The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Materials and equipment A scandal has rocked Japan’s Kobe Steel. The company disclosed that it has falsified inspection data for iron powder, aluminum and copper products that were sent to over 200 customers in the automotive, electronics, transportation and other sectors. The falsified data involves 20,000 tones of products, according to reports. Kobe apologized for the issues and provided ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 10


5/2 fractional states Using a powerful magnet, Columbia University has observed a quantum particle in a bilayer graphene material, an event referred to as a 5/2 fractional quantum state. The observation could bring the industry closer to quantum computing. More specifically, researchers from Columbia said that they have observed “an anomaly in condensed matter physics—the even-denominat... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Test, measurement and fab tools National Instruments (NI) has released a report that explores the future trends in the electronics industry. The report, called the NI Trend Watch 2018, looks at the technological advances and some of the biggest challenges engineers face in 2018. The report from NI looks at the following topics—machine learning; test challenges for 5G; IIoT; and effects of... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Oct. 3


Making buckypaper The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology has developed a process that will transform carbon nanotube powder into so-called buckypaper. Buckypaper is a thin sheet made from carbon nanotubes. They are sometimes known as multi-walled carbon nanotube sheets. Meanwhile, carbon nanotubes are tube-shaped materials, which are 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of human ... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Who will buy Toshiba’s memory business? In the latest of what is becoming a confusing saga, Toshiba has signed a deal to sell its memory unit to a group led by Bain Capital. The Bain-led consortium will hold a 49.9% stake in the memory unit, while Toshiba will hold 40.2% and Japan’s Hoya will own 9.9%. Other members in the group include Apple, Dell, Kingston, and Seagate. In add... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Sept. 26


Electrical twisted yarn The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the University of Texas at Dallas and Hanyan University in South Korea have developed a twisted yarn technology that can be used to generate or harvest electrical energy. The technology, dubbed “twistron” yarn, incorporates twisted bundles of tiny coiled carbon nanotubes. The nanotube-based twistron yarn works in con... » read more

Looming Issues And Tradeoffs For EUV


Momentum is building for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, but there are still some major challenges to solve before this long-overdue technology can be used for mass production. [gettech id="31045" comment="EUV"] lithography—a next-generation technology that patterns tiny features on a chip—was supposed to move into production around 2012. But over the years, EUV has encountered se... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers GlobalFoundries has asked European antitrust regulators to investigate TSMC over alleged unfair competition, according to a report from Reuters. Commenting on the report, a spokeswoman for GlobalFoundries said: “We are not surprised that the European Commission is looking into anti-competitive market practices and abusive conduct in the semiconductor sector. The semiconductor indu... » read more

The Materials Gap


When consolidation thinned the ranks of semiconductor foundries and equipment makers, materials companies figured things were about to get better. They haven't. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, semiconductors are now so complex and difficult to develop that a slew of innovations are required on all sides. Everyone is familiar with transistor structures, interconnects and lithog... » read more

5 Takeaways From SEMI’s SMC


At the recent Strategic Materials Conference (SMC), there were a multitude of presentations on a number of subjects. The event, sponsored by SEMI, had presentations on the IC industry, market drivers, electronic materials and other subjects. In no particular order, here are my five takeaways from SMC: Materials M&A mania Last year, the IC industry experienced a dizzying array of merger ... » read more

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