02/20/2008  ; Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC), a university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, has announced that the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the U. at Albany will serve as headquarters for a research effort aimed at enabling nanoelectronics advances that are critical for the development of smaller, faster and cheaper computer nanochips.

02/19/2008  Feb. 19, 2008 - Toshiba and SanDisk have signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding to form a new production JV and a new 300mm wafer fab for NAND flash memory, with a definitive agreement expected later this year. Separately, Toshiba indicated it will build another chip plant in Japan to boost in-house semiconductor capacity.

02/15/2008  Feb. 15, 2008 - After a two-quarter blackout, Hynix Semiconductor is preparing to resume selling DRAM chips on the sport market, likely starting in 2Q08, according to the Korea Times.

02/15/2008  by M. David Levenson, Editor-In-Chief, Microlithography World
Feb. 15, 2008 - An odd thing happened on the way to 65nm chip technology -- perfectly good photomasks started going bad after a few hundred wafer exposures, due to the deposition of crystal-like defects. If detected, they can be cleaned off and the $100k mask re-used. KLA-Tencor says its new suite of tools can requalify masks in the fab, avoiding yield crashes (though occasionally delaying production).

02/15/2008  Feb. 15, 2008 - KLA-Tencor has unveiled three new inspection tools for requalifying masks in a wafer fab and inspect for contaminants, capabilities it says will improve yield and lower production risk in 65nm and 45nm chip manufacturing and 32nm development.

02/15/2008  Feb. 15, 2008 - The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) has published a newly revised "recommended practice" addressing characterization of organic compounds outgassed from materials or components exposed to air or gases in cleanrooms and other controlled environments.

02/15/2008  Feb. 15, 2008 - Facing limits in its ability to expand internal capacity, Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing has bought 100% ownership of Hitachi's Singapore unit, Hitachi Semiconductor Singapore Pte Ltd (HNS), including a local 200mm fab near its existing campus, for ~$233M in cash.

02/15/2008  ; Yole Developpement has just released a new report entitled "WLP & Embedded Die Technologies 2008". This report presents the manufacturing challenges faced by the wafer level packaging industry in terms of MEMS, CMOS image sensors and semiconductor ICs.

02/15/2008  ; The X-Tek Group, specialists in microfocus and CT X-ray systems, signed an agreement with Metris for the sale of 100% of the X-Tek stock at the end of 2007. The acquisition will enable Metris to expand X-Tek's CT capabilities into various applications within the metrology industry.

02/15/2008  by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology
There's a strategic shift coming in how the IC industry develops basic manufacturing processes. With increasing manufacturing complexity at the 45nm node occurring at the same time as chip commoditization, the industry now has multiple integration targets to drive the development of new unit processes. Novellus' EVP Tom Caulfield weighs in on this trend.

02/13/2008  ; Inkjet printer heads hold one of the largest shares of the MEMS market. Printer manufacturers generally use thermal bubble jet technology or piezoelectric jet technology. A silicon chip is used as a barrier between the orifice plate, which contains hundreds of nozzles, and the ink reservoir.

02/12/2008  Feb. 11, 2008 - SEMATECH says it has demonstrated defect density of 0.04/cm² for EUV mask blanks, with a total of 8 defects combined from substrate and multilayer, surpassing the consortium's published commercial EUV mask blank roadmap target for the end of 2007.

02/08/2008  Feb. 8, 2008 - Legacy Holding, a provider of wafer cleaning/strip technologies, says it has submitted a patent application for its proprietary "Organostrip" photoresist removal technology used in backend semiconductor manufacturing processes, saying that opportunities in China's IC industry make it a sweet spot for business.

02/08/2008  MEMS developer Nanochip is working to address the limits of flash memory technology. The company's first products, planned for production in 2010, are expected to exceed 100GB/chipset, reaching terabytes in the future. Small Times' Debra Vogler reports.

02/08/2008  EV Group, a supplier of wafer-bonding and lithography equipment, has received an order from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, for two of its MEMS-focused systems.

02/07/2008  Feb. 7, 2008 - Toshiba and partner SanDisk reportedly have settled on a location in which to build their fifth NAND flash fab, sharing the ¥700B (US ~$6.58B) investment in the new facility, according to a report by the Asahi Shimbun. Mass production is slated for fiscal 2009.

02/07/2008  Feb. 7, 2008 - SanDisk says it will start shipping 16Gb multilevel NAND flash memory products built with 43nm process technologies during 2Q08, with 32Gb versions slated for later in the year. Manufacturing of the newer process node is underway at Toshiba's Yokkaichi operations near Nagoya, Japan, produced initially at Fab 4, followed by Fab 3 sometime in 2H08.

02/06/2008  Feb. 6, 2008 - Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments came in right around SEMI's revised projections in 2007, squeaking back into positive growth territory by year's end, according to the latest data from SEMI's SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG).

02/06/2008  Feb. 6. 2008 - Test/probe-card firm FormFactor says it will trim its workforce by 14% (mostly manufacturing workers at its HQ in Livermore, CA, according to local reports), taking a charge of $4-$5M mostly in 1Q08 as it tries to fight through a soft market.

02/06/2008  Feb. 6, 2008 - At this week's International Solid State Circuit Conference (ISSCC), European R&D consortia IMEC is pushing several new converter technologies built in 90nm digital CMOS, and encouraging more participants in continuing the work. It's also showing a full-CMOS 60GHz antenna array, and a chip for small EEG machines.