February 2015 - Page 3 of 10 - Semiconductor Engineering

Tighter CD Requires Tighter Laser Bandwidth
By Katherine Derbyshire - 24 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Concerns that the bandwidth of the light source for optical lithography can affect pattern quality are not new. No lens material is completely free from chromatic aberration: the refractive index varies with wavelength, and so different wavelengths will focus at different points. Chromatic aberration became a much less serious concern with the replacement of broadband mercury lamps with lase... » read more

System Bits: Feb. 24
By Ann Mutschler - 24 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

New solder for semis A research team led by the University of Chicago has demonstrated how semiconductors can be soldered and still deliver good electronic performance by working out new chemistry for a broad class of compositions relevant to semiconductors. The compounds that the team developed can be used to join pieces of semiconductor, which researchers have longed struggled with. Th... » read more

Power/Performance Bits: Feb. 24
By Jesse Allen - 24 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Simulating ultrafast phenomena Interesting phenomena can happen when electronic states in materials are excited during dynamic processes. As an example, electrical charge transfer can take place on quadrillionth-of-a-second, or femtosecond, timescales. Numerical simulations in real-time provide the best way to study these processes. Such simulations, however, can be extremely expensive. R... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 24
By Mark LaPedus - 24 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

EUV progress report At the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference in San Jose, Calif., ASML Holding said that one customer, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC), has exposed more than 1,000 wafers on an NXE:3300B EUV system in a single day. This is one step towards the insertion of EUV lithography in volume production. During a recent test run on the system, TSMC exposed 1,022 w... » read more

Flex Logix: FPGA Cores
By Ed Sperling - 23 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

One of the interesting challenges in the semiconductor space these days is getting a design right, because the cost of making mistakes is rising at each new process node and as more and more functionality is added into chips. This has always been one of the benefits of programmable logic, where logic and layout can be tweaked to fit into multiple devices and errors can be fixed even late in ... » read more

GaN Manufacturing Meets Big Silicon
By Michael Watts - 20 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

I have been talking about GaN on Silicon for several years because it offers a path to cost reduction in LED’s in the same way as silicon semiconductors. This year at Photonics West 2015, Aixtron presented its next generation 6-inch wafer system with all the automation that the semiconductor guys expect to be able to build GaN power transistors. The systems are configured as cluster tools... » read more

Week 37: Eliminating Glitches In The Matrix
By Anne Cirkel - 20 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

As I’ve often stated, DAC is very much a team effort. Way back in week five I introduced Chuck Alpert, who is vice chair of the conference. Among other things, this title means Chuck will chair DAC 53 in Austin in 2016. Not that he hasn’t been busy with DAC 52. Chuck worked very hard to put together this year’s conference matrix, basically the overall conference schedule. It was big job, ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 20 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

For years, chipmakers have attempted to build fabs in India. So far, however, India has failed to set up modern fabs and for good reason. There are issues in terms of obtaining dependable power and water for a fab in India, according to Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, who added that India also suffers from government bureaucracy. India is still trying. Last week, Cricket Semicon... » read more

The Week In Review: Design/IoT
By Jesse Allen - 20 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Deals Arteris teamed up with Yogitech to integrate the two companies' products. They're planning a set of ISO 26262 deliverables for a series of SoC reference designs and a functional safety assessment of the Arteris FlexNoC interconnect IP. ARM and Green Hills Software collaborated on an optimized compiler for the Cortex-R5 processor. The compiler achieved a score of 1.01EEMBC Automarks/... » read more

5 Disruptive Mask Technologies
By Mark LaPedus - 19 Feb, 2015 - Comments: 0

Photomask complexity and costs are increasing at each node, thereby creating a number of challenges on several fronts. On one front, for example, traditional single-beam e-beam tools are struggling to keep up with mask complexity. As a result, the write times and costs continue to rise. Mask complexity also impacts the other parts of the tool flow, such as inspection, metrology and repair. I... » read more

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