Manufacturing Bits: Aug. 4


Advancing rheometry The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has developed a new technology that could advance the field of rheometry. More specifically, NIST has developed a new and advanced capillary rheometer. Rheometry is the study of the flow of liquids, gases or matter in systems. A capillary rheometer is an instrument, which measures the flow properties and shear vis... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 28


Nanoscale IR imaging The Nanooptics Group at CIC nanoGUNE has made some major advances in the emerging field of nanoscale infrared microscopy. The group’s technology, called nano-FTIR spectroscopy, is an infrared characterization technique. Infrared (IR) isn’t new. Invisible to the human eye, infrared wavelengths range between 760nm to 1,000nm. For years, infrared inspection/metrology h... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 21


Intel’s next-gen MRAM At the recent 2020 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, Intel presented a paper on a CMOS-compatible spin-orbit torque MRAM (SOT-MRAM) device. Still in R&D, SOT-MRAM is a next-generation MRAM designed to replace SRAM. Generally, processors integrate a CPU, SRAM and a variety of other functions. SRAM stores instructions that are rapidly needed by the processo... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 14


Complementary FETs At the recent 2020 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, Imec presented a paper on a 3D complementary field-effect transistor (CFET) made on 300mm wafers. As a demonstration vehicle, Imec showed a CFET based on a 14nm process. Ideally, though, CFETs are next-generation transistors that are targeted for the 1nm node in the future. On the transistor front, chipmaker... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 6


Luminosity record Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) has regained the world’s record for the highest luminosity achieved in a particle accelerator, beating the previous mark by CERN. KEK achieved the record in the SuperKEKB, a giant storage ring that combines an electron-positron collider with an advanced detector. This system is designed to explore fundamental ... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 30


1μm pitch wafer bonding At the recent IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), Imec presented a paper on a fine-pitch hybrid wafer-to-wafer bonding technology for heterogeneous integration. Imec described a way to enable hybrid bond pitches down to 1μm using a novel Cu/SiCN (copper/silicon-carbon-nitrogen) surface topography. Today, the industry is developing or shi... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 23


Fan-out gas sensors At the recent IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Indian Institute of Science presented a paper on the development of a wearable MEMS gas sensor device based on a flexible wafer-level fan-out packaging technology. Researchers have demonstrated a gas sensor device or a personal environment... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 16


GaN power modules Gallium-nitride (GaN) devices are emerging in several markets, such as power semiconductors and RF. GaN, a binary III-V compound, is a wide-bandgap technology, meaning it is faster and more efficient than silicon-based devices. GaN has 10 times the breakdown field strength with double the electron mobility than silicon. Generally, some GaN vendors don’t use a traditio... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 8


Maskless EUV lithography At this week’s 2020 EUVL Workshop, KJ Innovation will present more details about its efforts to develop a maskless extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology. Still in R&D, KJ Innovation’s maskless EUV technology involves a high-numerical aperture (high-NA) system with 2 million individual write beams. The 0.55 NA technology is targeted for direct-write l... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: June 2


EUV lithography in outer space The U.S. space program made history on May 31, 2020, when NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft arrived at the International Space Station (ISS). This is the first time a commercial spacecraft has delivered astronauts to the ISS. The ISS serves as a research lab for companies, government agencies and universiti... » read more

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