Breaking news about a leading porous low-k (PLK) material from Japan was first revealed in the SemiNeedle Planarization Lounge Forums (www.semineedle.com/forums/5001) about two months ago. During an expert panel discussion on CMP integration with low-k materials (moderated by this editor, summarized in “Chemical-Mechanical Planarization (CMP) technology consensus 09Q1” publication available at the site), Dick James, […]
The BetaBlog of March 5th was originally titled “Amkor chooses TMV not TSV for PoP” and Amkor’s stalwart vice president of business development Lee Smith contacted BetaSights to correct the impression that Amkor may have chosen to not work on TSV. I’d intended the original title to be somewhat playful; since TSV is chip-level while […]
Trust is the foundation of all trade and business. Without trust, no deal can get done, no venture can be launched, no discussion can even begin. Trust has been shaken in individual businesses in recent years, but recently exposed financial scams have shaken confidence not just in one or a collection of companies but almost […]
Stangl Semiconductor Equipment has launched its Linea horizontal inline wet process platform for cleaning and etching of crystalline silicon PV wafers. The fully-automated dry-in/dry-out system offers reliable production capacity of up to 3,400 wafers per hour (wph) corresponding to an estimated 60 MW per line running 156mm wafers. The system can also be configured at […]
Nanometrics today announced the release of Version 2.0 of its NanoCD Suite of solutions for optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology, just one year after V1 was released. OCD (a.k.a., “scatterometry”) has been used to successfully control fab processes for many years. The major known limitation of the technique is model building from reference metrology data, […]
Bob Metcalfe is very smart, very successful, and very rich. Now an unashamed venture capitalist investing in both PV and home nuclear as part of his diversified portfolio, his major vision is for a new “enernet” that would fundamentally revolutionize the energy industry. He spoke of this as well as his invention of Ethernet this […]
SVTC Technologies has been busy announcing new business directions ever since Joe Bronson stepped in as CEO at the beginning of this year. Last month it announced a partnership with Entrepix to provide 300 mm chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) development and production services for customers who use the Tool Access Program (TAP) at the SVTC […]
Veeco announced yesterday that it has entered into a strategic partnership with Daiyang Metal of Korea, a leader in the production of cold rolled stainless steel, to be its supplier of equipment to manufacture CIGS solar cells. As a first milestone in this relationship, Daiyang has placed an initial multi-million dollar purchase order with Veeco […]
Amkor Technology announced today that it will introduce its next generation package on package (PoP) platform at the IMAPS Device Packaging Conference next week in Scottsdale, AZ. Again begging the question, “Who needs TSV?” this this new PoP platform uses Amkor’s proprietary through mold via (TMV)(TM) interconnect technology to get to 3D IC stacking. {Blog […]
Electron beam direct write (EBDW) lithography is well-developed and has better potential resolution than any other method, but writing speeds did not keep up with Moore’s law after about 1980, leading to abysmal throughput (measured in hours per wafer). Now, the e-Beam Initiative focusing on design for e-beam manufacturing (DFEB) and multibeam writing using MEMS […]