Issue

As the odometer spins over from 1999-2000, a glance at the speedometer shows the speed of discovery moving upward at a steadily faster pace.

Significant progress with pilot-line 300mm lithography; Semi session shows standards emerging for 300mm tools; SVGL puts up fight for 130nm node;

AMD opens Dresdon fab; IMEC ships 0.25µm design kits; Brooks Automation buys Jenoptik Infab; UK consortium plans silicon technology course

Toshiba enters joint venture with SanDisk; Japan plans a 5-year, US$2 billion semicon development project; Sony outlines roadmap for PlayStation

While the chemicals industry stuffs nearly all molecules into chemicals-market metrics, typically lumping together metals, gases, liquids, etc., the semiconductor industry has traditionally distinguished between gases, wet chemicals, and related markets.

Low-k spin-on clusters; Automated stocker and delivery system; System-on-a-chip test; Large panel singulation and more.

To help the industry's transition to 300mm wafer production, the modeling team in the productivity and infrastructure department of Sematech's International 300mm Initiative built a simulation model of a generic semiconductor factory.

Over the last several years, run-to-run process control has only been applied to select processes.

Arcing between the sputtering target and plasma during physical vapor deposition (PVD) of metal films is one of the primary causes of defect generation in interconnect metallization processes.

At the height of the last boom in the semiconductor industry, we heard an industry-wide cry about the lack of properly educated and trained people entering the industry at all levels.