Solid State Technology articles from January 2006

Solid State Technology archives from January 2006

Using fluid flow simulation to increase yield in crystal growth.(ONLINE)
January 1, 2006... It is difficult to grow CdZnTe single crystals, and maintaining a high single-crystal yield depends on the design and operation of the high-pressure, electro-dynamic gradient furnaces in which the crystals are grown, Running physical...

Nanotech: it's not a bubble.(usage of nanotechnology)
January 1, 2006... After the recent dot-com fiasco, it's no wonder the industry regards with skepticism any claims about a revolutionary technology with limitless growth potential. Since 2000, the US government has poured more than $4 billion into nanotechnology...

Cell phones, consumer resiliency underscore strong chip sales in 2005.(BUSINESS TRENDS)(Brief Article)(Industry Overview)
January 1, 2006... Consumers' uncurbed appetite for cell phones and digital entertainment gear as well as a jump in demand for electronics from the developing world, mean 2005 chip sales are coming in slightly stronger than expected, according to a forecast...

Metron Technology Inc. has agreed to purchase all of the outstanding shares of ChemTrace Corp. and ChemTrace Precision Cleaning Inc.(USA)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Metron Technology Inc. has agreed to purchase all of the outstanding shares of ChemTrace Corp. and ChemTrace Precision Cleaning Inc., both privately-held companies, for an undisclosed cash amount. ChemTrace will be operated as part of Metron, a...

Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., a silicon producer, plans to invest $400-$500 million to expand capacity 50% at its Hemlock, MI, headquarters.(USA)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Hemlock Semiconductor Corp., a silicon producer, plans to invest $400-$500 million to expand capacity 50% at its Hemlock, MI, headquarters. The company, a joint venture of Dow Corning Corp., Shin-Etsu Handotai Co. Ltd., and Mitsubishi Materials...

Agilent Technologies Inc., Palo Alto, CA has acquired privately held Molecular Imaging Corp.(USA)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Agilent Technologies Inc., Palo Alto, CA has acquired privately held Molecular Imaging Corp., a developer and manufacturer of nanotechnology measurement tools including AFMs, for an undisclosed amount.

A group of US-based IC R&D and manufacturing companies is breaking ground on a $2.5 billion IC manufacturing and R&D center in Tianjin, China, with aims to eventually build up operations for 200mm and 300mm CMOS chip production.(ASIAFOCUS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A group of US-based IC R&D and manufacturing companies is breaking ground on a $2.5 billion IC manufacturing and R&D center in Tianjin, China, with aims to eventually build up operations for 200mm and 300mm CMOS chip production. The cooperative...

eASIC has selected Fujitsu as a foundry partner to make its 90nm-based ASIC devices.(ASIAFOCUS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... eASIC has selected Fujitsu as a foundry partner to make its 90nm-based ASIC devices, utilizing maskless direct-write e-beam technology. Following tapeout, the product is now undergoing testing and development, with scheduled release in 1H06.

Intel.(EUROFOCUS)(buildings and facility)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A regional planning board has reportedly approved an application from Intel to build a 16,000[m.sup.2] addition ("Fab 24-3") to its 150-acre operations in Leixlip, although the company hasn't made any official plans to commence construction....

Six companies that supply parts to Dutch-South Korean company LGPhilips LCD, which makes LCD screens, signed an agreement with the Polish government to build a US$360 million factory in southwestern Poland.(EUROFOCUS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Six companies that supply parts to Dutch-South Korean company LGPhilips LCD, which makes LCD screens, signed an agreement with the Polish government to build a US$360 million factory in southwestern Poland. LG Philips LCD is a joint venture...

Infineon Technologies AG is expanding its 65nm development and manufacturing partnership with IBM, Chartered Semiconductor, and Samsung.(EUROFOCUS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Infineon Technologies AG is expanding its 65nm development and manufacturing partnership with IBM, Chartered Semiconductor, and Samsung, by having Chartered manufacture 65nm logic products for low-power mobile phones, with initial prototypes...

Quantum transport phenomena could lead to new applications in carbon-based electronics.(nanotechnology)
January 1, 2006... Two papers in the November 10 issue of Nature report remarkable observations in the electronics of graphene--a carbon macromolecule with the structure of chicken wire that when stacked is called graphite. Researchers have learned how to pull...

Nanocrystalline silicon may cut flash memory costs.(TECHNOLOGY NEWS)
January 1, 2006... Freescale Semiconductor says replacing floating polysilicon gates with nanocrystalline silicon will cut chip size and mask steps, significantly reducing the cost of its embedded flash memory products, starting with the 65nm node in 2008-2009....

Sequential UV annealing of dielectrics.(TECHNOLOGY NEWS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A new ultraviolet thermal processing platform from Novellus blends industry-standard lamp-based UV light sources with the company's multistation sequential processing architecture. With transistor and interconnect fabrication applications that...

Silicon's building block synthesized.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Silicon's building block synthesized--The smallest discretely defined repeat unit that can be plucked from the silicon crystal lattice has been synthesized as an independent molecule by a team of Austrian chemists, as reported in Science 2005,...

Study of cadmium selenide nanostructure growth yields production roadmap.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Study of cadmium selenide nanostructure growth yields production roadmap--Researchers have taken an important step toward high-volume production of new nanometer-scale structures with the first systematic study of growth conditions that affect...

IBM researchers slow down light on a chip.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... IBM researchers slow down light on a chip--Reported in the November 3 issue of Nature, Yurii Vlasov and co-workers at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center have applied photonic crystal technology to 'slow light' on a chip. In their work, pulses of...

Fabricating GaN on silicon wafers.(Oki Electric Industry Co. )(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Fabricating GaN on silicon wafers--Oki Electric Industry Co. has developed a technique to fabricate transistors of gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon wafers instead of expensive silicon carbide, reports the Nikkei English News. GaN-HEMTs...

Japan scientists make Braille rollable display.(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... Japan scientists make Braille rollable display--Researchers at the U. of Tokyo have created a flexible Braille display utilizing organic semiconductor devices, plastic actuators driven by an organic field-effect transistor active matrix. An...

A glimpse of 45nm at IEDM.(International Electron Device Meeting)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... A glimpse of 45nm at IEDM--At the 2005 IEEE International Electron Device Meeting (IEDM) last month, Intel provided a glimpse of the 45nm technology node in its paper on high performance CMOS transistors featuring fully silicided NiSi metal...

Differentiating tools and techniques for liquid flow control.(prodcution processes of semiconductor devices)
January 1, 2006... Semiconductor manufacturing has always used aqueous processes. Process control in an aqueous batch tool can often be achieved by controlling reaction temperature and time, assuming proper uniformity within the batch, typically without requiring...

CMOS future involves new materials and devices.(complementary metal oxide semiconductor)
January 1, 2006... The relentless scaling of CMOS, having paced the microelectronics industry at the speed of Moore's Law for the past 30 years, is rapidly approaching fundamental limits imposed by discrete atomic dimensions of critical materials (e.g.,...

Roadmap requirements for emerging materials.(complementary metal oxide semiconductor)
January 1, 2006... A significant section of the ITRS is written by the Starting Materials sub-Technology Working Group. In 2003, the Emerging Materials Committee was established within the Starting Materials Group to examine and track the alternative materials...

Building engineered substrates for GaN HEMT applications.(semiconductor devices)
January 1, 2006... OVERVIEW Compound semiconductors such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and indium phosphide (InP) are key materials in high-frequency and optoelectronic devices. New or evolving applications pave the way for further performance requirements,...

Swagelok[R] Semiconductor Services Company is helping you create the future of semiconductor.(CORPORATE PROFILE)(Company Profile)
January 1, 2006... Swagelok Semiconductor Services Company (SSSC) leverages its dedicated associates and high-purity manufacturing facilities to support the unique fluid system needs and fast-paced technical environment of the global semiconductor manufacturing...

Improving statistical validity with Macro CD-SEM imaging.(METROLOGY)(Industry Overview)
January 1, 2006... OVERVIEW A new image processing technology being added to current-generation CD-SEMs allows CD measurements to be made from multiple features from the same SEM image. Process control and characterization achieves better statistical...

Using the same line for processing Cu and Al.(copper and aluminium)
January 1, 2006... Aluminum has served as an excellent interconnect metal for 40 years, but its limitations become evident at chip geometries in the sub-0.18[micro]m range. Limitations include the difficulty of packing dielectric into the smaller gap between...

How the road to Singapore accelerated manufacturing in China.(CHINA/SINGAPORE)(Industry Overview)
January 1, 2006... With China offering the semiconductor industry new levels of manufacturing cost efficiencies and strong domestic market growth opportunities, many integrated device manufacturers (IDM), material suppliers, and chip-packaging equipment companies...

Ion implanter achieves 500wph throughput.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc.)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The VIISta 900XP ion implanter is designed to address sub-MeV n- and p-type retrograde well implants for high-performance devices. It has an increased upper energy range and features a single-wafer architecture that enables precise, zero...

Embossing/imprinting system demonstrates 1-3 min cycle times.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Jenoptik Mikrotechnik GmbH)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The HEX 04 hot embossing / imprinting system is suited for high-volume polymer-embossing applications, such as optical gratings, microfluidic chips, and wafer-scale sensor packaging, that require high-throughput systems. Feature sizes range...

Automated system fully inspects wafers for HB-LED production.(PRODUCT NEWS)(KLA-Tencor)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The Candela CS20 is the first automated wafer inspection system designed to manage defects in the high-brightness LED (HB-LED) market. With multichannel detection, the system nondestructively inspects transparent substrates and epi layers at up...

System provides full-chip litho model per ITRS requirements.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Brion Technologies Inc)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The focus exposure modeling (FEM) system is a one-model, full-chip, full process-window lithography simulation technology that predicts design weaknesses before they cause failures in photomask or wafer production. This capability is integrated...

Nanopositioning stage.(PRODUCT NEWS)(product introduction)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The P714 is a high-speed stage for x-y nanopositioning and scanning in alignment, microscopy, imaging, and resolution enhancement applications. The 45x45x6mm piezo-driven stage has a high resonant frequency of 2.2kHz for submillisec, response....

PECVD system for FPDs.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... The AKT-50K PECVD system for manufacturing Gen-8 TFT-LCD panels can process up to six 52-in. flat panel screens per substrate using glass substrates ~2160x2400mm in size. With up to five process chambers, the system has a throughput of more...

Dielectric etch chamber.(PRODUCT NEWS)(Tokyo Electron Ltd)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2006... This super capacitively coupled module (SCCM, development code JIN) chamber for 300mm Telius platforms is available for next-generation BEOL dielectric etch processing for 45nm and beyond. New hardware targets plasma sheath shape, electron...

Gap fill process.(PRODUCT NEWS)
January 1, 2006... Sequential profile modulation process technology, a high-density plasma gap-fill process for the Speed NExT 300mm CVD system, provides a gap-fill solution for high aspect-ratio features in 65nm devices. The process is scalable to accommodate...

Wafer-handling workcell.(PRODUCT NEWS)
January 1, 2006... WaferMate workcells feature a PC-based (or optional Adept Technology) control system that enables custom programming. The WaferMate200 accommodates 100-200mm wafers, and can be configured with end effectors. The WaferMate300 accommodates...

New tools needed for improving cost-of-ownership.(nanotechnology)
January 1, 2006... In its listing of the Top Technical Challenges facing the industry in 2006, SEMATECH recently included several aspects of metrology and fault detection. Specific areas of concern cited include e-manufacturing, advanced equipment and process...