03/23/2007  March 23, 2007 - Boosted by refreshed inventories and demand for power transistors, sales of discrete semiconductor devices grew faster than IC sales in 2006 for the first time in nearly two decades, and only the second time since the 1970s, according to data from IC Insights Inc.

03/22/2007  NEXX Systems (Billerica) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd. (TSMC) of Hsinchu, Taiwan, will co-develop processes for cost-effective use of through-silicon vias (TSVs), wafer-level chip-scale packages (WLCSPs), and redistribution layers.

03/22/2007  March 22, 2007 - After more than tripling the growth rate of the global semiconductor industry in 2006, Taiwan's semiconductor industry growth will be cut in half in 2007 to be right in line with everyone else, according to data from the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association and reported by the Taiwan Economic News.

03/22/2007  March 22, 2007 - Wafer prober supplier Electroglas Inc. says it has entered into definitive agreements for private placement of $25.75 million of its 6.25% convertible senior subordinated secure notes due 2027.

03/22/2007  March 22, 2007 - Inotera Memories Inc., the memory chipmaking JV of Nanya Technology Corp. and German chipmaker Qimonda AG, plans to spend about $72 million to buy 16.7 hectares of land in a suburban area of Taoyuan County in northern Taiwan, reports the Taiwan Economic News.

03/22/2007  March 22, 2007 - Shu Li, president and CEO of Jazz Semiconductor, has left to "pursue other opportunities," and parent company chairman/CEO Gil Amelio (former Apple exec) will assume his duties "for the foreseeable future," according to the company.

03/21/2007  March 21, 2007 - Nearly one year to the day after acquiring overlay metrology firm Soluris Inc., metrology equipment supplier Nanometrics Inc. says it is closing the firm's Concord, MA facility and consolidating all of its overlay metrology production at a facility in Asia.

03/21/2007  March 21, 2007 - Frank Huang, chairman of Taiwan DRAM firm Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., is under investigation for alleged insider trading in affiliate company Veutron where he is also chairman, according to the Taiwan Economic News.

03/21/2007  March 21, 2007 - Chipmaking consortium SEMATECH is kickstarting a planned revamp of its membership business model into program-level participation, by opening the doors to new members to join its 3D Interconnect program.

03/21/2007  March 21, 2007 - Micron Technology Inc. has officially opened its first manufacturing facility in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province in midwest China, for assembly and test of its products including memory (DRAM and NAND flash) and CMOS image sensors. Build-out of the facility, one of the largest investments in the Xi'an High Tech Zone, is expected to continue through the end of 2008, with investments topping $250 million.

03/20/2007  By Yuji Setta, Tatsuo Chijimatsu, Satoru Asai, Fujitsu Ltd., Tokyo, Japan

Arrays of 100nm contact holes can be printed with adequate depth of focus (DOF) through pitch using dry 193nm wavelength exposure and a special illuminator design.

Contact holes are among the most difficult IC structures to pattern. The design rule for nested holes patterns at the 65nm-node generation assumes a spacing almost the same as the wavelength used in ArF lithography.

03/20/2007  Nanotech developers are challenged to demonstrate that their solutions are reliably available in quantity for commercial applications. Small Times contributing editor Richard Gaughan reports on a consortium that welcomes input to identify milestones and plot the path for market acceptance.

03/19/2007  by M. David Levenson, Editor-in-Chief, Microlithography World

The traditional Exposure Systems and Components session on the last day of the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium gave vendors the opportunity to tout their latest hyper-NA immersion scanners and supporting technologies.

03/19/2007  March 19, 2007 - Intel Corp. has announced its entry into solid state drives with the Intel Z-U130 value solid-state drive that is based on NAND flash memory with industry standard USB interfaces, to be used in a wide variety of computing and embedded platforms.

03/19/2007  By Griff Resor, Resor Associates

Each year, experts gather at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium in San Jose to report on their pursuit of Moore's Law. Every two years, a new node in the ITRS is reached, and 2007 is the year for 45nm technology production. Many presentations at SPIE showed the 45nm node in production, as scheduled, using 193 immersion lithography, while other presentations looked further ahead...

03/19/2007  March 19, 2007 - SEMI today reported that worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totaled $40.47 billion in 2006, compared to $32.88 billion in 2005, representing a year-over-year increase of 23 percent.

03/19/2007  March 19, 2007 - The Taipei High Administrative Court has ruled in favor of Richard Chang, CEO of Chinese chipmaker SMIC, who was fined by the Ministry of Economic Affairs Investment Commission for allegedly violating bans on mainland-bound chipmaking investments.

03/19/2007  March 15, 2007 -- /BUSINESS WIRE/ -- SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- SELA, a leading global supplier of engineering and failure analysis tools for the semiconductor industry, has set its production schedule for the Xact, the first STEM/TEM sample preparation system using the disruptive new AIMTM (Adaptive Ion Milling) technology.

03/16/2007  March 16, 2007 - Bede X-ray Metrology has announced that SEMATECH will use a Bede x-ray metrology system to evaluate novel semiconductor materials needed for the 45nm and 32nm technology nodes and beyond.

03/15/2007  March 15, 2007 - Luxtera Inc. has announced that it is the first company to use a standard SOI-CMOS fabrication process to develop an integrated long-wavelength photodetection capability by strategically adding pure germanium around optical waveguides.