Issue

After the recent dot-com fiasco, it’s no wonder the industry regards with skepticism any claims about a revolutionary technology with limitless growth potential.

Semiconductor manufacturing has always used aqueous processes. Process control in an aqueous batch tool can often be achieved by controlling reaction temperature and time, assuming proper uniformity within the batch, typically without requiring control over “second- and third-order” parameters such as flow rate and response-time-to-setpoint.

In its listing of the Top Technical Challenges facing the industry in 2006, Sematech recently included several aspects of metrology and fault detection.

The relentless scaling of CMOS, having paced the microelectronics industry at the speed of Moore’s Law for the past 30 years, is rapidly approaching fundamental limits imposed by discrete atomic dimensions of critical materials and the quantum effects in conventional MOSFET structures.

A significant section of the ITRS is written by the Starting Materials sub-Technology Working Group.

Compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP) are key materials in high-frequency and optoelectronic devices.

A new image processing technology being added to current-generation CD-SEMs allows CD measurements to be made from multiple features from the same SEM image.

Aluminum has served as an excellent interconnect metal for 40 years, but its limitations become evident at chip geometries in the sub-0.18μm range.

With China offering the semiconductor industry new levels of manufacturing cost efficiencies and strong domestic market growth opportunities, many integrated device manufacturers (IDM), material suppliers, and chip-packaging equipment companies are moving operations to the Chinese mainland at unprecedented rates.