The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Intel has announced plans to invest more than $7 billion to complete its previously-announced fab in Chandler, Ariz. The fab was announced several years ago, but Intel delayed the plant in 2014. Now, the plant, dubbed Fab 42, is moving forward again. Targeted for 7nm technology, Fab 42 will be completed in 3 to 4 years and will create approximately 3,000 jobs. The announcement was m... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Feb. 7


The University of California at Santa Barbara claims to have developed the world’s smallest hammer. The technology, dubbed the μHammer or microHammer, is geared for biomedical research. With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the tiny hammer will allow researchers to get a cellular-level understanding when force is applied to brain cells. The project is part of the U.S.-b... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Manufacturing Veeco Instruments has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Ultratech. With the deal, Veeco will enter into the lithography market for chip-packaging as well as the laser spike anneal business. Veeco is a supplier of MOCVD tools. The implied total transaction value is approximately $815 million and the implied enterprise value is approximately $550 million. FlexTech, a SE... » read more

Rethinking Stats In Manufacturing Equipment


Consolidation, slower market growth due to increasing complexity, and extended lead times have prompted SEMI to drop its book-to-bill reports. Long considered the best way to assess the health of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment business, the industry organization now views the book-to-bill report as far less valuable than in the past. "At the leading edge, there are only a handf... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: Jan. 31


Fiber-imprint patterning The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)--a research institute/university in Lausanne, Switzerland--has put a new twist in nano-imprint patterning technology. It has devised a way to imprint tiny or nano-metric patterns on hollow polymer fiber. Using a technique called thermal drawing, tiny patterns can be printed on both the inside and the outside of ... » read more

BEOL Issues At 10nm And 7nm


Semiconductor Engineering sat down to discuss problems with the back end of line at leading-edge nodes with Craig Child, senior manager and deputy director for [getentity id="22819" e_name="GlobalFoundries'"] advanced technology development integration unit; Paul Besser, senior technology director at [getentity id="22820" comment="Lam Research"]; David Fried, CTO at [getentity id="22210" e_name... » read more

Managing Parasitics For Transistor Performance


The basic equations describing transistor behavior rely on parameters like channel doping, the capacitance of the gate oxide, and the resistance between the source and drain and the channel. And for most of the IC industry's history, these have been sufficient. “Parasitic” or “external” resistances and capacitances from structures outside the transistor have been small enough to discoun... » read more

The Week In Review: Manufacturing


Chipmakers Faced with a huge write-down at its nuclear operations, Toshiba is looking to spin off its semiconductor division, which makes NAND. As expected, Toshiba seeks investors in the new company, according to Nikkei. Western Digital (WD) is one potential investor. Foxconn is another possible investor, according to CNBC. Peregrine Semiconductor has rolled out its latest RF SOI process.... » read more

New Techniques To Analyze And Reduce Etch Variation


Time division multiplex (TDM) plasma etch processes (commonly referred to as Deep Reactive ION Etching [“DRIE”]) use alternating deposition and etch steps cyclically to produce high aspect ratio structures on a silicon substrate. These etch processes have been widely applied in the manufacturing of silicon MEMS devices, and more recently in creating through silicon vias in 3D silicon struct... » read more

New Embedded Memories Ahead


The embedded memory market is beginning to heat up, fueled by a new wave of microcontrollers (MCUs) and related chips that will likely require new and more capable nonvolatile memory types. The industry is moving on several different fronts in the embedded memory landscape. On one front, traditional solutions are advancing. On another front, several vendors are positioning the next-generatio... » read more

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