12/04/2007  ; Tessera has announced that executives from Hewlett Packard, Intel, Nokia and Toshiba will be guest speakers at the fourth annual Tessera Technology Symposium in Tokyo, Japan, tomorrow. The theme of this year's conference is "Driving the Mobile Revolution."

12/04/2007  The FC300 high-force (4000N), high accuracy (0.5µm) device bonder for wafer diameters up to 300mm is the first step in a joint development program between CEA Leti and S.E.T.

12/04/2007  December 3, 2007 - The Fabless Semiconductor Association is dropping the "fabless" from its name and going "global," claiming that it's met original goals to proliferate the fabless business model and now must expand its agenda to address challenges through the entire chipmaking supply chain.

12/03/2007  The HR65D-VI series of machine micro lenses (MMLs) has been designed for high-resolution discrete part inspection in semiconductor manufacturing operations including die bonding, flip chip bonding, chip on glass and chip on film machining.

12/03/2007  December 3, 2007 - Global semiconductor sales inched up 2.1% in October to $23.07B, keeping in line with projections of about 4% growth for the year, and a strong "Black Friday" suggests that despite macroeconomic concerns US consumers are still hungry for digital devices, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

12/03/2007  December 3, 2007 - Samsung Electronics and Toshiba have agreed to cross-license their respective OneNAND and LBA-NAND NAND flash memory technologies, to both spur overall growth of, and gain footholds in, the burgeoning market for "fusion" flash technologies.

12/03/2007  Spectroscopic ellipsometers (SE) have been used for decades to provide thickness and composition information for thin dielectric films. Most broadband SEs have been limited by optics hardware to resolving as low as 190nm wavelengths, but a lot of interesting information regarding dielectrics can be found down below 190nm. With this in mind, KLA-Tencor has modified its broadband SE tool to push the wavelength limit down to 150nm.

12/03/2007  December 3, 2007 - A jury has ruled for a permanent injunction against Ultra Clean manufacturing, selling, or importing its Predator gas delivery systems or "colorably similar" products into the US, and must pay rival Celerity royalties for past infringing sales plus interest as well as legal costs.

12/01/2007  Continually scaling circuit features have led to tightened process requirements, including the purity levels of gas and liquid chemicals used in semiconductor manufacturing.

11/30/2007  By Debra Vogler, Senior Technical Editor

The International Symposium on Semiconductor Manufacturing (ISSM), running from Oct. 15-17 in Santa Clara, CA, was full of spirited debate, especially about 450mm, as senior technical editor Debra Vogler reports in her following two articles.

11/30/2007  By Manish Ranjan, Ultratech Inc.

Semiconductor assembly and test service (SATS) houses, packaging foundries, and integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) are increasingly turning to wafer-level packaging (WLP) to address the demand for miniaturization, lower cost, enhanced functionality, and higher reliability in today's personal digital devices.

11/30/2007  By Debra Vogler, Senior Technical Editor

The tradition of the ISMI Manufacturing Symposium as an "in the trenches" conference, by and for the people doing the actual day-to-day work in the fabs, continued Oct. 24-25 in Austin, TX. Particular attention was given to topics on yield improvement/productivity methodologies, ESH, and sustainability. Specific talks included how to fix litho "hot spots," cleaning wafer chucks without DI water or solvents...

11/30/2007  November 30, 2007 - Qimonda says it will reduce its 200mm manufacturing capacities worldwide in an effort to increase work on 300mm activities.

11/30/2007  November 30, 2007 - An appeal conducted by the World Trade Organization (WTO) has reiterated a July ruling that Japan's 27.2% tariffs levied against Korean DRAM chips (targeting Hynix) are illegal.

11/30/2007  PV technology and business expert Charles Gay, former director of the National Renewable Energy Labs in Colorado and currently VP and GM of Applied Materials' solar business group, talks with WaferNEWS about how the PV industry's rapid scaling has spurred innovations in materials science and manufacturing efficiencies.

11/29/2007  November 28, 2007 - Hitachi Kokusai Electric has agreed to license ASM International's patents for batch atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology, to bolster its own work in the technology.

11/29/2007  November 28, 2007 - Sharp Manufacturing Systems has created a wafer cleaning system that uses hot, concentrated ozone water with sustained high concentrations to more effectively dissolve and remove photoresist and other organic contaminants, according to the Nikkei Business Daily.

11/27/2007  November 27, 2007 - NEC says it will start mass production of 40nm system chips in late fiscal 2008.

11/27/2007  November 27, 2007 - Four years after spinning off its original nonmemory business (now thriving as MagnaChip Semiconductor), Hynix Semiconductor Inc. is getting back into the sector through a partnership with CMOS image sensor designer SiliconFile Technologies.

11/27/2007  Pure-play flash memory provider Spansion is gearing up to start manufacturing its 45nm MirrorBit ORNAND2 architecture, which uses a SONOS-like memory cell connected in a NAND memory array and is based on proprietary charge-trapping storage technology. Spansion president/CEO Bertrand Cambou talks with WaferNEWS about the cost advantages achieved with this NAND/NOR hybrid, as well as with the company's multisource manufacturing strategy.