After the 1st “act” of the story of Intel as a memory chip company founded in 1969, the 2nd act really started in 1985 with the decision to bet the company on the 80386 microprocessor according to Richard S. Tedlow, Harvard Business School professor and residential scholar of the Computer History Museum, in a lecture […]
CEA/Leti, along with e-beam lithography supplier Vistec, and new design and software company D2S, recently announced a collaboration focused on refining and validating advanced design-for-e-beam (DFEB) solutions for 45nm and 32nm nodes. Over the next 12 months, Leti will manufacture test chips using a combination of D2S’ design and software capabilities along with the latest […]
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 SEMICON Korea 2009, SUSS MicroTec unveiled the second generation of its ACS300, a modular system for coating, baking and developing of wafers up to 300mm. Compared to the prior generation, the Gen2 tool reportedly costs less, has reduced footprint, and offers configuration flexibility with new capabilities. The system architecture and process modules are specifically […]
The first customer for an Applied Materials (AMAT) turnkey SunFab thin-film PV fab—Moser Baer in Greater Noida, India—announced today that the 40 MW capacity line has passed final acceptance test (FAT) certification after having met all manufacturing, module efficiency, and yield specifications. PV modules from the line have been certified by the International Electrotechnical Commission […]
Just over five years ago, I was one of the steering committee members of the MIT • Stanford • UC Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum, and had the pleasure of meeting new U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu when he was one of the presenters at our first event, “Nanotech beyond the hype,” held May 29, 2003 at […]
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 […]
Smart Equipment Technology (S.E.T.), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Replisaurus Technologies and a leading supplier of high accuracy die-to-die (D2D), die-to-wafer (D2W) bonding and nanoimprint lithography solutions, announced yesterday that it will collaborate with IMEC on 3DIC R&D. IMEC’s 3D integration program explores 3D technology and design for applications in various domains, focusing on 3D WLP […]
At SEMI’s Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) running at Half Moon Bay, California today, IMEC president and CEO Gilbert Declerck talked about the need for R&D to facilitate IC industry growth. An industry based on answering the question, “what have you done for me lately?” can never rest on past successes and must continue to innovate. […]