Why New Photoresist Technology Is Critical


As chipmakers move to advanced technology nodes, they are challenged to resolve ever finer features. One of the major roadblocks involves the material used to transfer chip design to the wafer. That material is rapidly reaching its limit to accurately transfer designs. To keep next-generation device scaling on track, a breakthrough technology has been introduced: dry resist. To better understan... » read more

From FinFETs To Gate-All-Around


When they were first commercialized at the 22 nm node, finFETs represented a revolutionary change to the way we build transistors, the tiny switches in the “brains” of a chip. As compared to prior planar transistors, the fin, contacted on three sides by the gate, provides much better control of the channel formed within the fin. But, finFETs are already reaching the end of their utility as... » read more

Winning The Global Race For Semiconductor Technology With Virtual Fabrication


Semiconductor process development is no easy task, with each generation of devices more difficult and expensive to create. Traditional cycles of build-and-test development are becoming obsolete, since they are too expensive and time-consuming for the most advanced processes. The high cost of process development Most chip designers developing new products rely on existing manufacturing process... » read more

ML Apps Enable Tool Diagnostics


Diagnosis of any kind requires the synthesis of information. As humans we are much better at doing this when we have ways of visualizing information versus looking at numbers and statistics, especially when the data represents something happening over time. Think of a GPS tracker that shows where you have walked in a day. The raw data are coordinates and time stamps. A map that shows you this i... » read more

Fan-Out Wafer-Level Packaging And Copper Electrodeposition


By Steven T. Mayer, Bryan Buckalew, and Kari Thorkelsson As integrated circuit designers bring more sophisticated chip functionality into smaller spaces, heterogeneous integration, including 3D stacking of devices, becomes an increasingly useful and cost-effective way of mixing and connecting various functional technologies. One of the heterogeneous integration platforms gaining increased ac... » read more

Artificial Intelligence Is Everywhere


It’s pretty hard to talk about technology today without artificial intelligence, or AI, entering into the conversation. It seems to be everywhere… and growing. Businesses are using it to operate more efficiently, it’s resulting in safer and more useful products, and it has the promise of allowing us to personalize our worlds as devices learn our preferences. The age of AI AI refers to t... » read more

Big Problems In A Little Data World


Lam Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Richard A. Gottscho, gave a keynote at the SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS), the annual executive conference for the semiconductor industry. Titled “I’m Living in a Little Data World, but I Have a Big Problem,” Rick talked about the challenges faced by the “little data world” of process development and the potential for ... » read more

Using New Technologies On Smaller Wafers


The industry is no longer held captive by sales from computing applications, such as personal computers, servers or even cellular phones and tablets. A diverse range of markets are contributing to growth seen by Lam and our customers. Cloud storage, machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), robotics, medical and automotive, including the ... » read more

Weighing Wafers Simplifies Metrology


Building semiconductors is an incredibly exacting process, with critical dimensions posing significant equipment challenges – and with the possibility that small process excursions can cause the yield to decrease. For this reason, it has always been important to measure and monitor the most critical process steps to ensure that no further processing is done on a faulty lot and so that equipme... » read more

Scaling Up And Down


You don’t have to look very far in the semiconductor world before you see the word “scaling.” Perhaps you read an industry news article headline about transistor scaling – how those nearly nanoscale components are shrinking even smaller in size down to the atomic scale. Or maybe you heard a reference to memory capacity scaling – how our favorite mobile devices can store more high-reso... » read more

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