Issue

A familiar refrain from market analysts these days is that the semiconductor industry has “matured.”

Growing neurons on a chip surface holds great promise for brain research. Recently, a printing technique was developed that allows alignment and combination of different chemical patterns on a chip surface, which can be used to control the position of the neuron on top of the transducers.

Metal-organic chemical-vapor deposition (MOCVD) has steadily progressed from small-scale materials research to a mass production technology, enabling such complex optoelectronic (OE) devices as laser diodes and ultrahigh-brightness light-emitting diodes (UHB-LED).

Design decisions made early in IC development can either complicate or alleviate a growing number of manufacturing challenges in advanced process technologies as feature sizes shrink well below 130nm.

Following are the Top Products of 2005 in semiconductor/thin-film processing as selected by Solid State Technology’s editorial advisory board, chosen from those featured each month in Product News.

Developers of nanotechnology are facing a conundrum. On one hand, new nanotechnology-based products have been produced and commercialized, yet on the other hand, the understanding of the underlying properties of nanoscale structures and materials is still in many areas at a fundamental level.

The masks required for chromeless phase lithography can be successfully inspected for transparent defects and repaired by existing technology.

As process tolerances decrease, significant yield losses are observed specifically due to differences between the design layout and how the resist actually prints on the wafer.

High concentrations of corrosive and toxic gases can be emitted from metal etch chambers and downstream pipelines during preventive maintenance.

Developments in step-and-flash imprint lithography have enabled the support of advanced device and process prototyping with mix-and-match overlay capability compatible with photolithography tools.