Advanced Materials For High-Temperature Process Integration


From the last several lithography nodes, in the 14 to 10nm range, to the latest nodes, in the 7 to 5nm range, the requirements for patterning and image transfer materials have increased dramatically. One of the key pinch points is the tradeoff between planarization and the high-temperature stability required from carbon films used in patterning and post-patterning process integration. Patter... » read more

Beyond-Line-Of-Sight Troposcatter Communications Primer


Though tropospheric scatter (troposcatter, or tropo) communications technology has existed since the 1950s and was used by the U.S. military from 1960 to 2002, this legacy technology is being revitalized in the wake of concerns around the reliability of tactical satellite communications (Satcom). For several decades, satellites were a reliable and secure method of communications that provided s... » read more

Pandemics And Panic Chip Buying


U.S.-China trade tensions are creating uncertainty in the semiconductor market, but it is also causing another event right now—panic chip buying. At present, some but not all foundry vendors are seeing “rush orders” for select products and are running their fabs at full capacity. It’s not just leading-edge devices, but also mature technologies. A surge of chip orders started in Ma... » read more

Enabling Curvilinear Masks


This talk by Leo Pang, Chief Product Officer of D2S, takes a look at a unique GPU-accelerated approach to curvilinear inverse lithography technology (ILT) and introduces mask-wafer co-optimization (MWCO) that enables writing curvilinear ILT for 193i on VSB or multi-beam machines in 12 hours. » read more

The Future Of Mobility: Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared


By Bettina Weiss and Sven Beiker As the amount of electronics in automobiles continues to increase, it is becoming more common to hear a vehicle referred to as a “computer on wheels.” To that end, innovation occurs at the intersection of automotive and microelectronics so that leveraging synergies and contemplating joint initiatives becomes crucial in shaping the future of both fields. I... » read more

Introducing Nanosheets Into Complementary-Field Effect Transistors (CFETs)


In our November 2019 blog [1], we discussed using virtual fabrication (SEMulator3D) to benchmark different process integration options for Complementary-FET (CFET) fabrication. CFET is a CMOS architecture that was proposed by imec in 2018 [2]. This architecture contains p- and n-MOSFET structures built on top of each other, instead of having them located side-by-side. In our previous blog, we r... » read more

Best Practices In Business Continuity Planning


Cameron Burks, head of Global Security, Enterprise Business Resiliency and Health, Environment & Safety with Adobe Systems, and a member of the White House Task Force for COVID-19 response, briefed members of SEMI’s IT Leadership (ITL) and Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) groups on April 20, 2020, on enterprise resiliency principals specific to the current COVID-19 crisis. Burk... » 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

Identifying And Preventing Process Failures At 7nm


Device yield is highly dependent upon proper process targeting and variation control of fabrication steps, particularly at advanced nodes with smaller feature sizes. Traditionally, cross-correlation and analysis of thousands of test data points have been required to identify and prevent process failures. This is very costly in terms of both time and money. Fortunately, semiconductor virtual fab... » read more

Taking A Pulse On The IC Biz


It’s been a difficult period for the semiconductor industry. The coronavirus outbreak has put a damper on what was supposed to be a strong year in the semiconductor industry in 2020. Many are holding out hopes for a rebound in the second half of the year. That’s still a big unknown. The forecasts are gloomy. For example, VLSI Research has three different scenarios for the semiconduc... » read more

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