Applied Materials’ Technical Symposium at SPIE 2009 featured a panel discussion on next generation lithography (NGL) that was moderated by the company’s Ken MacWIlliams. The outstanding panelists were C. Grant Willson (UT-Austin), Burn Lin (TSMC), Jongwook Kye (AMD), Steve Radigan (Sandisk), and Milind Weling (Cadence). As would be expected from this panel, EUV steppers were […]
JSR announced today that it has entered into several joint development partnerships (JDP) with IBM to develop low-k dielectrics for 32nm and 22nm nodes of semiconductor technology. The companies will work on next generation materials JSR has had in development and commercial production, including low-k dielectrics and a broad range of photoresists. “This larger scale […]
For thick plating applications like copper pillar bump processing in semiconductor advanced packaging, Shin-Etsu MicroSi has introduced a positive tone, ultra-thick photoresist, SIPR-7126. The 7100 chemically amplified (CA) series has been in production for several years, and the SIPR-7126 has been optimized to reduce processing steps and improve removability in layers up to 100 µm […]
Evident Technologies has announced the issuance of US Patent No. 7,482,059 covering the ability to synthesize a quantum dot with a metal layer which dramatically enhances the brightness and stability of a semiconductor nanocrystal complex. This advance of semiconductor materials science relies on a relatively low-cost colloidal formation processing, instead of needing epitaxial lattice-matching or […]
CMP applications experts gathered in Santa Clara, California on February 10th to share their experience and expertise at the fifth annual seminar sponsored by Levitronix. Leading developers, manufacturers, and end-users of CMP discussed all aspects of the technology, and since Levitronix makes magnetic levitation (MagLev) pumps there were many thorough presentations on slurry distribution issues. […]
The SEMI PV Group today announced the release of its Global Photovoltaic (PV) Standards Roadmap Guidance Document, which identifies immediate opportunities for reducing cost and accelerating innovation in thin-film and crystalline silicon cell and module manufacturing through industry standards. This new roadmap confirms that major manufacturing cost savings are possible through standardizing wafer carriers and […]
Aixtron and Ovonyx announced a JDP for Atomic Vapor Deposition (AVD®) process technology to push scaling of next-generation phase change memory (PCM) products. Since it is expected to replace current high-density memory, PCM cells must be made dense and so companies like Samsung (Ref: BetaSights Newsletter 0001) and Numonyx require CVD-like processes for gap-fill instead […]
Researchers from Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Korea have found that large graphene films can be formed using CVD over a Ni thin film. The graphene is both strong and stretchy, and at low temperatures the monolayers transferred to SiO2 substrates show electron mobility >3,700 cm2/Vs implying that the quality is as high as mechanically-cleaved graphene. […]
At SEMI’s SMC yesterday, Sung Wook Park, executive vice president and general manager of Hynix Semiconductor, provided a keynote address on the materials needs for mainstream memory chips over the next decade. DRAMs will likely turn into STTRAMs, and NAND Flash will probably be replaced by ReRAM (Ref: Ed’s Threads 080505). Combinatorial materials R&D company […]
As SEMI’s SMC today, Raymond Roberge, SVP and CTO of Praxair Electronics, proposed a pragmatic new collaboration model for electronic materials R&D. Semiconductor fab process materials TAM for 2008 was ~$10B, yet materials suppliers now question their ongoing profitability. “Certainly the 300mm shift has resulted in productivity advances for IDMs at the expense of materials […]