Issue



Table of Contents

Solid State Technology

Year 2006
Issue 11

DEPARTMENTS

Editorial


Science and technology’s excellent adventure?

As semiconductor processing nears physical limits, manipulating technology to push ever further gets steadily more challenging.


World News


BUSINESS TRENDS

Chinese semiconductor fab capital expenditures have whipsawed over the past three years, but next year Chinese fab capex is expected to be flat, and will extend to a relatively moderate 24.


Tech News


New materials take a “BiTe” out of high-end CPU hot spots

Hot-spots resulting from nonuniform power dissipation over a chip are the bane of manufacturers of high-performance ICs such as CPUs, graphics chips, and DSPs—and as CMOS devices continue to scale and total power dissipation increases, these hot-spots will only become more pronounced.


Tech News


Healthy photomask industry confronts data, RET challenges

The long-suffering mask making industry is presently in fine shape, according to experts at the 26th Annual BACUS Symposium on Photomask Technology in Monterey, CA, Sept.


Tap


Wafer-level packaging boosts yields of chip-on-board image sensors

Chip-on-board (COB) is the most dominant assembly process used to build over a million camera modules each day of the year.


Product News


Product news

The Candela Optical Surface Analyzer 6300 series provides full surface disk topography metrology in both radial and circumferential directions for data storage substrates and finished media.


Industry Forum


Optical film-thickness metrology enters the mix-and-match era

Optical film measurement has evolved from manual offline analytical lab instruments to fully automated inline tools loaded with a wide array of measurement capabilities through adding and merging more optics and algorithms while retaining predecessors.


FEATURES

Resists


Using ultrasonics to measure the strength of porous ULK dielectrics

Low-k dielectric materials permit faster IC operation and improve electrical performance, but these materials are generally weaker and prone to mechanical failure.


Strained Silicon


Pushing planar transistors to the limit using strained channel engineering

The quest to satisfy the low-power and low-leakage requirements of portable/mobile consumer electronics is driving efforts to improve transistor performance.


Wafer Cleaning


In situ monitoring of components to control dilute wet chemistries

Materials loss per cleaning cycle must be limited in advanced semiconductor process flows.


Cover Article


Improving angle control in sub-65nm implantation

A new angle control technology has been developed to automatically measure beam angles before implant in both the horizontal and vertical planes and to correct for any deviation from the desired implant angle.


ASIA-PACIFIC

Japan


The secrets to achieving success with Japanese subsidiaries

As an early pioneer in the worldwide semiconductor market, Japan holds a place of strategic importance for any company that supplies materials, components, and equipment to Asian semiconductor and related markets.