Microtechnology News articles from April 1999

Microtechnology News archives from April 1999

APPLICATIONS: Replacing MEMS with CHEMS.(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... Ceramic hybrid electromechanical systems (CHEMS) have been proposed to overcome some of the disadvantages while retaining most of the advantages of MEMS, according to work done by Linda Miller, Michael Hecht, Martin Buehler, Amin Mottiwala,...

Chip Analyzes Chemical Solutions.(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories (Albuquerque, NM, and Livermore, CA) have combined a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) with diffractive optics to develop an instrument that analyzes the chemical makeup of liquids using...

Sensor Provides Attitude and Reference System.(Crossbow Technology, Inc's DMU-AHRS sensor subsystem)(Product Information)
April 1, 1999... Crossbow Technology, Inc. (San Jose, CA), a leading developer of advanced sensor technology, announced the attitude and heading reference system (DMU-AHRS), an intelligent sensor subsystem that provides highly reliable and stable measurement of...

MEMS Sensor Used in Seismic Instruments.(Product Information)
April 1, 1999... Analog Devices, Inc. (21 Osborne St., Cambridge, MA 02139; Tel: 800/262/5643) says it will supply its ADXL202 MEMS accelerometer to Kinemetrics (Website: www.kinemetrics.com) a leading supplier of seismic instrumentation. The ADXL202 is an...

Packaging for Optical Media.
April 1, 1999... Irvine Sensors (Costa Mesa, CA) says it is using its proprietary neo- stack packaging technology to support development of a high speed, removable optical media storage system for future generation digital versatile disk (DVD) systems....

Time Release Pills onto Silicon.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology microchip research develops drug delivery system)(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, MA) have created a more refined, electronic version of the time-honored pill through the application of microchip technology. Their dime-sized silicon chip may, in the...

FABRICATION: SpectraChip Will Dice MEMS.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 1, 1999... SpectraChip LLC (Santa Rosa, CA) was recently founded to provide scribe and break wafer dicing services to the semiconductor industry. Scribe and break has reportedly become the best method to dice certain substrates into chips, including...

Cree's LEDs May Help Miniaturization.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 1, 1999... Cree Research (Durham, NC), the world leader in the development and manufacture of semiconductor materials and electronic devices made from silicon carbide (SiC), says that it expects to produce and ship greater than 20,000,000 units of blue...

Tanner EDA, Sandia Deliver Design Kits.(Company Business and Marketing)
April 1, 1999... Tanner EDA (Pasadena, CA) says that it will join forces with Sandia National Laboratories to provide a design kit for Sandia's module monolithic MEMS (M3S) fabrication process as part of its MEMS Pro CAE tool suite. The design kit will lower...

PROCESSING: Lucent Selects Nikon ArF Scanner.(Product Information)
April 1, 1999... Nikon Precision, Inc. (Belmont, CA) says that Lucent Technologies has ordered Nikon's newest ArF scanner for development of advanced communications semiconductors in its new Bell laboratories development facility at Cirent Semiconductor in...

Atom Laser May Improve Lithography.(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... Atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate can be manipulated with light to form a highly directional atom laser, according to physicists at the Commerce Dept.'s National Institute for Standards (NIST). The NIST atom laser represents a significant...

Multi-Systems Metal Etch Sales.(Lam TCP 9600PTX high-density metal etch system)(Product Information)(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... In a recent announcement, Lam says it received multi-system orders for its high throughput TCP 9600PTX high-density metal etch system. Orders are from several major global companies, including Taiwan and Singapore foundries, Korean and Japanese...

MATERIALS: Crystallume Smooths CVD Diamond Films.(Product Information)
April 1, 1999... Crystallume (Santa Clara, CA) successfully developed a process controlling very fine grain size and uniformity of diamond films during growth, producing ultra-smooth diamond surfaces. The grain size remains constant regardless of the thickness...

Sandia Examines Mysterious Nanopatterns.(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... According to news from Sandia Lab (Albuquerque, NM) scientists have found that nanometer-scale islands of metals and semiconductors deposited on a crystal surface self-organize into ordered arrays. When this process occurs on a single atom...

TEST AND MEASUREMENT: Measuring Thick Films Using Ellipsometry.(Technology Information)
April 1, 1999... Rudolph Technologies, Inc. (Flanders, NJ) has developed a metrology approach that can measure thickness and uniformity of very thick transparent films (up to 50 micron). While ellipsometry is well known as an effective technique for very thin...

Low Temperature Alert Monitor.(MKS Instruments, Inc's HPS low temperature alert monitor)(Product Information)(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... The vacuum products group of MKS Instruments, Inc. (Boulder, CO) has released the recently modified HPS low temperature alert monitor for the series 45 heated pumping line jackets. The monitor indicates by LED if the temperature of the heaters...

Polymer Properties on a Microscopic Scale.(ThermoMicroscopes' explorer PD scanning probe microscope)(Product Announcement)
April 1, 1999... ThermoMicroscopes (Sunnyvale, CA) introduced its new explorer polymer system (PS), a scanning probe microscope (SPM) designed specifically for polymer industrial and research laboratories. The new Explorer PS adds thermal and mechanical...

INDUSTRY NEWS: CoreTek Receives Venture Funding.
April 1, 1999... The market delivery of MEMS-based tunable photonic devices for optical fiber communications is likely to accelerate with the infusion of investor funds to CoreTek, Inc. The added funding is likely to benefit the development of communications...

User's Network for Nanoscale Science.
April 1, 1999... A partnership called the National Nanofabrication Users Network (NNUN) has been established among five universities in the U.S. to further research in nanotechnology. The network is committed to educate, train, and provide technical outreach to...

Tanner and ANSYS in Partnership.(Company Business and Marketing)(Brief Article)
April 1, 1999... In a separate announcement, Tanner EDA and ANSYS, Inc. (Southpointe, PA), a global provider of computer aided engineering (CAE) software products for simulation of real world multiphysics problems, says they have a joint marketing and...

BF Goodrich Acquires Advanced MicroMachines.
April 1, 1999... The BF Goodrich Co. (Burnsville, MN) says it has acquired Advanced MicroMachines, Inc. (AMMI, Cleveland, OH), a developer of MEMS systems. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. MEMS, which evolved from computer chip technology,...

Lam Announces Share Repurchase Program.
April 1, 1999... Lam Research Corp. (Fremont, CA) says its board of directors has authorized the repurchase, at management's discretion, of up to two million shares of the company's common stock from the public market or in private purchase. The purchases will...

Cronos Created from Spin Off.
April 1, 1999... Cronos Integrated Microsystems will be spun off from MCNC's MEMS division by the end of the second quarter, creating a leading company in MEMS technology. Cronos will receive intellectual property, all MEMS-related assets and approximately 40...

Microvision Reports 1998 Results.
April 1, 1999... Microvision, Inc. (Seattle, WA) reported results for the year ended December 31, 1998. Revenues were $7,074,100 compared to $1,712,700 for the same period last year. The company reported a net loss of $7,327,500 compared to a net loss of...

ATMI Reports 4Q, Year-end Results.
April 1, 1999... ATMI, Inc. (Danbury, CT) says the revenues for the fourth quarter were $21.1 million, down about 33% from the fourth quarter of 1997. Net income was $1.3 million, or $0.60/share, compared to a loss of $4.6 million, or a loss of $0.24/share in...

CALCE Gets Contract to Study RF MEMS.
April 1, 1999... CALCE electronic products and systems consortium was awarded a two year contract from NASA's jet propulsion lab to evaluate the manufacturing processes associated with fabricating advanced high frequency modules made up of a combination of...

MEETINGS: Sensors Expo to Feature MEMS and Micromachines.
April 1, 1999... The commercialization of MEMS, microsystems technologies (MST), and micromachines will be the topics at an all day seminar on Wednesday, May 5, 1999 at the Baltimore Exhibition Center. It is being held in conjunction with Sensors Expo. Roger...

CALENDAR.
April 1, 1999... May 4-6, 1999. Sensors Expo, Baltimore Convention Center, Baltimore, MD. Contact: Tel: 800/331-5706 or 218/723-9130. August 25-27, 1999. EMAG 99, Electron Microscopy and Analysis Group Conference, Sheffield, U.K. Contact: Beccy Chapple,...