Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Node scaling wars are revving up, although much of the action is happening where most people can't see it — inside of research labs. This is difficult stuff, which makes delivery dates difficult to pinpoint, and no one wants to give away their competitive position or commit to a timeline they can't keep. Billions of dollars of leading-edge research — funded by pure-play foundry TSMC, IDM... » read more

Ways To Address The Materials Crunch


Stellar growth over the last two years and the seemingly insatiable demand for chips, at least through 2025, is sparking massive investment by chip firms — as much as $500B over the next five years. But without significant boosts in raw materials, parts for tools, and silicon to fuel facilities, such numbers are unlikely to be met. Materials are the Achilles heel to the rapidly expanding c... » read more

Variation Making Trouble In Advanced Packages


Variation is becoming increasingly problematic as chip designs become more heterogeneous and targeted by application, making it difficult to identify the root cause of problems or predict what can go wrong and when. Concerns about variation traditionally have been confined to the most advanced nodes, where transistor density is highest and where manufacturing processes are still being fine-t... » read more

High-NA EUV May Be Closer Than It Appears


High-NA EUV is on track to enable scaling down to the Angstrom level, setting the stage for chips with even higher transistor counts and a whole new wave of tools, materials, and system architectures. At the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Mark Phillips, director of lithography hardware and solutions at Intel, reiterated the company’s intention to deploy the technology in high... » read more

Chipmaking In The Third Dimension


Every few months, new and improved electronics are introduced. They’re typically smaller, smarter, faster, have more bandwidth, are more power-efficient, etc. — all thanks to a new generation of advanced chips and processors. Our digital society has come to expect this steady drip of new devices as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow. Behind the scenes, however, engineers are working feve... » read more

Packaging Solutions For Unique Markets


The MicroLeadframe (MLF/QFN) packaging technology is the fastest growing IC packaging solution today. From a market segment perspective, MLF packaging solutions represent a >111B-unit market for 2022 across 5 unique markets: automotive, consumer, industrial, computing/networking, and communications. The package solution requirements across these markets varies but, the fundamental values the... » read more

Quantum Computers And CMOS Semiconductors: A Review And Future Predictions


With the advent of quantum computing, the need for peripheral fault-tolerant logic control circuitry has reached new heights. In classical computation, the unit of information is a “1” or “0”. In quantum computers, the unit of information is a qubit which can be characterized as a “0”, “1”, or a superposition of both values (known as a “superimposed state”). The control c... » read more

Small Molecule Analysis Testing: Liquid Chromatography Versus Gas Chromatography


Chromatography is a process for separating components of a mixture for analysis. This is a component of our small molecule analysis testing and plays a critical part in identifying and quantifying impurities. It is also crucial in screening raw materials for identification, to ensure the quality and safety of products, as well as evaluate reactions by looking at residual analytes to better unde... » read more

Revising 5G RF Calibration Procedures For RF IC Production Testing


Modern radio frequency (RF) components introduce many challenges to outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) suppliers whose objective is to ensure products are assembled and tested to meet the product test specifications. The growing advancement and demand for RF products for cellphones, navigational instruments, global positioning systems, Wi-Fi, receiver/transmitter (Rx/Tx) componen... » read more

High-Temperature Stable Spin-On Carbon Materials For Advanced Pattern Transfer Applications


In recent years a strong demand has arisen for spin-on carbon (SOC) materials compatible with high-temperature processes. This requirement is to enable usage of high-temperature SOC (HTSOC) materials in integration schemes utilizing chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and/or atomic layer deposition (ALD) processes. In addition to compatibility with the high-temperature deposition processes, planari... » read more

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