02/21/2007  February 21, 2007 - The Dongbu group says it will merge its foundry business, Dongbu Electronics, with Dongbu Hannong Chemicals to create a "biosemiconductor enterprise" to provide foundry services along with advanced materials targeting bioengineering, nanotechnology and semiconductor processing.

02/21/2007  February 21, 2007 - Toshiba Corp., Shibaura Mechatronics Corp., and Chlorine Engineers Corp. Ltd. have devised a new semiconductor resist strip technology that utilizes electrolyzed sulfuric acid to reduce the volume of sulfuric acid used in the process by 70%, and entirely eliminate the need for hydrogen peroxide.

02/20/2007  The Falcon 600 automated optical inspection (AOI) system targets MEMS and other special applications for the semiconductor manufacturing and packaging industries. The model targets applications that require special handling and inspection capabilities, such as optoelectronic devices, MEMS, wafer-level packaging (WLP), and glass substrates.

02/20/2007  The proliferation of DFM start-ups has set the stage for a plethora of announcements in the months leading up to the SPIE Microlithography Conference. In this three-part series, WaferNEWS interviews companies that are trying to make their mark on the DFM landscape. This week we look at a company with technology that predicts, during the design phase, how ideal GDS shapes will print as contours in silicon: Clear Shape Technologies.

02/20/2007  After catching its breath in 2007, the semiconductor market is expected to explode in 2008, reaching the industry's next cyclical peak growth rate of >20% and setting a new milestone of >$300 billion in annual revenue, according to analyst firm IC Insights. "I'm not sure if everyone is being lulled to sleep by the single-digit dollar volume growth rates we've seen recently," said the firm's president, Bill McClean, speaking at a recent seminar in Boston, MA. "This should wake everybody up."

02/20/2007  Advanced process materials and the continued adoption march of 300mm are driving materials growth in 2007, and fabs seem to be finally learning to make smarter purchasing decisions, according to top analysts tracking the market, interviewed by WaferNEWS. Potentially troubling signs seem to be offset by mitigating factors -- yet there is still no short-term answer for stretched-to-the-limit polysilicon demand, particularly from the solar segment.

02/20/2007  Advanced Packaging Techniques
By Terence Q. Collier, CVInc.

Traditionally, die are electrically connected to the outside world using fine gold or aluminum wires that attach from the die's bond pad to the land of a substrate or PCB. Wafer bumping involves taking those traditional aluminum pads and converting into a format that provides a desirable structure for solder adhesion (bumping). There are a number of new, old, and relatively untested techniques for bumping wafers.

02/16/2007  February 16, 2007 - Researchers at the U. of California-Riverside have designed the building blocks for a memory device that uses telescoping binary or three-stage carbon nanotubes as high-speed, low-power microswitches.

02/16/2007  February 16, 2007 - North American suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment enjoyed a double-digit boost in demand for their tools to kickstart the year, and sales picked up as well, mainly due to capacity investments from memory firms, according to the latest data from SEMI.

02/15/2007  Micron Technology, Inc., will incorporate its next-generation 1Gb mobile DRAM into "bundle" packages with the company's NAND flash memory. The multichip packages (MCPs) will target high-end mobile phone applications.

02/15/2007  The development of a highly sensitive biochip based on silicon nanowire technology promises to advance the detection and analysis of RNA and DNA, which is central to many life sciences endeavors, ranging from uncovering and diagnosing disease to the discovery and screening of new drugs.

02/14/2007  February 14, 2007 - Applied Materials Inc. delivered fiscal 1Q07 results that were down sequentially as expected. But an anticipated recovery by the foundry sector and sustained strength in NAND flash could help the company exceed overall projected industry capex growth, executives said in a conference call discussing the numbers.

02/13/2007  Among presentations at SEMI Europe's Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) in Z

02/13/2007  February 13, 2007 - Renesas Technology Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd. say they have developed a technique that achieves stable operation with 45nm bulk CMOS, instead of silicon-on-insulator (SOI), for SRAM that can be embedded in system-on-a-chip (SoC) devices and microprocessors.

02/13/2007  The industry is a-changin', but there's both good and bad news as a result, suggested a panel of top Wall Street analysts (with an occasional bit of prodding from the moderator) at the recent Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) at Half Moon Bay, CA. There was agreement that fast-rising consumer markets, especially in Asia, are indeed putting growth back on a somewhat faster track, though some participants are still proceeding with caution.

02/13/2007  February 13, 2007 - Wafer demand surged in 2006 after moderate single-digit growth in 2005, with both revenues and shipments up >20% due in large part to memory investments and growing adoption of 300mm processing, according to new data from SEMI.

02/08/2007  February 8, 2007 - Silicon Laboratories Inc. has agreed to sell its cellular communications business to NXP Semiconductors (nee Philips' chip business) for $285 million in cash, in what NXP's top exec deemed a first step in the upcoming wireless industry consolidation."

02/08/2007  February 8, 2007 - Taiwan foundries Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) both posted 4Q06 results that showed dents from an inventory correction, but both firms expect that to ease out by 2Q, and both are inching up their spending plans for 2007.

02/08/2007  February 8, 2007 - Japan's Nikon Corp. has invested about 2.3 billion yen (US $19 million) to start producing glass substrates for liquid-crystal display (LCD) photomasks, according to a Reuters report.

02/08/2007  February 8, 2007 - Market conditions for NOR flash memory weren't as harsh as in 2005, but it's still no picnic with ASPs still getting pummeled, especially in the mobile phone sector, according to data from iSuppli Corp.