11/01/2005  A 2,600-square-foot cleanroom, previously occupied by Infineon, is the new site of research and development of emerging wafer-lithography technologies being conducted by Fraunhofer Center for Nanoelectronic Technologies.

11/01/2005  The NanoCommerce trade show and SEMI NanoForum begin today in Chicago. The events, which run through Thursday, are designed to cover both business and technology issues.

11/01/2005  Mastering Challenges of Lead-free Alloys

11/01/2005  With the July 2006 date for implementation of the EU’s RoHS and WEEE Directives looming, most, if not all producers of electronic products are studying prospective technologies and looking for potential solutions for assembling products using lead-free solders.

10/31/2005  Pete Hulbert, Keithley Instruments Inc., Cleveland, Ohio

New semiconductor materials and shrinking device dimensions have made reliability testing increasingly important because the gate dielectric behavior of modern devices isn't well understood, requiring the development of new device lifetime models. However, traditional test methods are time consuming and not suitable for new materials and shorter development cycles. A new approach...

10/31/2005  October 31, 2005 - Oki Electric Industry Co. has developed a technique to fabricate transistors of gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon wafers instead of expensive silicon carbide, reports the Nikkei English News. Using this technique, Oki said it can manufacture chips with an output of around 100W for less than half the conventional cost.

10/27/2005 

10/25/2005  October 25, 2005 - Intel Corp. has announced plans to invest $650 million to increase the capacity of its 300mm wafer Fab 11X in Rio Rancho, NM. Construction and new tool installations are scheduled to continue through 2006, with production operations set to begin through the new expansion in early 2007. This investment will create more than 300 new manufacturing jobs.

10/21/2005  October 21, 2005 - Micro-Metric, San Jose, CA, a provider of noncontact measurement and assembly systems, has announced that View Engineering, a Simi Valley, CA-based vision measurement systems provider, has acquired its assets.

10/20/2005  San Jose, Calif. — In September 2005 and on a 3-month-average basis, North American-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.09 billion in orders and a book-to-bill ratio of 1.02, according to SEMI's September 2005 Book-to-Bill Report. This ratio represents $102 worth of orders received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

10/20/2005  October 20, 2005 - Analog Devices Inc., Norwood, MA, is consolidating wafer fabrication operations in Sunnyvale and Santa Clara, CA, to its larger facilities in MA and Ireland, where the company works on more advanced process technologies.

10/20/2005 

10/19/2005  October 19, 2005 - European R&D consortium IMEC and chipmaker Infineon Technologies AG have developed a new profiling technique for extracting charge profiles in nitride-based nonvolatile flash memory (NVM), which will allow the technology to compete broadly against traditional flash memory for standalone code and data storage, as well as in embedded applications.

10/18/2005  October 18, 2005 - European R&D consortium IMEC has added an RF-CMOS arm to its industrial affiliation program for researching sub-45nm CMOS technologies, expanding its efforts from an earlier 90nm program.

10/18/2005  October 18, 2005 - MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO, has received a favorable ruling from the Opposition Division of the European Patent Office regarding the manufacture and use of semiconductor-grade, single-crystal, defect-free silicon wafers having a diameter of 200mm or greater.

10/18/2005  Molecular Imprints Inc., a maker of nanoimprint lithography tools, announced that it has appointed Mark Melliar-Smith as chief executive officer. Melliar-Smith was previously COO.

10/17/2005  October 17, 2005 - Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan, has unveiled the development of a gallium nitride high electron-mobility transistor (GaN-HEMT) formed on a silicon substrate.

10/14/2005  October 13, 2005 - Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) has published eight new technical standards for the semiconductor, flat-panel display (FPD), and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) manufacturing industries.

10/14/2005  October 14, 2005 - Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has agreed to pay a $300 million fine to the US Department of Justice regarding a single charge related to price-fixing allegations...

10/12/2005  Utica, N.Y. — In efforts to provide enhanced customer service, Indium Corp. has expanded its sales team in the western U.S. Bill Macartney IV is the new U.S. Rocky Mountain regional sales manager, Tony Przano is the new Southwest regional sales manager, and Karthik Vijayamadhavan is the new area sales manager for the West Coast.