05/31/2000  PETALUMA, Calif.--May 30, 2000--Tegal Corp. today announced that it has received a patent for a process that minimizes critical dimension growth on a semiconductor wafers.

05/25/2000  AUSTIN, TX--May 24, 2000--Fresh on the heels of pending legislation before the U.S. Congress that, if passed, would grant China normal trading privileges, a number of U.S.-based semiconductor manufacturers are seeking a foothold in the rapidly growing Chinese economy.

05/18/2000  ROUSSET, France--May 18, 2000--The Prime Minister of France, Mr Lionel Jospin, inaugurated Rousset8, STMicroelectronics' latest 200 mm wafer plant designed energy efficiency in mind. The fab is located in Rousset, near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France.

05/18/2000  MUNICH, Germany?May 18, 2000?Karl Suss and Image Technology are teaming to develop standardized 9-inch photomasks for high volume wafer bumping and wafer-lever chip scale packaging.

05/18/2000  ROUSSET, France--May 18, 2000--The Prime Minister of France, Mr Lionel Jospin, inaugurated Rousset8, STMicroelectronics' latest 200 mm wafer plant designed energy efficiency in mind. The fab is located in Rousset, near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France.

05/17/2000  CORVALLIS, OR.--May 17, 2000--Electroglas Inspection Products has increased wafer throughput, accuracy, and repeatability of QuickSilver II post-fab bumped wafer inspection system, company officials say.

05/01/2000  As the use of unpackaged semiconductor devices becomes more widespread, the need for the reliable availability of KGD becomes increasingly important.

04/26/2000  NEC will spend $2.9 billion to build two 300-mm, 12-inch wafer fabs. The construction will occur simultaneously and will double the company's semiconductor manufacturing capacity.

04/01/2000  Mount Prospect, IL—Extensive field testing by industry has led the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology's Working Group on cleanroom housekeeping, operating and monitoring procedures to add two alternate methods of mopping walls and floors to its recommended practice (RP) 18.2.

03/23/2000  SiGen will team with Akrion to qualify production-worthy wet cleaning recipes for its NanoCleave silicon-on-insulator wafer fabrication process.

03/21/2000  Berkeley Process Control OEMs are now marketing a wafer management system for 300-mm fabs.

03/20/2000  A new liquid metering and vaporization system from Sitek is available to epitaxial wafer manufacturers for controlling silicon during deposition.

03/16/2000  In December, Ibis will add an RF inductively coupled ion source to improve throughput of its Ibis 2000 SIMOX-SOI implanter, used in silicon-on-wafer semiconductor manufacturing. Anticipating a 20 percent increase in throughput for its implanter, currently under development at the University of California, Ibis officials say they expect the new technology will also extend their product's maintenance intervals.

03/15/2000  Intrabay Automation, a factory automation startup, will partner with Mannesmann Rexroth to bring its Class 1 wafer stocker to market.

03/14/2000  International SEMATECH has evaluated the success of low-k dielectric films to produce one-level copper damascene test structures. These tests are the first phase of such work, and focused on films with a dielectric constant between 3.0 to 2.1. In addition, the organization also tested a number of tools used to fabricate devices using these materials.

03/09/2000  The industry may experience a shortage of raw 8-inch silicon wafers, the end result of which will slow the evolution to 300-mm production, according to 8-inch wafer producers.

03/01/2000  As electronics applications shrink in size, integrated circuit (IC) packaged devices must be reduced both in footprint and in thickness. The main motivation for the development of smaller packages is the demand for portable communications devices, such as memory cards, smart cards, cellular telephones, and portable computing and gaming devices. End-users of such electronic devices are interested in greater functionality per unit volume, not relatively simplistic metrics, such as transistors per

03/01/2000  The NSX-100 is a new addition to the NSX series of automated micro defect inspection systems for wafer and die. It is said to offer an improvement in inspection time of up to 100 percent compared with previous industry standards. With high resolution image capturing technology and enhanced illumination techniques and optics, inspection time in a typical 8-inch wafer application reportedly can be cut from 120 to 60 sec.

02/11/2000  Just one week after a federal grand jury indicted McDowell & Co., San Carlos, CA, for allegedly stealing confidential blueprints from Applied Materials, the equipment giant said it has settled its civil suit with the parts supplier.

02/01/2000  Through the use of patented electroplating technology, Unitive Electronics has announced the ability to produce a wide array of bump sizes and pitches for wafer bumping. Bumps ranging from 20 to 800 µms reportedly can be generated, with densities as high as 20 µm bumps on a 50 µm pitch. The process is based on patented Intermetallic Compound Patterning wafer bumping technology, which uses certain metals in the under-bump metallurgy to form intermetallic compounds with liquid solde