12/09/2005  December 9, 2005 - A European Commission-sponsored research project said it has achieved a significant breakthrough with development of a 800W EUV light source.

12/09/2005  December 8, 2005 - NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp. said they have developed a new device technology for low-power, high-performance systel LSI capable of enhancing functionality of sub-10nm transistors.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - Intel and STMicroelectronics have developed a common flash memory subsystem aimed at creating a "second source" for 90nm and beyond NOR flash products and subsystems, in order to lower long-term development costs for handsets and mobile phones.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - European R&D consortium IMEC is installing two 300mm coater/developer tools from Tokyo Electron Ltd. for use in EUV and 193nm immersion lithography work.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - ASML said it plans to ship 20-25 immersion lithography systems in 2006, including shipments to Japan, and is now receiving components for its first EUV alpha tools being delivered next year to IMEC and Albany NanoTech.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - At IEDM 2005, IMEC presented breakthroughs demonstrating FUSI as a leading candidate for integration of Hf-based dielectrics with metal gates for (sub)-45nm.

12/08/2005  December 8, 2005 - The leading manufacturers of semiconductor equipment project 2005 sales to reach $32.95 billion, according to the just-released, year-end edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Consensus Forecast.

12/08/2005 

12/07/2005  December 7, 2005 - At Semicon Japan, a new ultraviolet thermal processing platform from Novellus was introduced that blends industry-standard lamp-based UV light sources with the company's multistation sequential processing architecture.

12/07/2005 

12/06/2005  December 6, 2005 - At the International Electron Devices meeting this week in Washington, DC, news includes: 1) Limited and Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. have developed carbon nanotube-based heatsinks for semiconductor chips. 2) Freescale Semiconductor has demonstrated a transistor that overcomes many of the challenges associated with vertical multigate devices. 3) STMicrolectronics unveiled a 65nm NOR Flash technology with a small cell size of 0.042 sq microns.

12/02/2005  Dennis Winters, Samsung Austin Semiconductor LP; Richard Kent, Fabworx Solutions Inc.

Fabs operating cluster tools from the 1990s frequently report robot-related wafer scratching as a common source of yield loss. When scratching occurs, the probability of killing a die is nearly 100%. The dominant cause of wafer scratching in these tools is robot droop, a result of wear that causes the robot blade to use more of the vertical clearance between the wafers within a cassette.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Researchers at the U. of Tokyo have created a flexible Braille display utilizing organic semiconductor devices -- plastic actuators driven by an organic field-effect transistor active matrix.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - The IEEE has begun work on a new standard to define methods for testing carbon nanotubes used as additives in bulk materials, and how to report data about the materials' performance.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Public-private partnership SemIndia and Indian state government have announced plans to spend roughly $3 billion to build the first semiconductor manufacturing plant in India, licensing x86 microprocessor and logic technology from AMD.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Total utilization rates for IC production rose slightly to 90.1% in 3Q05, up from 89.1% in 2Q05 and 84.8% in 1Q05, with run rates for leading-edge technologies (<0.12 microns, and 0.12-0.16 microns) pushing to 96%-97% by the end of September, according to data from Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics (SICAS).

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Researchers at Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) have developed a way to fabricate functional resistance random-access memory (RRAM) using existing electronic materials, possibly opening a pathway to low-cost mass production of the technology touted as faster, low-power alternative to flash memory.

12/02/2005  December 2, 2005 - Intel Corp. said yesterday that it plans to build a new $3.5 billion, 300mm wafer fabrication facility at its site in Kiryat Gat, Israel. The new factory will produce chips using 45nm process technology and will be operational in 2008.

12/02/2005 

12/01/2005  December 1, 2005