06/19/2009  A highlight at Intel's annual research open house held this week, amid general updates on eco-innovation, 3D graphics, mobility, and enterprise computing, was a roundtable discussion of the company's manufacturing research, including a summary of the status of EUV.

06/15/2009  Silicon wafer demand "rebounded strongly" in the second quarter of 2009, but look for a moderated recovery through the rest of the year and a less-than-pretty yearly picture, according to a report from Gartner.

06/10/2009  JUNE 10, 2009

06/10/2009  June 10, 2009: Vanderbilt physicists have found a way to make freestanding nanoparticle films, without any additive, that are strong and resilient enough to pick up and move with tweezers -- making them easy to incorporate into microelectronic devices.

06/09/2009  June 9, 2009: A group of scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is working on a device which incorporates eye tracking to create bidirectional "data eyeglasses," opening up hands-free applications generally associated with spy movies and fighter pilots.

06/09/2009  June 9, 2009: Xradia Inc. and NanoLab Technologies Inc. have formed a partnership to offer 3D X-ray imaging as part of a service model to help address semiconductor packaging development and failure analysis challenges.

06/09/2009  Amid preparations for IMEC's 25th anniversary celebration, SST spoke with Luc Van den hove, now president/CEO of European R&D consortium IMEC, who discussed the research center's strategy and the keys to its success over the years.

06/08/2009  Multiple media reports indicate Taiwan authorities are mulling over plans to relax restrictions on local companies investing in leading-edge chipmaking operations in mainland China.

06/08/2009  In this article, ASM and Numonyx explain that ALD of high-k dielectrics and novel metal layers will be prevalent in producing next-generation NVMs, because it has been shown to address many of the issues related to speed, endurance, and reliability of these devices.

06/04/2009  Researchers at Georgia Tech say they have experimentally demonstrated the potential for graphene to replace copper for on-chip interconnects and help extend performance scaling for silicon-based ICs.

06/02/2009 

Applied Materials exec Marek Radko gives SST a tour of its new Endura CuBS RFX PVD system, qualified for copper barrier/seed deposition technology at 32nm and 22nm for production of logic and flash memory.

06/02/2009  Applied Materials exec Marek Radko gives SST a tour of its new Endura CuBS RFX PVD system, qualified for copper barrier/seed deposition technology at 32nm and 22nm for production of logic and flash memory.

06/01/2009  The Applied Materials' Charger UBM PVD system was designed for under-bump metallization (UBM), redistribution layer and CMOS image sensor applications. Its linear architecture is said to more than double the wafer output of other systems. In addition, its proprietary Isani wafer treatment technology allows the UBM system to process ten times more wafers between servicing.

06/01/2009  Day 4 of the ECS Spring 2009 Meeting saw the continuation of symposia on flexible electronics, emerging dielectrics, SOI, and graphene, reports Techcet's Michael A. Fury in his exclusive daily blog for SST. And discussions of battery/energy and SOI device technology indicated the global breadth of research interest and funding in these fields.

05/29/2009  Day 3 of the ECS Spring 2009 Meeting showed signs of normalization: good sized audiences in right-sized rooms, and presentations proceeding as scheduled, reports Techcet's Michael A. Fury in his exclusive daily blog for SST. Topics today touched on work in semiconductor-biocell interfaces, organic TFTs, alternative phase-change material, high-k dielectrics, SiGe PMOS/NMOS integration, post-32nm MugFET designs, and graphene aerogels.

05/28/2009  Techcet's Michael A. Fury reports exclusively for SST from this week's spring meeting of the Electrochemical Society. On tap for Day 2: "Tantalizing" advancements in ZnO as a future semiconductor material, cost-effective 2D microfluidics, triple-junction solar cells, a supersensitive toxin-detecting HEMT device, and feeling the effects of "Fox News flu."

05/28/2009  May 27, 2009 - Sanyo Electric says it has ratcheted up the conversion efficiency of its crystalline silicon (c-Si) solar cells to 23.0% thanks to improvements in the heterojunction quality, absorption loss, and resistance loss.

05/27/2009  Techcet's Michael A. Fury reports exclusively for SST from this week's spring meeting of the Electrochemical Society. On tap for Day 1: a CMP symposium, combinatorial discovery methods for fuel cells, carbon nanotubes in nanophotonics, and energy storage.

05/20/2009  The latest data nugget describing the low depths being plumbed by the semiconductor industry: silicon wafer shipments are still at a low not seen since mid-2001, and one metric of decline goes back even further.

05/18/2009  Semiconductor packaging/assembly/test companies are gently ratcheting up their manufacturing capacity, but it won't be enough to prevent a culling of the herd, with nearly 20 (mostly older) facilities likely to be shuttered within a span of two years, according to new analyses from Gartner. And an improving outlook won't be enough to salvage what will likely be "one of the worst years in the SATS industry's modern era."