03/31/2005  March 31, 2005 - Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC), the biggest chipmaker on the Chinese mainland, saw its first quarterly losses in the 4Q last year, after becoming profitable a year ago, mainly due to compensation payments made to its competitor Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC), said Asia Pulse Pte Ltd.

03/31/2005  March 31, 2005 - Ancora Management LLC today said it has completed the purchase of the assets of Robotic Vision Systems Inc.'s Semiconductor Equipment Group (SEG). The company had been operating under protection of the US Bankruptcy Court, which approved the sale of SEG. The business will operate as RVSI Inspection LLC and will continue to be based in Hauppauge, Long Island.

03/29/2005  March 29, 2005 - MagnaChip Semiconductor today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire IC Media Corp., a developer of CMOS image sensors, for an undisclosed amount. The transaction remains subject to certain closing conditions.

03/28/2005  Chaska, Minn. and Billerica, Mass., March 21, 2005 - Entegris, Inc. of Chaska, Minn., and Mykrolis Corporation, of Billerica, Mass., two leading suppliers to the global semiconductor and related industries, announced a definitive agreement to combine in a merger-of-equals transaction that creates a combined company valued at approximately $1.3 billion.

03/28/2005  March 28, 2005 - Toshiba Corp. said Friday it will fight a decision by a Silicon Valley jury that found it guilty of stealing trade secrets from Lexar Media Inc. in a suit over flash memory used in digital cameras, music players, and other devices.

03/25/2005  (March 25, 2005) Pocatello, Idaho — AMI Semiconductor (AMIS) now offers 'green,' RoHS-compliant packages, in accordance with the EU's WEEE environmental initiatives to replace lead-based packaging in the manufacturing process.

03/25/2005  March 25, 2005 - DuPont Photomasks Inc. has received a Spotlight Award from flash memory device maker Spansion LLC for helping Spansion's FAB25 in Austin, TX, enhance wafer yield. Spansion's award recognizes DuPont Photomasks' role in a joint-development project aimed at boosting yield by targeting improvement of layer-to-layer registration when chip designs are etched on wafers. Spansion, formerly known as FASL LLC, is the flash memory subsidiary of AMD and Fujitsu Limited.

03/24/2005  March 24, 2005 - EV Group today announced that it has successfully installed a Gemini production wafer bonder at DALSA Corp.'s Semiconductor Division in Bromont, Quebec, Canada. The Gemini wafer bonder is designed for alignment and low-temperature plasma bonding for a wide variety of wafer types and sizes.

03/23/2005  March 23, 2005 - Oki Electric Industry Co. has retooled the semiconductor manufacturing lines at Miyazaki Oki Electric Co. so that its three fabrication lines can handle different wafer sizes, said the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

03/23/2005 

03/22/2005  March 22, 2005 - Photronics Inc. has announced plans to expand its flat panel display (FPD) mask capacity through the construction of a state-of-the-art FPD mask fabrication facility in Taichung, Taiwan. This new 10,100 sq. m. facility will support Taiwan's rapidly expanding FPD fabrication industry.

03/22/2005  March 22, 2005 - JDS Uniphase Corp. has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Lightwave Electronics Corp., a provider of solid-state lasers for commercial markets - including materials processing, semiconductor fabrication, and biotech - as part of its strategy to expand its product line of solid-state lasers and broaden its customer base in growing laser markets.

03/18/2005  March 18, 2005 - SES Co., a manufacturer of semiconductor cleaning equipment, will consign the manufacturing of lower-priced models, designed to clean 200mm wafers, to a South Korean company, in a bid to cut production costs by 20%, company sources said, according to Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

03/18/2005  Veeco Instruments Inc. announced that it received an order for its Dimension X3D automated atomic force microscope from a leading global hard disk drive manufacturer.

03/17/2005  March 17, 2005 - Therma-Wave Inc. has announced that a leading Taiwanese DRAM semiconductor manufacturer has selected multiple Therma-Wave metrology solutions for use in its 300mm factory. The multimillion dollar order includes multiple Opti-Probe 7341 thin film metrology tools with real-time, critical-dimension capability for use in 90nm technology node production, extendible to 65nm development work. The order also includes a Therma-Probe 630XP tool for ion implant metrology.

03/17/2005  March 17, 2005- Sumitomo Mitsubishi Silicon Corp. announced that it plans to hike its monthly production capacity of 300mm silicon wafers from 300,000 units to 600,000 by summer 2008, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

03/17/2005  March 18, 2005 - Aviza Technology Inc., Scotts Valley, CA, and Trikon Technologies Inc., Newport, Wales, UK, have agreed to merge to form a $160 million company combining Trikon's plasma etch, physical-vapor deposition (PVD), and chemical-vapor deposition (CVD) systems, with Aviza's thermal processing and ALD tools.

03/15/2005  (March 15, 2005) Cleveland — Keithley Instruments has received a repeat multiple-system order for its S680 DC/RF Parametric Test Systems from Icheon, Korea-based Hynix Semiconductor Inc.

03/15/2005  AUSTIN, TX -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 03/14/2005 -- SEMATECH engineers have developed an eye-catching test device that allows semiconductor technologists to measure the important electrical characteristic of work function on a single wafer, saving time and increasing accuracy.

03/14/2005  New hyper-NA tools aim to boost throughput over ASML's Twinscan

By J. Robert Lineback, Senior Technical Editor

With no "showstoppers" identified yet in immersion lithography, rival scanner makers ASML, Canon, and Nikon are accelerating efforts to take 193nm "wet" exposure tools to the next level, quickly pushing numerical aperture lenses to their feasible limits in systems using water to boost depth of field and resolution for 65nm and 45nm processes.