01/09/2001  Wilmington, Delaware/Lehigh, Pennsylvania--DuPont and Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. today announced that they have formed a joint venture--DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials L.L.C.--to develop, manufacture, and market colloidal silica-based slurries for electronic precision polishing or planarization applications such as silicon wafer polishing and chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) processes used in the manufacture of semiconductors.

01/09/2001  Phoenix, Arizona--Rodel, Inc., an innovator of integrated materials for the microelectronics industry, and its wholly owned subsidiary, Solution Technology, Inc. (STI), have announced the sale of certain assets held by both companies to EMINESS Technologies Inc.

01/09/2001  San Jose, California--PDF Solutions, Inc., which provides comprehensive infrastructure technologies and services to improve yield and optimize performance of ICs, recently announced the opening of new offices in Japan and Italy.

01/09/2001  Migdal Haemek, Israel--Tower Semiconductor, an independent wafer manufacturer strategically focused on advanced flash memory and CMOS image sensor technologies, has announced that it will begin trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), starting January 10.

01/08/2001  San Jose, California--Tality Corp., a subsidiary of Cadence Design Systems, Inc., announced today the availability of its licensable Bluetooth RF Transceiver silicon intellectual property (SIP). This completes a licensable Bluetooth IP portfolio that also includes Tality's Bluetooth upper and lower protocol stack, system-on-chip (SOC) integration platform, and baseband controller SIP, according to the company.

01/08/2001  Milpitas, California/Singapore--The Fabless Semiconductor Association (FSA), an industry association focused on furthering the cause of the fabless semiconductor model, has elected Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing's president and chief executive officer, Barry Waite, to its board of directors.

01/08/2001  Newbury Park, California--Semtech Corp., a supplier of mixed-signal semiconductors for communications, computers, and industrial equipment, today unveiled a new surge protection device based on the company's advanced transient voltage supression (TVS) diode technology.

01/05/2001  Santa Clara, California--ChipPAC, Inc., a supplier of packaging and test services, has entered into a multi-year services and supply agreement with Hyundai Electronics Industries Co. Ltd. (HEI)--making ChipPac the primary outsource supplier of semiconductor test and package services to HEI.

01/04/2001  Berkeley, California--Today's chips, built from more than a dozen layers of material etched with electronic circuits, each need a photomask to project the circuit pattern--an expensive and time-consuming process. An effort to eliminate photomasks from the lithography process has led researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to investigate ion beam technology and a dot-matrix lithography technique as a possible solution.

01/04/2001  Fremont, California--Completion of the merger of Mattson Technology, Inc., a Fremont, California-based supplier of advanced process equipment used to manufacture semiconductors, with the semiconductor equipment division of STEAG Electronics Systems AG (Essen, Germany), and CFM Technologies (Exton, Pennsylvania) was announced yesterday.

01/03/2001  NOGALES, AZ -- Disposable protective apparel maker Alpha Pro Tech, Ltd has entered into a new distribution alliance with Patterson Dental Company.

01/03/2001  Westwood, Massachusetts--ADE Corp., working on a development program with Super Silicon Crystal Research Institute Corp. (SSi) in Japan, says that it has produced a system capable of detecting 40nm particles--required for meeting the 0.10-micron technology node.

01/03/2001  New Tripoli, Pennsylvania--Worldwide revenues for semiconductor processing equipment rose 31.8% in the fourth quarter of 2000 and are poised to continue rising another 45.9% in 2001, according to New Tripoli, Pennsylvania-based market researchers The Information Network in their recently published 'The Global Market for Equipment and Materials for IC Manufacturing' report.

01/03/2001  San Jose, California--The outlook for semiconductor sales in 2001 remains strong, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today as it announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $18.28 billion in November 2000--an increase of 28.4% over the $14.24 billion a year ago.

01/01/2001  Cleveland, Ohio--Eaton Corp. has completed the spin-off of its semiconductor equipment operations into a wholly owned subsidiary, Axcelis Technologies, Inc., based in Beverly, Massachusetts.

01/01/2001  For the past five years, construction personnel at Cirent Semiconductor's Orlando, FL, wafer fab have installed hundreds of fan filter units (FFUs) in support areas, while choosing distributed air circulation systems for main production areas.

01/01/2001  Motorola Semiconductor Products Sector (SPS) is the strong, silent type. The industry might characterize the company as having been elusive in terms of its packaging developments in recent years, but behind this silence comes some good news for the packaging arena

01/01/2001  Many precision products, while still requiring some degree of environmental contaminant control, can settle for less than the state of-the-art cleanroom used in semiconductor manufacturing. One definition of a precision product is a product that must be manufactured in a cleanroom.

01/01/2001  Microscopic dust, bacteria, viruses and allergens beware. Filters used in air cleaning have become so precise that the most delicate wafer architecture can be exposed in cleanrooms without the slightest contamination from some very small particles.

12/26/2000  Irvine, California--Newport Corp. today announced the signing of a definitive agreement to merge with Kensington Laboratories Inc., a Richmond, California-based, privately held manufacturer of high-precision robotic and motion control equipment for the semiconductor and fiber optic communication industries.