A New Dimension In Optical CD


One of the biggest challenges for nanoscale fabrication is how to measure devices on such a minute scale. As the semiconductor industry demands ever smaller devices, the need for reliable, robust measurements for quality control and process optimization increases. One robust and commonly used technique in semiconductor manufacturing is optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology. Standard, al... » read more

Driving Toward Net-Zero: Key Takeaways From Semiconductor Sustainability Summit


To address the climate crisis, countries around the world are pursuing ambitious targets to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 under the Paris Agreement. In March, Taiwan redoubled its focus on decarbonization by announcing its net-zero pathway, while its Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) under the Executive Yuan is reshaping the Greenhouse Gas Reduction and Management Act in... » read more

The Rise Of Copper Wires In Automotive ICs


In 2011, the price of Gold (Au) surged to $1900/oz which had a drastic impact on Wirebonded ICs using Au wires. IC suppliers scrambled to convert from Au to copper (Cu) wire on as many products as they could. However, automotive ICs were reluctant to make the jump due to lack of reliability data and performance track-record. However, today’s automotive ICs are big users of Cu wires driven by ... » read more

High-NA EUV Complicates EUV Photomask Future


The eBeam Initiative’s 11th annual Luminaries survey in 2022 reported EUV fueling growth of the semiconductor photomask industry while a panel of experts cited a number of complications in moving to High-NA EUV during an event co-located with the SPIE Photomask Technology Conference in late September. Industry luminaries representing 44 companies from across the semiconductor ecosystem partic... » read more

Creating Airgaps To Reduce Parasitic Capacitance In FEOL


Reducing the parasitic capacitance between the gate metal and the source/drain contact of a transistor can decrease device switching delays. One way to reduce parasitic capacitance is to reduce the effective dielectric constant of the material layers between the gate and source/drain. This can be done by creating airgaps in the dielectric material at that location. This type of work has been do... » read more

Heterogeneous Chip Assembly Helps Optimize Medical And Wearable Devices


Heterogeneous integration (HI) has significant implications for the medical, health, and wearables industry. At Promex, we utilize a variety of complex assembly processes to achieve HI for medical and biotech applications. This post will take a closer look at the processes associated with assembling these classes of devices. Figure 1 provides a high-level overview of our approach. Nearly eve... » read more

Wall Street View Of EDA Industry


Jay Vleeschhouwer, managing director of Griffin Securities, has followed the electronic design automation (EDA) industry as a leading financial analyst for 25 years and is a popular speaker at the annual Design Automation Conference (DAC). I spoke with Vleeschhouwer after attending his presentation "The State of EDA: A View from Wall Street" at this year’s DAC. Bob Smith: According t... » read more

Additive Techniques For Flexible Hybrid Electronics Packaging And Integration With Human Body


By Gity Samadi and Paul Semenza Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) has spawned the development of novel packaging techniques to overcome the application limitations of the rigid boards, high-temperature solders, bulky component packages, and insertion processes used in traditional printed circuit boards. Thin, flexible substrates, bare die, and combinations of printed and small-format package... » read more

Insights Into Advanced DRAM Capacitor Patterning: Process Window Evaluation Using Virtual Fabrication


With continuous device scaling, process windows have become narrower and narrower due to smaller feature sizes and greater process step variability [1]. A key task during the R&D stage of semiconductor development is to choose a good integration scheme with a relatively large process window. When wafer test data is limited, evaluating the process window for different integration schemes can... » read more

Production Testing Of Discrete Power Products


By Vineet Pancholi and Dennis Dinawanao Metal Oxide Silicon Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETs), Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs), Bipolar Junction Transistors (BJTs), diodes, and application specific multi-transistor packaged modules are some of the more popular discrete products. Switches control the flow of current within a circuit. MOSFETs are a building block of most electronic... » read more

← Older posts Newer posts →