Mark LaPedus

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Mark LaPedus is Executive Editor for manufacturing at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Is 450mm Dead In The Water?
By Mark LaPedus - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 3

At one time, Intel, TSMC and Samsung were aggressively beating the 450mm drum. Chipmakers wanted, if not demanded, 450mm pilot line fabs by 2016, with high-volume manufacturing 450mm plants slated by 2018. At least for those companies, 450mm made some sense. Moving to 450mm wafers would supposedly give chipmakers a 2.25x boost in wafer area and a 30% cost reduction over 300mm substrates. But... » read more

Test Challenges Grow
By Mark LaPedus - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 2

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss current and future test challenges with Dave Armstrong, director of business development at Advantest; Steve Pateras, product marketing director for Silicon Test Solutions at Mentor Graphics; Robert Ruiz, senior product marketing manager at Synopsys; Mike Slessor, president of FormFactor; and Dan Glotter, chief executive of Optimal+. SE: What are... » read more

The Bumpy Road To FinFETs
By Mark LaPedus - 15 May, 2014 - Comments: 2

The shift from planar transistors to finFETs is a major inflection point in the IC industry. FinFETs are expected to enable higher performance chips at lower voltages. And the next-generation transistor technology also could allow the industry to extend CMOS to the 10nm node and perhaps beyond. But as it turns out, finFET technology is also harder to master than previously thought. For exam... » read more

Cobalt To The Rescue
By Mark LaPedus - 13 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

A big concern for chipmakers is a key part of the manufacturing flow—the backend-of-the-line (BEOL). In chip production, the BEOL is where the interconnects are formed within a device. Interconnects, those tiny wiring schemes in devices, are becoming more compact at each node. This, in turn, is causing a degradation in performance and an increase in the dreaded resistance-capacitance (RC) ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 13
By Mark LaPedus - 13 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

Telling a FIB The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has built the first low-energy focused ion beam (FIB) microscope that uses a lithium ion source. Still in the R&D stage, the FIB microscope from NIST could be used to examine adjacent materials that are chemically different and identify the elements that make them up. The FIB microscope uses an ion source based on p... » read more

One-On-One: Linyong Pang
By Mark LaPedus - 12 May, 2014 - Comments: 1

Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss trends in the lithography and photomask business with Linyong “Leo” Pang, the new chief product officer and executive vice president at D2S, which focuses on model-based mask data preparation as well as other mask writing technologies. What follows are excerpts of that conversation. SE: Before you arrived at D2S you were at Luminescent, whic... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 09 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

Samsung Electronics announced that its memory fabrication line in Xi’an China has begun full-scale manufacturing operations. The new facility will manufacture Samsung’s advanced NAND flash memory chips, dubbed 3D V-NAND. A recent chemical leak at Intel’s fab in Arizona was contained and two workers were taken to a hospital for observation, according to reports. Apparently, Intel was i... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: May 6
By Mark LaPedus - 06 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

Litho beam startup A startup has developed a new beam technology for advanced lithography applications. The company, called Digibeam, has demonstrated the ability to shoot a particle beam through a slow wave RF structure to create a train of compressed beam packets for high-throughput lithography. “Synchronized with high-speed deflection, the core technology enables shot rates well into t... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing
By Mark LaPedus - 02 May, 2014 - Comments: 0

Intel has submitted a business plan to upgrade its fab in Israel, according to reports. Crocus Nano Electronics (CNE), the joint venture founded in 2011 by Crocus Technology and Russia’s RUSNANO, has raised $60 million from its investors. The venture is Russia’s first 300mm fab. This first production line was completed one year after construction began. Currently, 200mm and 300mm CMOS wa... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: April 29
By Mark LaPedus - 29 Apr, 2014 - Comments: 0

Silky e-beam lithography Tufts University has put a soft and silky spin on direct-write electron-beam lithography. Researchers used common silk as the resist material, enabling the production of photonic lattices, quantum dots and other structures. This approach is a green alternative to traditional and toxic resists. The silk-based resist is developed using a water-based process. It starts... » read more

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