Big Changes Ahead For Photomask Technology


The move to curvilinear shapes on photomasks is gaining steam after years of promise as a way of improving yield, lowering defectivity, and reducing wasted space on a die — all of which are essential for both continued scaling and improved reliability in semiconductors. Interest in this approach ran high at this year's SPIE Photomask Technology + EUV Lithography Conference. Put simply, cur... » read more

Wirebonding Is Here To Stay


Few technologies in semiconductor manufacturing have stood the test of time as steadfastly as wirebonding. This process, which involves electrically connecting semiconductor devices to their packages, has been a cornerstone of the electronics industry since the beginning of the electronics industry. Like everything else in the semiconductor market, wirebonding technologies have changed over ... » read more

Heterogeneous Integration Finding Its Footing


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss heterogeneous integration with Dick Otte, president and CEO of Promex Industries; Mike Kelly, vice president of chiplets/FCBGA integration at Amkor Technology; Shekhar Kapoor, senior director of product management at Synopsys; John Park, product management group director in Cadence's Custom IC & PCB Group; and Tony Mastroianni, advanced packagin... » read more

The Impact Of Channel Hole Profiles On Advanced 3D NAND Structures


In a two-tier 3D NAND structure, the upper and lower channel hole profile can be different, and this combination of different profiles leads to different top-down visible areas. The visible area is the key metric to determine whether the bottom SONO layer can be punched through and ensure that the bit cells connect to the common source line. Performing channel hole profile splits on a silicon w... » read more

Why Curvy Design Now? Less Change Than You Think And Manufacturable Today


A curvilinear (curvy) chip, if magically made possible, would be smaller, faster, and use less power. Magic is no longer needed on the manufacturing side, as companies like Micron Technology are making photomasks with curvy shapes using state-of-the-art multi-beam mask writers today. Yet the entire chip-design infrastructure is based on the Manhattan assumption of 90-degree turns, even though i... » read more

Looking Forward To The New Chip Cycle


Charles Shi, Principal and Senior Analyst at Needham & Company, LLC., remains upbeat about the EDA, IP and services business, or what SEMI refers to as the electronic system design (ESD) ecosystem. I recently spoke with Shi about his talk “Looking Forward to the New Chip Cycle” during the opening of the 2023 Design Automation Conference, collocated in July with SEMICON West in San Fra... » read more

Memory And High-Speed Digital Design


As DRAM gets faster, timing constraints, jitter, and signal integrity become harder to control. The real challenge is to understand what can go wrong early in the design process, and that becomes more complex with each new version of memory and higher signal speeds. Stephen Slater, product manager for EDA products at Keysight, talks about how simulation can be applied to these issues, what to t... » read more

Negative-Tone Photosensitive Polymeric Bonding Material To Enable Room Temperature Prebond For Cu/Polymer Hybrid Bonding


An evaluation of a negative-tone i-line photosensitive polymeric bonding material for achieving prebonding in Cu/polymer hybrid bonding at low temperatures via the Cu damascene process. The polymeric material has a Tg≤100∘C ; Young’s modulus of 99 MPa, the dielectric constant of 2.6, and dissipation factor of 0.0016 at 10 GHz. Shear tests revealed a bond shear strength of over 10 MPa when... » read more

Why Using Commercial Chiplets Is So Difficult


Experts at the Table: Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss use cases and challenges for commercial chiplets with Saif Alam, vice president of engineering at Movellus; Tony Mastroianni, advanced packaging solutions director at Siemens Digital Industries Software; Mark Kuemerle, vice president of technology at Marvell; and Craig Bishop, CTO at Deca Technologies. What follows are excerpts... » read more

AI Process Control Platform Enabling Next Generation Technology, Part 2


As feature dimensions in semiconductors continue to shrink and worldwide demand continues to expand, semiconductor equipment manufacturers need innovative ways to compete and deliver. The Tignis PAICe Maker physics-driven AI computational modeling platform accelerates leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing—from equipment R&D to reliable high-yield chip fabrication capability. Tignis sup... » read more

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