Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Packaging and test Advantest and PDF Solutions have launched their first jointly developed offering since forming a partnership in 2020. The new product is called the Advantest Cloud Solutions Dynamic Parametric Test (ACS DPT) solution. It integrates PDF Solutions’ Exensio portfolio of data analytics with Advantest’s V93000 Parametric Test System. The ACS DPT solution is designed to op... » read more

Benefits Of Being A B-Corp. In The Tech Industry


Becoming a Certified B Corporation comes with many benefits, most of them extending beyond the walls of the company and into the hands of employees, community members, and industry partners. The designation makes the meticulous and rigorous process to certification well worth the endeavor. In 2021, Brewer Science announced that it’s the first company in the semiconductor industry to become... » read more

System-In-Package Thrives In The Shadows


IC packaging continues to play a big role in the development of new electronic products, particularly with system-in-package (SiP), a successful approach that continues to gain momentum — but mostly under the radar because it adds a competitive edge. With a SiP, several chips and other components are integrated into a package, enabling it to function as an electronic system or sub-system. ... » read more

Are Surfaces Of Silicon Hardmasks Adaptive?


Silicon hardmask (Si-HM) materials used in lithography processes play a critical role in transferring patterns to desired substrates. In addition, these materials allow for the tuning of optical properties such as reflectivity and optical distribution for better lithography. Si-HM materials also need to possess good compatibility with photoresists before and after optical exposure, during which... » read more

Angstrom-Level Measurements With AFMs


Competition is heating up in the atomic force microscopy (AFM) market, where several vendors are shipping new AFM systems that address various metrology challenges in packaging, semiconductors and other fields. AFM, a small but growing field that has been under the radar, involves a standalone system that provides surface measurements on structures down to the angstrom level. (1 angstrom = 0... » read more

Marangoni Effect-Based Under-Layer For A Dual Damascene Via-First Approach


One of the main challenges of a Dual Damascene (DD) via-first process is the control of the Critical Dimensions (CDs) in the lithography of the trenches. The PhotoResist (PhR) thickness presents variations from the via arrays to the open areas, which cause the variation of CDs: the swing effect. The planarization of a DD via-first process is reported. A dual-layer solution is used to demonst... » read more

Week In Review: Auto, Security, Pervasive Computing


Automotive SGS-TÜV Saar certified that Cadence’s Tensilica Xtensa processors with FlexLock meets the ISO 26262:2018 standard to ASIL-D level. The new FlexLock feature is key to the certification because it supports lockstep, a fault-tolerant method that runs the same operation on two cores at the same time and then compares the output. Any difference in the output can be examined for issues... » read more

Eco-Friendly Initiatives For Semiconductor Sustainability


Global warming is a hot topic lately, pun intended, contributing to an over 2-degree temperature increase in the last two centuries—which might not seem significant until you factor in the larger stress it puts on our ecosystem (and economy): fire threats, water shortages, and increases in natural disasters. In the last four decades, damages from climate disasters have cost the US 2 trillion... » read more

Piecing Together Chiplets


Several companies are implementing the chiplet model as a means to develop next-generation 3D-like chip designs, but this methodology still has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream for the rest of the industry. It takes several pieces to bring up a 3D chip design using the chiplet model. A few large players have the pieces, though most are proprietary. Others are missing some key co... » read more

Underlayer Optimization Method For EUV Lithography


Photoresist and underlayer combine to serve a central role in EUVL for patterning. Layers will be very thin in future, because high numerical aperture (NA) and tight pitches will require very thin layers in the lithography stack. This thinness will make chemical interactions at the photoresist-underlayer interface more common. Adhesion between these layers will be critical to overcome pattern c... » read more

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