04/30/2002  April 30, 2002--Wilmington, MA--BOC Edwards announced its acquiring CA- based, Semco Corporation. Once the transaction is complete, Semco will be merged into BOC Edwards' Chemical Management business.

04/30/2002  April 30, 2002 - Phoenix, AZ - The SEZ Group is opening its first 300mm applications lab in the US. Located in Phoenix, AZ, the 3,000 square foot lab will be a resource for SEZ and its customers and partners worldwide to test 300mm wafer cleaning processes.

04/30/2002  Taiwan's government has been walking a political tightrope, as it is attempting to balance letting its chipmakers stay competitive by moving to mainland China, and losing its stronghold on the world's semiconductor manufacturing capabilities.

04/29/2002 

04/29/2002 

04/25/2002  April 25, 2002 - Murray Hill, NJ - Scientists at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, have found a way to peer deep inside a semiconductor and create an image of a single impurity atom in silicon. The feat - claimed by Bell Labs to be the first time that an individual impurity has been pictured in its undisturbed state within a crystal -- was achieved using a special electron microscope, and is as difficult as seeing a footprint on the moon from the Earth.

04/25/2002  Santa Clara - Intel Corp. will resume construction on Fab 24 in Leixlip, County Kildare, Ireland. The $2 billion manufacturing facility will produce advanced semiconductor components on 300mm wafers and will initially use 90nm process technology.

04/24/2002  What's the key to unlocking the door to the China market? In a word, guanxi - relationships - according to Photronics CEO Dan Del Rosario.

04/24/2002  Singapore - Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing's board of directors has named Jim Norling interim president and CEO, stepping in for Barry Waite who has requested an early retirement to spend more time with his family.

04/22/2002  April 22, 2002 - Tokyo, Japan - Toshiba Corp. has restarted one of two semiconductor fabrication lines at its main memory chip production plant in Yokkaichi, central Japan, after shutting down the line in late September due to a plunge in demand.

04/22/2002  April 22, 2002 - Taipei, Taiwan - Chip assembler ChipMos Technologies Ltd. recently acquired the tape carrier packaging (TCP) production lines from Walsin Advanced Electronics Ltd. to boost output capacity to 14 million flat-panel chips/month.

04/19/2002  China - Intel will maintain its policy against building advanced silicon wafer fabs in China or elsewhere in Asia, a senior company spokesman said.

04/18/2002  In divesting and merging their systems chip businesses, Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric have finally started the kind of major restructuring that Japanese industry pundits have been urging as the best hope for reviving Japan's struggling semiconductor industry.

04/18/2002  April 18, 2002 - Seoul, Korea - Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has embarked on what it calls the "Prime Chip Project" to apply 0.13-micron process technology to its DRAM production.

04/18/2002  April 18, 2002--Crawley, UK--Parts cleaning and component management services provider, BOC Edwards Kachina opened its first facility in Europe. BOC Edwards Kachina is a division of BOC Edwards.

04/16/2002  April 16, 2002 - Fremont, CA, and Tokyo, Japan - Asyst Technologies Inc. and Shinko Electric Co. Ltd. have signed a basic agreement that is expected to lead to the formation of a new joint venture company that will develop, manufacture, and market Shinko's automated materials handling systems (AMHS).

04/16/2002  April 16, 2002 - San Jose, CA - Canon Inc. has signed an agreement with Applied Materials Inc. to collaborate in the development of semiconductor device patterning technology to support Applied Materials' process module strategy for 300mm wafer manufacturing.

04/16/2002  It seems that the semiconductor IPO well has begun to run dry, at least for the time being. It has been months since a chip-related company has filed for its initial public offering. And yet, if one looks at companies that went IPO during late 2000 into 2001, it seems that the public market has been kind to them.

04/16/2002  April 16, 2002 - Hsinchu, Taiwan - An alliance between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and two European chipmakers will be joined by a fourth partner, US-based mobile phone manufacturer Motorola, in forming an R&D center for nanometer science in eastern France.

04/12/2002  From air gaps, to ALD (atomic layer deposition) at room temperature, to CVD vs. SOD (spin-on dielectrics) and VICs (vertically integrated circuits) - the recent AVS Conference on Microelectronics and Interfaces was a voyage into the future.