It’s A Materials World


By Mark LaPedus At a recent event, Intel’s fab materials guru described a nightmarish occurrence that nearly brought the chip giant to its knees. Tim Hendry, director of fab materials and vice president of the Technology and Manufacturing Group at Intel, said the company obtained a critical material from an undisclosed supplier. “This large sub-supplier, a very large chemical company, m... » read more

The Week In Review: Aug. 12


By Mark LaPedus Is the sky falling on semi capital spending? “We have seen several 2014 industry demand estimates in the 20%+ range, based on the ramps of FinFET and 3D NAND,” said Weston Twigg, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities. “We expect Samsung to ramp spending in Q4, but we believe foundry and logic spending will remain soft for several quarters. As a result, we are developin... » read more

The Week In Review: Aug 5


By Mark LaPedus According to a nationwide online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Crucial.com, 36% of those Americans who experienced PC problems in the past six months admit they have lashed out at their slow, underperforming computers by using profanity, screaming and shouting, or by striking it with a fist or other object. Those who experienced computer problems also indi... » read more

Materials, Software And Techniques


The future of advanced semiconductor technology is about to split evenly into three different areas. On the leading edge of manufacturing, Applied Materials CEO Mike Splinter called it correctly—it’s all about materials. Just shrinking features isn’t buying much anymore. In fact, at advanced nodes, with extra margin built into designs, it frequently doesn’t buy anything except extra ... » read more

The Alphabet Soup Of New Material Science


By Joanne Itow Escaping the scorching Arizona temperatures is only one reason why I always look forward to Semicon West. This year’s event was packed with an exceptional variety of activities and vendors. What was the most memorable take-away from the show? There were plenty of panels, presentation and networking discussions on the 450mm wafer transition and EUV. But the biggest thing that I... » read more

High NA EUV Litho May Require Larger Photomask Size


By Jeff Chappell With extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) potentially being used in pilot production in a few years, it raises the question of larger photomasks sizes—will the industry need them, and if so, when? While there has been discussion of late about the possible need to transition to a larger mask size, veterans of the mask business may feel it's déjà vu all over again. Back... » read more

450mm: Out Of Sync


By Mark LaPedus The IC industry has been talking about it for ages, but vendors are finally coming to terms with a monumental shift in the business. The vast changes involve a pending and critical juncture, where the 450mm wafer size transition, new device architectures and other technologies will likely converge at or near the same time. In one possible scenario, 450mm fabs are projected ... » read more

MEMS Foundries Play Waiting Game


By Mark LaPedus For years, the foundries in the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) business have been patiently waiting for the MEMS integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) to outsource some or all of their production. The MEMS foundries are still waiting for that development. Because MEMS are custom devices tuned to a proprietary process and toolset, IDMs still prefer to use their own f... » read more

Mobility Gets A Boost With Expanded Epi Applications


By Jeremy Zelenko Even as industry moves into the era of the high k metal gate (HKMG) and FinFET transistor, chipmakers continue to seek ways to improve device performance. One of the latest advances and the subject of an Applied Materials announcement made today is to extend epitaxial deposition from PMOS to NMOS transistors. Implementing an NMOS epitaxy (epi) process in addition to the estab... » read more

Seeing Spots At 10nm


By Ed Sperling The relentless march to smaller process nodes means the defects are getting smaller, more numerous, and much harder to find. That explains why Applied Materials and KLA-Tencor both introduced new defect review and classification tools last week. The move to the 1x nm is on the top of both companies’ agendas, and with that comes defects on the walls of finFETs in addition to... » read more

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