Solid State Technology articles from August 2005

Solid State Technology archives from August 2005

Feature article #1: in situ measurements for reducing across-wafer CDU.(ONLINE)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... As linewidths approach the 90nm node in volume production, post-exposure bake (PEB) uniformity becomes a much larger component of the across-wafer critical dimension uniformity (CDU). In production, the need for PEB plate matching has led to...

A node too far?(EDITORIAL)(Editorial)
August 1, 2005... Debates about semiconductor engineering often focus on the physical limitations of building smaller and smaller transistors or mass-producing them on larger and larger wafers. But the real limits are more likely to be determined by economics...

The first X Architecture-based product publicly announced by a fabless IC supplier, a 0.11[micro]m PCI-Express graphics processor.(ATI Technologies Inc., Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd.)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The first X Architecture-based product publicly announced by a fabless IC supplier, a 0.11[micro]m PCI-Express graphics processor, is planned for volume manufacturing later this year, developed by ATI Technologies Inc. and Taiwan Semiconductor...

Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Austin, TX, and ASM International NV, Bilthoven, The Netherlands, have agreed to continue collaboration on process technologies for CMOS IC production.(WORLDWIDE HIGHLIGHTS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Austin, TX, and ASM International NV, Bilthoven, The Netherlands, have agreed to continue collaboration on process technologies for CMOS IC production, focusing on selective epitaxy for CMOS transistor structures...

Apple Computer Inc. plans to transition all of its Macintosh products to Intel Corp. microprocessors from the current PowerPC central processor units supplied by IBM Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc.(USA)
August 1, 2005... Apple Computer Inc. plans to transition all of its Macintosh products to Intel Corp. microprocessors from the current PowerPC central processor units supplied by IBM Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. Apple expects to ship its first Macs...

Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT), Santa Clara, CA, a developer of semiconductors for network equipment, and Integrated Circuit Systems Inc. (ICS).(USA)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Integrated Device Technology Inc. (IDT), Santa Clara, CA, a developer of semiconductors for network equipment, and Integrated Circuit Systems Inc. (ICS), a Norristown, PA-based provider of silicon timing devices, have agreed to merge in a...

Corwil Technology Corp.(USA)(management)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Corwil Technology Corp., Milpitas, CA, has integrated 300mm-wafer high-volume dicing capabilities for bumped and nonbumped wafers into its pick-and-place, die inspection, wire-bond, flip-chip assembly, and wafer thinning and polishing services....

Applied Materials Inc.(China)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Applied Materials Inc. has applied to Chinese authorities to establish a holding company in Shanghai. Pending government approval, the company plans to build a development center in Xi'An to provide global engineering and software support...

Nest Group.(India)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Indian IT company Nest Group plans to invest up to $1.0 billion to set up a memory chip foundry in India by 2008, according a report in the local Business Line. The first phase of the project involves setting up a 200-seat VLSI design center by...

Japan's government funded Millennium Research for Advanced Information Technology (MIRAI) Project, along with NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp.(Japan)
August 1, 2005... Japan's government funded Millennium Research for Advanced Information Technology (MIRAI) Project, along with NEC Corp. and NEC Electronics Corp., has announced a jointly developed low-k film seen as feasible to be used with ultrafine copper...

Hynix Semiconductor Inc.(Korea)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has started mass production of 90nm/300mm wafers at its M10 facility in Icheon, south of Seoul, after a conversion from 200mm production, according to the Korea Herald. The company said output would increase throughout...

Infineon Technologies AG has contracted M+W Zander Holding AG to build a 130 [euro] million (~US$170 million) production plant in the Kulim High Tech Park in Malaysia, with opening targeted for spring 2006.(Malaysia)
August 1, 2005... Infineon Technologies AG has contracted M+W Zander Holding AG to build a 130 [euro] million (~US$170 million) production plant in the Kulim High Tech Park in Malaysia, with opening targeted for spring 2006. The site will produce mainly power...

Flextronics International Inc. has agreed to sell its semiconductor business, which focuses on custom mixed-signal products, imaging sensors, and digital ASICs, to AMIS Holdings Inc., parent of AMI Semiconductor Inc., for $135 million.(Singapore)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Flextronics International Inc. has agreed to sell its semiconductor business, which focuses on custom mixed-signal products, imaging sensors, and digital ASICs, to AMIS Holdings Inc., parent of AMI Semiconductor Inc., for $135 million....

Powerchip Semiconductor Corp.(Taiwan)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. said it has started production at its Fab 12B facility, its second 300mm site, with output of 15,000 wafers/month, and has achieved its full overall capacity of 45,000 wafers/month.

Infineon Technologies AG has turned over its wearable electronics activities to a new company, Interactive Wear AG iG division, as part of a management buyout for an undisclosed price.(EUROFOCUS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Infineon Technologies AG has turned over its wearable electronics activities to a new company, Interactive Wear AG iG division, as part of a management buyout for an undisclosed price. The unit, based in Oberpfaffenhofen (Wessling), focuses on...

STMicroelectronics NV.(EUROFOCUS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... STMicroelectronics NV said 2300 of its 3000-worker cutbacks announced May 16 will come from locations outside Asia, and will take place by mid-2006. Among plans to restructure the company's European operations are conversion from 150mm to 200mm...

Clarification.(Correction Notice)
August 1, 2005... In Fig. 3 on p. 62 of Solid State Technology's June article "Transistor scaling is moving implant energies lower," the lines in the key for high-dose decel and high-dose drift were inadvertently switched.

Wide-field pattern-inspection system cuts microscopy scan time.(TECHNOLOGY NEWS)(NanoGeometry Research Inc)
August 1, 2005... NanoGeometry Research Inc., Kawasaki, Japan, and Topcon Corp., Tokyo, have developed a wide-field pattern inspection system that cuts the time needed to check an entire 25x35mm exposure shot for defects down from several months to one day. The...

Applied goes bright on inspection.(TECHNOLOGY NEWS)(Applied Materials Inc.)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... A just-introduced laser 3D [channel] brightfield inspection system, UVision, by Applied Materials uses a beam multiplier that sets up a column of beams derived from the same deep-ultraviolet (DUV) laser source to scan wafers in parallel. For...

New nanocrystal layer enhances image contrast in lithography.(TECHNOLOGY NEWS)(Pixelligent Technologies LLC)
August 1, 2005... Pixelligent Technologies LLC has revealed that it is developing a new nanocrystal-based reversible contrast-enhancement layer (R-CEL) material that, according to company president Gregory Cooper, can help enable the extension of current 193nm...

A novel technique for sealing porous dielectrics.(INTERCONNECT)
August 1, 2005... As the industry moves toward the 45nm node and beyond, pore sealing is critical to enable the integration of porous low-k dielectric materials. The addition of porosity to the low-k film, together with scaling requirements for finer dimensions,...

Coupling substrate and architecture with thin-layer transfer technology.(MATERIALS)
August 1, 2005... Silicon-on-insulator (SOI) is the first example of an engineered substrate with an active top Si layer decoupled from the support wafer by the buried oxide (BOX), thereby addressing mainstream MOSFET performance requirements. The ability of SOI...

Stepping and scanning into the NA>1 immersion exposure era.(ASML's roadmap for new immersion system with numerical-aperture less than 1)(Cover Story)
August 1, 2005... OVERVIEW During the past two years, immersion 193nm lithography has made astonishing strides in moving from the conceptual stage in R&D to the development and testing of the first full-field scanners that use water between the wafer and...

Single-tank processing demonstrates immersion batch cleaning for 65nm ICs.(WAFER CLEANING)
August 1, 2005... OVERVIEW An advanced batch immersion system for wafer cleaning applications has been tested in 65nm pilot-line production. The fully automated tool incorporates the latest wet-cleaning technology for short cycle-time, single-tank...

Advances in thick photoresists for flip-chip bumping.(PACKAGING/ASSEMBLY)
August 1, 2005... OVERVIEW The push to smaller process geometries and higher-count I/0 on ICs in portable and wireless applications has significantly increased the industry's focus on chip-scale packaging and flip-chip assembly techniques, which deposit...

A flexible 'wrapper' enables secure IP sharing.(SOFTWARE)
August 1, 2005... OVERVIEW The growing need for collaboration in the semiconductor industry has created an additional challenge: protection of intellectual property (IP) while sharing capabilities in wafer fabs. Concern over IP protection in today's...

What's next for China's emerging IC industry.(ASIA PACIFIC: CHINA)(Industry Overview)
August 1, 2005... This year's significance for China's electronics industry, and especially for its semiconductor segment, should not be underestimated. In 2005, China will emerge from its startup phase and become a regional IC powerhouse. As its electronics...

Competing fab strategies rely on advanced automation.(ASIA PACIFIC: CHINA/TAIWAN)
August 1, 2005... No corner of the semiconductor industry is expanding manufacturing capacity faster than Asia, where rising competition between established players such as Taiwan and the emerging Chinese semiconductor industry are helping to drive growth. The...

New demand and challenges for gold-bump technology.(ASIA PACIFIC: PACKAGING)
August 1, 2005... Asia has been a dynamic region for the development and manufacturing of liquid-crystal display (LCD) panels. Specifically, Japan has been the industry leader in vertically integrated manufacturing of display panels, as well as one of their key...

Overlay metrology solution exceeds 45nm node requirements.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... Archer AIM+ reportedly reduces total measurement uncertainty (TMU) by 50%, compared to the previous generation, and increases tool through-put to up to 180wph. New optics and improved illumination reduce TMU to within 2.1nm--exceeding 45nm-node...

RF wafer probe performs multiport testing up to 10GHz.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The Multi IZI Probe is reportedly the only radio-frequency (RF) wafer probe offering up to eight independent RF transmission lines with 50[OMEGA] impedance. It can be individually configured with RF and DC contacts for mixed-mode component...

Defect review tool achieves 3nm resolution for 65nm processes.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The JWS-3000 automatic defect review (ADR) tool, designed for 300mm wafer inspection, features a conical lens that achieves 3nm resolution for high-precision review of microdefects in 65nm design-rule processes. The system can examine 300-400...

Instrument combo measures and controls nanoscale particles.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... Together, a plug-in finger probe (1520) and flow-through cell (1551) can control CMP blending concentration, measure concentration of PVDF coatings, and treat and segregate wastewater. Results for commonly applied materials such as silica,...

Thin-film metrology tools.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The F80 line of stand-alone and integrated thin-film metrology tools is based on spectral imaging technology that generates large arrays of reflectance spectra at each measurement location. With this thickness-based approach, the tools are...

Ion source.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The Nexus 420 ion source is designed to maximize the performance of Nexus ion-beam etch systems for next-generation thin-film magnetic head (TFMH) production. The ion source provides a wider dynamic energy range and a two- to three-fold...

Field-emission SEMs.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The Supra 40 series of ultrahigh-resolution field-emission scanning electron microscopes (FESEM), which replaces the previous Supra 35 and Supra 50 FESEM models, is based on the latest version of the Gemini FESEM column that delivers nanoscale...

Curvature sensor.(PRODUCT NEWS)(LayTec)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The EpiCurve curvature sensor is for production-line MOCVD systems. It performs measurements for wafer curvature, emissivity-corrected wafer temperature, and double-wavelength reflectance. Combined with the EpiTT sensor for true-temperature and...

ArF excimer laser.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Gigaphoton Inc)(Brief Article)
August 1, 2005... The GT40A argon fluoride (ArF) excimer laser has 193nm emission wavelength and 4kHz repetition rate. It features an injection-locking resonator for use as a mass-production lithography light source for 65nm and below technology nodes, which...

Storage and delivery system.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The third-generation safe delivery source SDS 3--a subatmospheric storage and delivery system--uses ATMI's monolithic carbon adsorbent and is able to store and deliver 2-3x as much ion-implant dopant gas as the second-generation SDS2 in the...

Chemical metrology platform.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... The Sentry inline chemical metrology platform features proprietary inline mass spectrometry (ILMS) technology, and is incorporated into two products: the chemical-composition metrology (CCM) and trace-contamination metrology (TCM) systems. The...

Silicon carbide.(PRODUCT NEWS)
August 1, 2005... PureBeta ultrahigh-purity sintered-body silicon carbide (SiC) is suitable for semiconductor applications. The total metal content is [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

New materials--new business model? Solid State Technology asked industry experts to comment on the pressures being exerted on the materials business model.(PERSPECTIVES)
August 1, 2005... As industry grows, new business models needed Phil Dembowski, Dow Corning, Midland, Michigan Ever since IBM introduced copper interconnects in 1997, suppliers and chipmakers alike have been keenly aware that device scaling cannot...