Issue

Is the world running out of oil? Will there be enough fuel available as China and India rapidly industrialize?

Scientists have been trying to get an organic compound that emits a stable blue light with a lifetime that exceeds the previously thought 1000 hr lifetime barrier ever since Shuji Nakamura’s invention of the first inorganic blue LED in the mid-90s.

The challenge in discussing flat-panel displays (FPD) is that they are both a technology and an application.

If the industry is to reach the 45nm node by decade’s end, it will be due, in large part, to a continuing acceleration of the flow of innovation, mostly from the bottom up.

As the semiconductor industry approaches the 45nm process-technology node, the capacitance of the copper interconnect must be reduced to lower the RC delay and increase chip performance.

Introduction of porous ultralow-k (ULK) materials poses challenges, such as poor mechanical properties due to porosity, that affect all unit processes, including CMP.

One of the key challenges in backend integration is damage to the low-k dielectric during etch/ash processes.

As device sizes continue to shrink, anisotropic dielectric etching faces a daunting list of challenges that include etch selectivity, etch uniformity, aspect-ratio dependent etching, and etch stop.

In semiconductor fabrication, optimized control over hundreds of process steps and multiple equipment sets is essential to achieving high yields in volume manufacturing.

The silicon-on-insulator (SOI) revolution that was first launched in Japan more than 25 years ago is returning home.

Successful suppliers to the semiconductor industry must acknowledge the importance of Japan in semiconductor manufacturing.