06/06/2001  June 6, 2001 - St. Peters, MO - MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. will close the 125 and 150mm polished and epitaxial wafer manufacturing line at MEMC Southwest Inc., located in Sherman, Texas. The closure will result in a reduction in workforce at the MEMC Southwest facility of more than 300 employees.

06/05/2001  June 6, 2001 - Beverly, MA, and Midland, MI - Axcelis Technologies Inc. and Dow Corning Corp. are working together to develop a novel process that enables use of porous ultra-low-k dielectric materials in next-generation semiconductor manufacturing.

06/04/2001  June 4, 2001 -- HSIN-CHU, Taiwan -- Systems on Silicon Manufacturing Company recently opened the doors of its $1.2 billion wafer production fab.

05/30/2001  May 30, 2001 - Hsinchu, Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC) has achieved ISO9001:2000 certification company-wide only five months after the new standards became available.

05/16/2001  May 16, 2001 - Lehigh Valley, PA - Air Products and Chemicals Inc. has officially entered into the tetramethyl ammonium hydroxide (TMAH) photoresist developer market with the opening of a new blending and packaging facility in Tempe, AZ.

05/16/2001  May 16, 2001 - Carlsbad, CA - DuPont Air Products NanoMaterials LLC, a 50/50 joint venture company of DuPont and Air Products and Chemicals Inc., is increasing manufacturing capacity for colloidal silica-based slurries at its subsidiary's facility at Ruabon, Wales, to 40 million pounds per annum.

05/15/2001  May 15, 2001 -- HILLSBORO, OR -- Intel Corporation has opened what it says is the world's first 300 mm wafer research laboratory, dedicated to advanced silicon process technologies.

05/14/2001  May 14, 2001 - Hillsboro, OR - Intel Corp. has opened what it says is the world's first 300mm wafer research laboratory.

05/11/2001  May 11, 2001 - Chandler, AZ - SpeedFam-IPEC Inc. will reduce its worldwide headcount by 12%, or approximately 120 employees, as part of its continued focus on reducing operating costs during the semiconductor industry downturn.

05/09/2001  May 9, 2001 -- AUSTIN, TX -- Radiant Photonics has acquired an ISO-certified semiconductor wafer fab in Austin. The facility houses ISO Class 5 (Class 100) and ISO Class 7 (Class 10,000) cleanrooms.

05/08/2001  Hong Kong - May 8, 2001 - Applied Materials has started construction of a new Southeast Asia headquarters in Singapore. Additionally, it has opened a new cleanroom manufacturing facility for semiconductor components in Taiwan.

05/02/2001  May 2, 2001 - San Jose, CA, and Sunnyvale, CA, - Xilinx, Inc., with UMC and Trecenti Technologies, a joint venture fabrication facility between UMC and Hitachi, said that Xilinx built its first Virtex products on 300mm silicon wafers. By taking advantage of the larger wafer sizes, Xilinx will be able to produce more cost effective programmable logic devices, the company said.

04/30/2001  April 30, 2001 - Tainan, Taiwan - Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. has reportedly decided to halt construction of its first 300mm wafer plant in the Tainan Industrial Park due to complications posed by a proposed high-speed railway.

04/27/2001  April 27, 2001 - Kyoto, Japan - Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co. Ltd. (DNS) has demonstrated uniform 300mm wafer coatings using less than 1 milliliter of Dow Chemical's SiLK semiconductor dielectric resin.

04/25/2001  April 25, 2001 - Newbury Park, CA - Semtech Corp. has completed the sale of its Santa Clara, CA, wafer fabrication facility to STI Foundry Inc.

04/24/2001  April 24, 2001 -- ALBANY, NY -- IBM plans to invest $100 million to help create a Center of Excellence for Nanotechnology, which would include state-of-the-art cleanroom and laboratory space at the State University of New York's Albany campus.

04/23/2001  April 23, 2001 -- Taipei -- A decline in demand for wafers has forced Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to postpone the completion of two 12-inch wafer plants that had been planned for southern Taiwan.

04/20/2001  April 20, 2001 - Hsinchu, Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is considering delaying plans to build two 300mm fabs in southern Taiwan until the economy shows signs of improvement.

04/19/2001  April 19, 2001 - Hsinchu, Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has announced what it claims are two new foundry firsts for advanced technology development.

04/18/2001  April 18, 2001 -- HSINCHU, Taiwan -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has completed a 300 mm pilot for 0.13-micron, all copper process of a 4 megabyte SRAM test vehicle.