Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Restrictions on China continue to grow. The Biden Administration is considering more restrictions on selling advanced AI chips to China, according to multiple media reports. Meanwhile, the Dutch government is expected to limit the sale of manufacturing equipment. JIC Capital, the wholly owned subsidiary of Japan Investment Corporation (JIC), will purchase materials company JSR Corp. through ... » read more

Balancing AI And Engineering Expertise In The Fab


Modeling and simulation are playing increasingly critical roles in chip development due to tighter process specs, shrinking process windows, and fierce competition to bring technologies to market first. Before a new device makes it to high-volume manufacturing, there are countless engineering hours spent on developing the lithography, etching, deposition, CMP, and many other processes, at hi... » read more

Preparing For 5G Millimeter Wave And 6G


Cellular technology is about to take a giant leap forward, but the packaging, assembly, and testing of the chips used in 5G millimeter wave and the forthcoming 6G ecosystem will be significantly more complicated than anything used in the past. So far, most 5G devices are still working at sub-6 GHz frequencies. A massive rollout of mmWave technology over the next few years will significantly ... » read more

Week In Review: Semiconductor Manufacturing, Test


Applied Materials sued its Chinese-owned rival, Mattson, over an alleged 14-month effort to steal valuable trade secrets, reports Bloomberg. In court filing, Applied Materials claimed that Mattson engaged in a spree of employee-poaching and covertly transferring semiconductor equipment designs. Global semiconductor materials revenue grew 8.9% to $72.7 billion in 2022, surpassing the previous... » read more

193i Lithography Takes Center Stage…Again


Cutting-edge lithography to create smaller features increasingly is being supplemented by improvements in lithography for mature process nodes, both of which are required as SoCs and complex chips are decomposed and integrated into advanced packages. Until the 7nm era, the primary goal of leading-edge chipmakers was to pack everything onto a single system-on-chip (SoC) using the same process... » read more

Smart Manufacturing Makes Gains In Chip Industry


Lights out manufacturing is gaining steam across the semiconductor industry, accelerating productivity, improving quality, and reducing costs and environment impact. These benefits are the result of years of strategic investments in technologies like machine-to-machine communication, data analytics, and robotics to achieve higher levels of autonomy. Semiconductor factories have long depen... » read more

High-Density Fan-Out Packaging With Fine Pitch Embedded Trace RDL


The needs of high-performance devices for artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC) and data center applications have drastically accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic period. At the same time, the integrated circuit (IC) industry struggles to minimize the silicon technology node to satisfy the endless requirements of computing performance within tight cost constraints. ... » read more

Improving DRAM Device Performance Through Saddle Fin Process Optimization


As DRAM technology nodes have scaled down, access transistor issues have been highlighted due to weak gate controllability. Saddle Fins with Buried Channel Array Transistors (BCAT) have subsequently been introduced to increase channel length, prevent short channel effects, and increase data retention times [1]. However, at technology nodes beyond 20nm, securing sufficient device performance (su... » read more

A Technical Guide To Selecting A Photosensitive Permanent Bonding Material


A photosensitive permanent bonding material enables the creation of high-quality permanent bonds between dissimilar materials used in the creation of MEMS and sensors. Having a thorough understanding of the materials and product performance is crucial to the success of the end application. In this article, we explore nine criteria used to evaluate a polymeric photosensitive permanent bonding ma... » read more

Will CFETs Help The Industry Go Vertical?


Device scaling is getting much harder at each new process node. Even defining what it means is becoming a challenge. In the past, gate length and metal pitch went down and device density went up. Today, this is much harder for several reasons: • Short channel effects limit gate-length scaling; • Parasitic effects limit device density, and • Metal resistance limits metal pitch. So r... » read more

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