Semiconductors

People can be good at hiding strain, and we’re not alone. Solar cells have the same talent. For a solar cell, physical strain within its microscopic crystalline structure can interrupt its core function — converting sunlight into electricity — by essentially “losing” energy as heat. For an emerging type of solar cell, known as lead halide perovskites, reducing and taming this loss is key to improving efficiency and putting the perovskites on par with today’s silicon solar cells.In order to understand where strain builds up within a solar cell and triggers the energy loss, scientists must visualize the underlying grain structure of perovskite crystals within the solar cell. But the best approach involves bombarding the solar cell with high-energy electrons, which essentially burns the solar cell and renders it useless.

Gigaphoton Inc. (Head Office: Oyama, Tochigi; President & CEO: Katsumi Uranaka), a manufacturer of light sources used in semiconductor lithography, announced the establishment and start of business for a new company GIGAPHOTON CHINA Inc. in China. Up until now, Gigaphoton’s service support in China has been conducted by Komatsu Industries Shanghai Ltd.’s optical machinery division. To expand business in China and strengthen governance, Gigaphoton China Inc. has been established as a subsidiary of Komatsu China Ltd., the regional headquarters of Komatsu, which is the parent company of Gigaphoton. Effective November 1, control of operations is transferred from Komatsu Industries Shanghai Ltd. to Gigaphoton China Inc.

At the recently concluded TECHCET Critical Materials Council (CMC) Seminar in Taoyuan, Taiwan, a diverse gathering of industry experts discussed materials value-chain topics including quality issues, logistics best practices, and geopolitical disruptions. Seminar participants included individuals from device makers, material suppliers, and equipment and component providers from China, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the U.S.

Innovative Foundry Technologies LLC (IFT) announced today that it has resolved patent litigation with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), which now triggers the beginning of the second wave of IFT’s foundry licensing program. The first wave of IFT’s multinational licensing program focused on TSMC and UMC in Germany, China and the United States. IFT launched this first wave in December 2018, when it initiated suit against Texas Instruments (TI), Volkswagen, and Ford in Dusseldorf, Germany, based on their use of UMC-manufactured OMAP processors, which IFT alleged infringe its patented technology. IFT later added UMC to the Dusseldorf action in August 2019.

GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) and TSMC today announced they are dismissing all litigation between them as well as those that involve any of their customers. The companies have agreed to a broad life-of-patents cross-license to each other’s worldwide existing semiconductor patents as well as those patents that will be filed during the next ten years as both companies continue to invest significantly in semiconductor research and development. This resolution guarantees GF and TSMC freedom to operate and ensures that their respective customers will continue to have access to each foundry’s complete array of technologies and services.

A University of Wyoming researcher and his team have shown that the spin Seebeck effect (SSE) can be used to detect light across a broad optical range – ultraviolet through visible to near-infrared. This work has future implications on novel spin current-based technologies. The SSE is one of three known ways to generate spin current, or a net movement of particle magnet moments. The SSE occurs when a thermal gradient is created across a material and, depending on how it is measured, results in an electrical potential. However, unlike its electrical analog, the SSE has been generated not just in ferromagnetic metals – such as cobalt, iron and nickel — and semiconductors, but also in magnetic insulators, making it widely applicable.

AKHAN Semiconductor, a technology company specializing in the fabrication and application of lab-grown, electronics-grade diamond, announced today issuances by both the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and Japan Patent Office (JPO) of patents covering AKHAN’s next-generation n-type diamond semiconductor system and diamond-based multilayer antireflective coating systems, key in military & aerospace sensor and detector applications, amongst others. The granted and issued patents, 6580644 in Japan and 10,422,928 & 10,410,860 in the US, are key additions to AKHAN’s breakthrough Miraj Diamond® intellectual property portfolio, and enable breakthrough performance in semiconductor devices as well as new capabilities in optical sensing, detecting, and transmission.

Credo, a global innovation leader in Serializer-Deserializer (SerDes) technology which delivers high performance, low power connectivity solutions for 100G, 400G, and 800G port enabled networks, today announced the appointment of David Zinsner to Credo’s Board of Directors. He is currently Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU). Zinsner joined Micron in February 2018 with more than 20 years of financial and operations experience in the semiconductor and technology industry, after serving as President and Chief Operating Officer at Affirmed Networks. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Finance and Chief Financial Officer at Analog Devices.