Global Investment Is Key To The Semiconductor Ecosystem


In response to the European Commission’s (EC) proposed framework for screening foreign direct investments (FDI), SEMI, representing the global electronics manufacturing supply chain, offers three recommendations for consideration by EU policymakers: To support the sophisticated global ecosystem of semiconductor manufacturers, the EU should remain open to global investment. More efforts sho... » read more

Surface Modification: Solving Semiconductor Manufacturing Challenges


Process reliability and faster technology deployment are two of the most pressing manufacturing challenges currently facing the semiconductor industry. In a world of ever-evolving technology and innovation, engineers are working to transform materials that don’t possess all the desired functions through a method called “surface modification” – the act of modifying a material’s surface... » read more

Advanced 3D Design Technology Co-Optimization For Manufacturability


By Yu De Chen, Jacky Huang, Dalong Zhao, Jiangjiang (Jimmy) Gu, and Joseph Ervin Yield and cost have always been critical factors for both manufacturers and designers of semiconductor products. It is a continuous challenge to meet targets of both yield and cost, due to new device structures and the increasing complexity of process innovations introduced to achieve improved product performanc... » read more

AI Accelerating Discovery


In early April 2018, the Materials Research Society held their spring meeting and exhibit at the Phoenix, Arizona convention center. With more than 110 symposium presentations, it was difficult to select which sessions to attend. But one forum caught my eye, “AI for Materials Development”. These days AI seems to be everywhere. As we all speculate about the impact of AI on autonomous driv... » read more

Auto Industry Driving Faster


Automotive electronics used to be a lumbering, trailing-edge business. Not anymore. Today, powerful semiconductor technologies are driving the development of automotive features that once might have been seen as science fiction, such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) which are paving the way to self-driving cars. Overall, the market for semiconductors in automotive applications is... » read more

Too Many, Too Few Rare Earths


A team from Japan recently made a major discovery—they found massive deposits of rare earths on the ocean floor off the coast of Japan. The team of Waseda University, the University of Tokyo and the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) found a deposit that equates to 16 million tons of rare earths. Rare earths are a group of critical materials used in various ele... » read more

Toward A 5G, AI-Centric World


The market environment over the coming years will continue to experience an explosion of data generation from a variety of new sources such as smart cars, smart factories, smart hospitals and smart network infrastructure. Data explosion combined with artificial intelligence (AI) will create a renaissance of computing and storage hardware. Mobile World Congress 2018 (MWC) reinforced this market ... » read more

Masks, Models And Alternative Lithography


Every February an outstanding group of eBeam luminaries gathers at events hosted by the eBeam Initiative during the SPIE Advanced Lithography conference. It was our 10th annual lunch with standing room only attendance again this year. It’s an honor to get to know some of these very talented people. We started producing videos for the community over five years ago to share more of their storie... » read more

Joining Hands In The Semiconductor Industry


SEMI’s mantra is: Connect, Collaborate, Innovate. This mantra has delivered industry-enabling value to our members since SEMI’s beginnings in 1970. It has been essential for SEMI members to grow and prosper locally, while being synchronized globally. As the electronics manufacturing business has become more complex and interdependent, SEMI’s mantra has increasingly been applied across the... » read more

The Problem With Spin-On Carbon Materials


In an integrated circuit manufacturing process, spin-on-carbon (SOC) materials constitute an important layer for the multilayer process to achieve smaller feature size. The SOC layer responds to the photolithography, pattern transformation, substrate planarization, and a variety of other critical processes. A key challenge in selecting a suitable material is that some processes require a hig... » read more

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