Issue

Debates about semiconductor engineering often focus on the physical limitations of building smaller and smaller transistors or mass-producing them on larger and larger wafers.

As the industry moves toward the 45nm node and beyond, pore sealing is critical to enable the integration of porous low-k dielectric materials.

Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is the first example of an engineered substrate with an active top Si layer decoupled from the support wafer by the buried oxide (BOX), thereby addressing mainstream MOSFET performance requirements.

Solid State Technology asked industry experts to comment on the pressures being exerted on the materials business model.

The ConFab — sponsored by Solid State Technology and our parent company, PennWell — brought together the leading semiconductor manufacturing executives for three days of dialogue and collaboration this past May in Las Vegas.

During the past two years, immersion 193nm lithography has made astonishing strides in moving from the conceptual stage in R&D to the development and testing of the first full-field scanners that use water between the wafer and exposure lens to improve depth-of-focus (DOF) and printing resolution.

An advanced batch immersion system for wafer cleaning applications has been tested in 65nm pilot-line production.

The push to smaller process geometries and higher-count I/O on ICs in portable and wireless applications has significantly increased the industry’s focus on chip-scale packaging and flip-chip assembly techniques, which deposit metal contact bumps across the entire surface of a die.

The growing need for collaboration in the semiconductor industry has created an additional challenge: protection of intellectual property (IP) while sharing capabilities in wafer fabs.

This year’s significance for China’s electronics industry, and especially for its semiconductor segment, should not be underestimated.

No corner of the semiconductor industry is expanding manufacturing capacity faster than Asia, where rising competition between established players such as Taiwan and the emerging Chinese semiconductor industry are helping to drive growth.

Asia has been a dynamic region for the development and manufacturing of liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels.