical that layout designers and manufacturing engineers remain engaged in the discussion of effective design rules that provide the types of yield, predictability and cost information that IC companies require.

08/20/2009  August 19, 2009: Image sensor sales will decline 11% in 2009 to $6.4B, the first decline in at least 12 years, and after a decade of 22% CAGR will settle into single-digit growth in coming years, according to a new report from Strategies Unlimited.

08/19/2009  August 19 -- IBM researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), have made an advancement in combining lithographic patterning with self assembly

08/18/2009  Samsung is revamping its 200mm memory line in Austin, TX, upgrading it to a 300mm NAND line, reportedly in a push to support solid-state drives. The kicker: hundreds of jobs will be lost.

08/17/2009  Researchers at IBM and the California Institute of Technology say they have come up with a solution to problems looming for future semiconductor manufacturing beyond the 22nm node: a combination of lithographic patterning and self-assembly that arranges DNA structures on surfaces compatible with current manufacturing equipment.

08/17/2009  Scientists at IBM Research and the California Institute of Technology announced a method for structuring DNA shapes to help build miniaturized computer chips well beyond 22-nm processes. The research claims that chips will be more energy efficient and suited to mass production.

08/14/2009  In memory, those whose technology is best aligned with cost savings (to both manufacturing and consumers) are in the catbird's seat, and so it is with Intel and Micron who now have 3-bit/cell multilevel cell NAND in their arsenal.

08/14/2009  August 24, 2009: Researchers from Yale and the Semiconductor Research Corp. say they have found a way to apply ferroelectric gate material to a DRAM cell (FeDRAM) to create a more simply structured, highly scalable, longer-lasting and lower-power-consuming device with multibit storage capabilities comparable to flash memory.

08/12/2009  Cu wiring based on dual damascene is beginning to hit fundamental limits of current via-first, trench-last (VFTL) integration, but thicknesses of films in the lithography stack for trench patterning can't scale as rapidly. This article outlines a novel approach for eliminating these variations using existing processes and equipment.

08/12/2009  Photovoltaic cells are getting steadily more efficient, and even the small area taken up by interconnect is shrinking to get more electrons flowing. Some of these developments were discussed at the recent Photovoltaic Specialists Conference in Philadelphia and at the accompanying PV America exhibition.

08/11/2009  August 11, 2009

08/11/2009  More evidence of a pent-up semiconductor industry ready to surge (hopefully): global shipments of polysilicon in 2Q09 displayed by far the biggest growth spike of at least the past nine years, according to data from SEMI's Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG).

08/10/2009  Ensuring laser-based tools are accepted as standard equipment during the production of high-efficiency crystalline silicon (c-Si) cells requires better understanding of the process windows involved, qualification of new tooling optimized for specific applications, and a clearly identified supply-chain.

08/10/2009  (August 10, 2009) SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Karen Twillmann, executive director of corporate marketing at Brewer Science, and Dan Wallace, the company's director of 3D packaging, discusses the advances made by the company's temporary bond adhesive for wafer bond applications.

08/08/2009  Semilab SSM president Chris Moore tells SST how the company's new manual system, the SRP Express 170, hits the spot for small- and mid-tier semiconductor and solar cell manufacturers with density and resistivity depth profiling of electrically active dopants.

08/08/2009  August 7, 2009: Integrated Device Technology (IDT) is giving up on the fab-lite model and going completely fabless, transferring its fabrication processes to TSMC over the next two years.

08/05/2009  Hamid Zarringhalam, EVP, technology, sales and marketing at Nikon Precision, talks about the need to extend double-patterning immersion lithography to 22nm. He also describes solutions to meet overlay accuracy requirements and a target throughput of 200wph.