Issue

Semicon West 2002 should mark the dawn of a new industry revival, and it should be a very strong one at that.

News from around the world.

Nearly 140 industry experts from IC manufacturers, tool and materials suppliers, and academia attending International Sematech's (ISMT) recent Technical Data Review were told that 157nm lithography is making significant progress, leading to manufacturing insertion in 2005.

The Bridgman-Stockbarger method of growing CaF₂ has been around for decades.

Increasingly, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are being developed to replace incandescent bulbs and fluorescent tubes. Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, is one research lab at the forefront of this revolution.

It is hard to imagine disruption of conventional wafer-to-tape mounting carriers used with wafer dicing in semiconductor assembly, but a newly patented wafer-mounting technique (US patent 6,383,606, May 7, 2002) from Diamond Touch Technology Inc.

Infineon Technologies AG, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., and DuPont Photomasks Inc. plan to establish and operate a new advanced photomask facility in Dresden, Germany, with investments of around EUR 360 million over the next five years.

We have developed the basic technology for a high-throughput, direct-write e-beam lithography system.

In the late 1990s, the focus of the compound semiconductor IC industry changed from small-scale demand for niche applications to high-volume demand for advanced communications systems.

Here's a chilling thought: a $3 billion 300mm IC fab depreciates at a rate of $50,000/hr.

A new process epitaxially grows a compound semiconductor material, such as gallium arsenide, on a standard silicon substrate.

The main scaling goal for high-performance logic is to maximize speed; for low-power logic, it is to maintain low leakage currents.

This paper will discuss three aspects of CMP that interact with module integration: high-/low-selectivity slurries for copper and for the low-k stack, and low-pressure (<2psi) CMP with optimum slurry utilization.

BioMEMS (biological microelectromechanical systems), and biosensor systems in particular, will offer an important tool in the future of medicine, analytical chemistry, and environmental screening.

Lower processing temperatures, stricter metal contamination requirements, and rapid thermal processing for advanced IC manufacturing renders some traditional gettering techniques inefficient.

Supercritical carbon dioxide is poised to replace conventional photoresist stripping in applications where via depth or underlying material sensitivity make conventional processing difficult or impossible.

While the need for automation in 300mm fabs is not debated, the form and performance of such automation is still in question. Software simulation that compares conveyor-based continuous flow transport technology to conventional car-based wafer-lot delivery has detailed delivery time and throughput advantages to the former.

In today's technical arena of increasing device speeds, low-k materials, and Cu electroplating, it is easy to overlook the classical metals that have been the mainstay of device manufacturing for the last 30 years.

Methodical research has shown that a newly designed aluminum cylinder with a brass valve significantly reduces nickel and iron contamination in carbon monoxide.

Moving rapidly from basic research into low-volume manufacturing, organic light-emitting device technology is widely recognized as the next major technology for flat panel displays.

Unlike traditional design rule checks, which have a clear pass or fail definition, yield issues are dependent on a number of variables and are more difficult to pin down.

A thorough analysis is performed of the many different flux printing systems with an eye to which work best when integrated with automated die bonding.

The extremely toxic, corrosive, and pyrophoric nature of process exhaust gases poses a major challenge to a semiconductor manufacturing company.