Solid State Technology articles from April 2004

Solid State Technology archives from April 2004

The best of both worlds.(Publisher's Letter)
April 1, 2004... Dear Semiconductor Manufacturing Professional: It's rare that you can have the best of both worlds, but that's exactly what Solid State Technology offers our readers. On April 1, Kevin Fitzgerald became Editor-in-Chief of Solid State...

Shifting costs may weaken suppliers.(Editorial)
April 1, 2004... At this year's International Strategy Symposium, speakers from major equipment and materials companies pointed out that R&D and other costs have moved upstream in the semiconductor supply chain, from chipmakers to their equipment and materials...

SIA: 2H03 chip sales streak toward the record books.(Business Trends)
April 1, 2004... Worldwide semiconductor sales in 2003 topped $166 billion, besting earlier projections to achieve 18.3% growth, thanks to a big ramp-up in the second half of the year, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The...

In what could be the start of a major round of consolidation in the crowded semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) arena, Singapore-based ST Assembly Test Services Ltd. (STATS) and ChipPAC Inc., Fremont, CA, have agreed to a $1.6 billion stock-swap merger.(Worldwide Highlights)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... In what could be the start of a major round of consolidation in the crowded semiconductor assembly and test services (SATS) arena, Singapore-based ST Assembly Test Services Ltd. (STATS) and ChipPAC Inc., Fremont, CA, have agreed to a $1.6...

SEMI, San Jose, CA, has published 25 new standards governing various steps for manufacturing semiconductors and flat-panel displays.(Worldwide Highlights)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... SEMI, San Jose, CA, has published 25 new standards governing various steps for manufacturing semiconductors and flat-panel displays. The new SEMI standards, part of the thrice-yearly publication cycle, include guidelines for defining the...

Patriot Scientific Corp., San Diego, CA, has answered a lawsuit from Intel by filing its own counterclaims for copyright infringement.(USA)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Patriot Scientific Corp., San Diego, CA, has answered a lawsuit from Intel by filing its own counterclaims for copyright infringement. Intel recently sued Patriot to prevent the company from taking legal action against its customers, for...

Aeroflex Inc.(USA)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Aeroflex Inc., Plainview, NY, said it plans to seek a buyer for its thin-film interconnect manufacturing business in Pearl River, NY. The company took a $5.8 million asset impairment charge in the company's 2Q04 financials to write down the...

Nikon Corp. is building a worldwide training center in the US, following entrenched efforts from rivals ASML and Canon.(USA)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Nikon Corp. is building a worldwide training center in the US, following entrenched efforts from rivals ASML and Canon. The $70 million facility in Belmont, CA, will house several steppers and scanners in a cleanroom set up for 90nm lithography...

Corning Inc.(USA)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Corning Inc., Rochester, NY, plans to invest $600 million to expand manufacturing of LCD glass at its facilities in Taiwan and Japan over the next two years. Corning, which has about 50% market share for the glass, plans to spend $240 million...

Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany; Genus Inc., Sunnyvale, CA; and the U. of Albany Center of Excellence in Nano-electronics have agreed to a three-year, $12 million partnership for developing next-generation memory chip devices.(USA)
April 1, 2004... Infineon Technologies AG, Munich, Germany; Genus Inc., Sunnyvale, CA; and the U. of Albany Center of Excellence in Nano-electronics have agreed to a three-year, $12 million partnership for developing next-generation memory chip devices. Teams...

New Venture Research, a US market-research and business-development firm, and E.J. McKay and Co., a Shanghai-based M&A advisory group, plan to form a joint venture to help companies do business in China.(China)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... New Venture Research, a US market-research and business-development firm, and E.J. McKay and Co., a Shanghai-based M&A advisory group, plan to form a joint venture to help companies do business in China. The "China Solutions" program will...

Add three more companies to the growing list of chip industry firms.(China)(Hyperform Technologies Co. Ltd)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Add three more companies to the growing list of chip industry firms that are setting up shop in Shanghai. SynTest Technologies Inc., Sunnyvale, CA, a supplier of IC design-for-test tools, has opened a new R&D and customer support center...

Toshiba and Sony are planning to jointly manufacture chips at Toshiba's 300mm facility in Oita, with volume production beginning this fall.(Japan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Toshiba and Sony are planning to jointly manufacture chips at Toshiba's 300mm facility in Oita, with volume production beginning this fall. The companies previously produced chips through a JV established in 1999. Toshiba recently announced...

Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. has agreed to acquire NEC Electronics' IC packaging and testing operations in Takahata, seen as a move against rival Amkor.(Japan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Taiwan's Advanced Semiconductor Engineering Inc. has agreed to acquire NEC Electronics' IC packaging and testing operations in Takahata, seen as a move against rival Amkor. The deal, expected to be completed by June, includes a four-year plan...

Advanced Interconnect Technologies Inc. (AIT) is relocating its corporate headquarters from Pleasanton, CA, to Singapore.(Singapore)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Advanced Interconnect Technologies Inc. (AIT) is relocating its corporate headquarters from Pleasanton, CA, to Singapore. Xilinx Inc. also plans to open up new headquarters in Singapore in early 2005 to offer R&D and chip-testing services in...

Wacker Siltronic.(Singapore)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Wacker Siltronic plans to invest nearly $30 million to expand production at its Singapore plant to 240,000 wafers/month, to help absorb capacity from its operations in Wasserburg, Germany, being shut down later this year. The deal raises...

Hynix Semiconductor Inc.(Korea)(512Mbit NAND flash-memory chips using 120nm technology)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Hynix Semiconductor Inc. said it is planning to roll out 512Mbit NAND flash-memory chips using 120nm technology early this year, its first foray into flash memory. Hynix will eventually produce 1Gbit and 2Gbit NAND flash chips by 4Q04 using...

The World Trade Organization is examining the legality of US and EU duties imposed on imports of South Korean chips.(Korea)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... The World Trade Organization is examining the legality of US and EU duties imposed on imports of South Korean chips. The duties were in response to alleged government subsidies received by Hynix, which were protested by Infineon Technologies AG...

Winbond Electronics Corp.(Taiwan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Winbond Electronics Corp. is planning to start the $1.3 billion first stage of construction on its 300mm facility in the Central Taiwan Science Park by 3Q04. Volume production of chips using 0.11 [micro]m processes is scheduled for 2Q06,...

Infineon Technologies AG plans to buy ADMtec Inc., a Taiwanese fabless chip-design firm, for about $75 million in cash, and an additional $25 million if unspecified "performance and development milestones" are met within two years.(Taiwan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Infineon Technologies AG plans to buy ADMtec Inc., a Taiwanese fabless chip-design firm, for about $75 million in cash, and an additional $25 million if unspecified "performance and development milestones" are met within two years. The new...

MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO, plans to acquire the remaining 55% of shares it does not own in Taisil Electronic Materials Corp., a Taiwanese manufacturer of polished and epitaxial silicon wafers.(Taiwan)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO, plans to acquire the remaining 55% of shares it does not own in Taisil Electronic Materials Corp., a Taiwanese manufacturer of polished and epitaxial silicon wafers. The deal adds manufacturing...

Micronic Laser Systems AB.(Eurofocus)(laser pattern-generation tool)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Micronic Laser Systems AB, Taby, Sweden, is discontinuing its Sigma7100 first-generation laser pattern-generation tool, saying it "did not meet the requirements for production stability." One system has been returned, and a postponed order has...

ASML and IMEC plan to collaborate on an industrial affiliation program for 193nm liquid immersion lithography, in addition to IMEC's existing 157nm litho program.(Eurofocus)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... ASML and IMEC plan to collaborate on an industrial affiliation program for 193nm liquid immersion lithography, in addition to IMEC's existing 157nm litho program. ASML will become a strategic partner in IMEC's 300mm research platform, with its...

Air Liquide SA has agreed to acquire most of the assets of German industrial-materials company Messer Griesheim GmbH for roughly $1.8 billion.(Eurofocus)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Air Liquide SA has agreed to acquire most of the assets of German industrial-materials company Messer Griesheim GmbH for roughly $1.8 billion. The deal involves Messer's operations in the US, UK, and Germany, which generated about $1.28 billion...

Clarification.(Eurofocus)(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2004... In the February article, "High-frequency capacitance measurements monitor EOT of thin gate dielectrics" Keithley Instruments Inc. neglected to note that the co-author was Yuegang Zhao, a senior applications engineer with its Semiconductor...

Via-customized ASICs make e-beam direct write faster and feasible.(Technology News)
April 1, 2004... With the cost of photomask sets pushing beyond $1.5 million for leading edge processes, efforts in direct-write lithography are on the rise. But the wafer-throughput speeds of tools remain excruciatingly slow--even for low-volume prototyping of...

Applied details low-k technology development.(Technology News)
April 1, 2004... Applied Materials recently outlined its timetable for development of low-k dielectric films, including a second-generation product that is claimed to overcome a classic problem of porous low-k films: decreased hardness as the k value decreases....

Purdue engineers develop quick way to prototype microchips.(Technology News)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Purdue U. researchers have developed a new method to quickly and inexpensively create microfluidic chips--analytic devices with potential applications in food safety, biosecurity, clinical diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, and other industries....

Challenges and advances for CMP consumables.(Interconnect)(chemical mechanical planarization)
April 1, 2004... In the early days of CMP, most of the focus was on developing the technology as a relatively stable process and enabling its usefulness, particularly for dielectric CMP. This was followed by tungsten CMP, which gained broad acceptance in the...

Forces of change keep reshaping vacuum systems in ion implant.(Vacuum Technology)(Cover Story)
April 1, 2004... Overview Since they were introduced into semiconductor processing in the 1970s, ion implanters have been characterized by change. An explosion of implanter architectures has occurred in the last decade. Vacuum systems serving these tools...

Gate process control using spectroscopic ellipsometry.(Metrology)
April 1, 2004... OVERVIEW Metrology techniques such as atomic force microscopy and cross-sectional tunneling electron microscopy, while able to provide full 2D profile metrology with the requisite precision, have inadequate throughput to allow for proper...

Probing the issues for Cu/low-k wire bonding.(Assembly/Packaging)
April 1, 2004... OVERVIEW The introduction of Low-k and ultralow-k dielectric films in copper-interconnect structures presents serious challenges in advanced device test, assembly, and packaging. Low-k films support higher circuit speeds and enable smaller...

Micro-system platforms/new materials for biosensor applications.(Bio-Chips)
April 1, 2004... Microelectronic-based biosensors consist of a physicochemical transducer in direct contact with a biological recognition element such as antibodies, DNA probes, cells, neurons, and so on. Surface chemistry is used to link both elements....

Deep silicon etching used for key MEMS building blocks.(microelectromechanical systems)
April 1, 2004... OVERVIEW Etch requirements for four basic deep Si processes--bulk, precision, SOI, and high aspect ratio--are presented and contrasted. These diverse processes are needed to satisfy today's MEMS manufacturers. Future devices will extend...

Using a biased-ICP reactor for PR strip and Cu barrier removal.(Wafer Cleaning)
April 1, 2004... OVERVIEW A 2-in-1 integration scheme--in which the barrier removal and photoresist strip are done in situ following dielectric etch--is proposed. Photoresist stripping and barrier removal on SiLK, porous SiLK, and LKD-5109 dielectric...

Liquid polymer encapsulates without sweep.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... NoSWEEP wire-bond encapsulant is a silica filled liquid polymer that encapsulates narrow-diameter, long, and ultra-fine-pitch wires on semiconductor devices without causing sweep. The polymer reportedly locks wires into place and prohibits...

Dry strip system for 300mm FEOL apps.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The RapidStrip 320 resist and polymer removal system uses downstream microwave plasma generation and chuck-based wafer heating to provide dry-strip, with small process vacuum chambers for high ash rates and process repeatability. The...

Software models e-beam lithography in 3D.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... SELID version 3.3 models the entire electron-beam lithography process in 3D, reportedly reducing cycle times and development costs by running hundreds of wafers or masks overnight, without using production resources. SELID uses the Monte Carlo...

Photoresist/spin-processing system has compact, modular design.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The FLEX/PCS photoresist/spin-processing system incorporates PC-based control and brushless DC servomotor-driven actuation. Its extended z-axis polar robots permit vertical stacking of thermal modules, which are enclosed for controlled process...

Plasma system for batch ashing.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The Plasma System 800 is designed for wafer processing in high-volume 200mm wafer fabs. Cassette-to-cassette handling of 25 wafer lots is integrated with PC control and touch-screen operation. The small-footprint plasma asher uses microwave...

Deep-Si etching module.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The Omega DSi is a module for Bosch process deep-Si etching designed to operate at high RF powers, high pressure, and high process-gas flow rates for optimum dissociation of the S[F.sub.6] etch gas. Processes have been developed for...

Suspension systems for microscopy.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... STX suspension arm systems for the SZ2 stereo microscope systems allow movement of the microscope in x, y, and z directions. With an adjustable gas-spring counterweight suspension arm, the microscope can be positioned with the touch of a...

Dual-use mask and bond aligner.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The 300mm automated IQ Aligner performs precision alignment techniques such as topside, bottom-side, large-gap, and darkfield alignment. The system targets applications such as full-field proximity exposure for 300mm wafer bumping, thick...

Microscope objective stage.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The MIPOS 500 travel stage for focusing microscope objectives exhibits nearly 5x the travel of the MIPOS 100 stage, at 500[micro]m, with repeatability [+ or -] 16nm. The symmetric design of the stage gives it low angular deviation over the...

RF delivery system.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The 3kW Apex delivery system provides high power density and power-delivery consistency in a compact, halt-rack package. Its RF-conversion technology eliminates the need for frontend DC-to-DC conversion components. An optional internal match...

Gas-concentration sensor.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... Version 8.08 of the Piezocon gas-concentration sensor reportedly exhibits a faster response and lower pressure range than the previous version, and includes both slave and master DeviceNet. The system measures the concentration of a binary...

Compact pressure regulators.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The Dymatrix HPR series pressure regulators are engineered to maintain constant downstream liquid pressure. Constructed from all-wetted PTFE and without sliding parts, the regulators are suited for aggressive chemical and high-purity...

Direct wafer-bonding technology.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... nano PREP, a method of surface activation and wafer-to-wafer bonding, is available as an optional process module in the SUSS SO1300 production system or as a standalone module for wafer-level integration of CMOS and MEMS or CMOS and...

"Smart" edge-grip robot system.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The 300mm automated edge-grip robot system provides safe, precise, repeatable 300mm wafer handling with an integrated sensor that enables the robot to "see" and measure its environment and self-teach. The system calculates wafer center with an...

X-ray inspection software.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... FGUI version 2.2 x-ray inspection software has been upgraded to include a single-button AVI recorder for saving video sequences of processed images used for training, demonstration, or reporting purposes. FGUI also offers 16-bit image...

Bond-test system.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The Royce 580 is a high-accuracy universal bond-test system for wire-pull, bond-shear, bump shear, stud-pull, and die-shear testing. Test standards supported include Mil-STD 883d, Mil-STD 750c, and ASTM 1269; and test capabilities include wire...

E-beam mask repair tool.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The photomask repair tool is reportedly the first to combine high-resolution electron-beam technology with damage-free review and repair capabilities. The tool, based on SMT's field-emission scanning microscope with GEMINI technology, includes...

Lead-free materials system.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... A lead-free system of matched silver-palladium conductors, resistors, overglazes, and crossover dielectrics provides ratios of 10:1, 6:1, 4:1, and 3:1. The 85-Series resistors feature high stability for hybrid circuit applications or discrete...

Self-adjusting matrix tray feeder.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The TF30 automated tray feeder is a self-adjusting handling solution for processing devices in and out of JEDEC and semiconductor-specific matrix trays during programming. The side-mounted design integrates with PP and PS Series automated...

Excimer laser lift-off system.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... The IX-1000 ChromaLift excimer laser system homogenizes the excimer laser beam profile and fires through the back of a sapphire wafer to de-bond a GaN LED device and transfer it to a substrate where it can be packaged onto a heat sink and/or...

Metrology software for 90nm processes.(Product News)
April 1, 2004... Expert Application System (EASy) software automates measurements for copper, low-k, and other process control challenges. EASy generates edge profiles; checks for traces of copper or barrier on ILD spacers between lines, and reports whether the...

Calendar.(Calendar)
April 1, 2004... * MAY 2004 4-6--SEMICON Singapore 2004--Singapore. Info: Karen Koh, SEMI Singapore, ph 65/6339-6361 ext. 11, fax 65/6339-6637, e-mail kkoh@ semi.org; or Amy Perry, SEMI Global Headquarters, ph 408/943-7984, fax 408/943-7953, e-mail...

Is it time to re-tool the business model?(Perspectives)
April 1, 2004... Managing for innovation V.V. Zhirnov, R.K. Cavin, Semiconductor Research Corp., Research Triangle Park, North Carolina Basic research in semiconductor sciences has been significantly under-funded for more than a decade in the US, an...