category: Top Stories

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Will CFETs Help The Industry Go Vertical?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 15 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

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

Etch Processes Push Toward Higher Selectivity, Cost Control
By Laura Peters - 18 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

Plasma etching is perhaps the most essential process in semiconductor manufacturing, and possibly the most complex of all fab operations next to photolithography. Nearly half of all fab steps rely on a plasma, an energetic ionized gas, to do their work. Despite ever-shrinking transistor and memory cells, engineers continue to deliver reliable etch processes. “To sustainably create chips... » read more

Challenges Grow For Creating Smaller Bumps For Flip Chips
By Anne Meixner - 18 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

New bump structures are being developed to enable higher interconnect densities in flip-chip packaging, but they are complex, expensive, and increasingly difficult to manufacture. For products with high pin counts, flip-chip [1] packages have long been a popular choice because they utilize the whole die area for interconnect. The technology has been in use since the 1970s, starting with IBM�... » read more

Managing Yield With EUV Lithography And Stochastics
By Katherine Derbyshire - 18 May, 2023 - Comments: 1

Identifying issues that actually affect yield is becoming more critical and more difficult at advanced nodes, but there is progress. Although they are closely related, yield management and process control are not the same. Yield management seeks to maximize the number of functioning devices at the end of the line. Process control focuses on keeping each individual device layer within its des... » read more

New Standards Push Co-Packaged Optics
By Karen Heyman - 26 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

Co-packaged optics (CPOs) promise five times the bandwidth of pluggable connections, but the new architecture requires multiple changes to accommodate different applications. The Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) recently published standards for co-packaged optics, which are the photonic industry’s hope for handling today’s faster Ethernet interfaces, as well as increasing speeds and p... » read more

Assist Layers: The Unsung Heroes of EUV Lithography
By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

Most discussions of advanced lithography focus on three elements — the exposure system, photomasks, and photoresists — but that's only part of the challenge. Successfully transferring a pattern from the photomask to a physical structure on the wafer also depends on a variety of films working together, including the underlayers, the developers, and a variety of surface treatments. In fact... » read more

Smarter Ways To Manufacture Chips
By Anne Meixner - 20 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

OSAT and wafer fabs are beginning to invest in Industry 4.0 solutions in order to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs, but it's a complicated process that involves setting up frameworks to evaluate different options and goals. Semiconductor manufacturing facilities have relied on dedicated automation teams for decades. These teams track and schedule chip production, respond to equi... » read more

Nanoimprint Finally Finds Its Footing
By Gregory Haley - 20 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 2

Nanoimprint lithography, which for decades has trailed behind traditional optical lithography, is emerging as the technology of choice for the rapidly growing photonics and biotech chips markets. First introduced in the mid-1990s, nanoimprint lithography (NIL) has consistently been touted as a lower-cost alternative to traditional optical lithography. Even today, NIL potentially is capable o... » read more

Power Semiconductors: A Deep Dive Into Materials, Manufacturing & Business
By The SE Staff - 03 Apr, 2023 - Comments: 0

Whether you’re the owner of the average smartphone, commuting on trains, or driving around in a Tesla, you use power semiconductor devices every day. In a technology-dependent world, these devices are everywhere, and demand for more types of chips using different materials is growing. In the past, most engineers paid little attention to power semiconductors. They were deemed commodity, off... » read more

Big Changes Ahead In Power Delivery, Materials, And Interconnects
By Laura Peters - 22 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Part one of this forecast looked at evolving transistor architectures and lithography platforms. This report examines revolutions in interconnects and packaging. When it comes to device interconnects, it’s hard to beat copper. Its low resistivity and high reliability have served the industry exceedingly well as both on-chip interconnect and wires between chips. But in logic chips, with int... » read more

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