Donis Flagello, president, CEO, and COO of Nikon Research Corporation of America (NRCA), will be presented with the 2017 Frits Zernike Award for Microlithography on Monday 27 February during SPIE Advanced Lithography in San Jose, California. The award, presented annually for outstanding accomplishments in microlithography technology, recognizes Flagello’s leading role in understanding and improving image formation in optical lithography for semiconductor manufacturing. A prominent member of the industry since the…
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Photoelectric measure of atomically thin stacks
A team led by researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered a breakthrough in how to measure the electronic structures of stacked 2D semiconductors using the photoelectric (PE) effect. Materials scientists around the world have been investigating various heterostructures to create different 2D materials, and stacking different combinations of 2D materials creates new materials with new properties. The new PE method measures the electronic properties of each layer in…
The New Driver for Semiconductor Tech
Over the past 40 years, the electronics industry has gone through three distinct stage or “waves” of evolution. Last year, in a Solid State Technology webcast presentation, Intel’s Islam Salama described the waves and how the latest wave is driving the semiconductor industry in new and very different ways. Dr. Salama is responsible for packaging substrate pathfinding of high density interconnects across all Intel products. His team focuses on packaging…
XMC becomes YRST or Changjiang Storage
As reported by Digitimes, a major enterprise in Wuhan, China has broken ground on the first of three mega-fabs to produce 3D-NAND chips. The final fab name-plate may ultimately read XMC or YMTC or YRST or possibly Changjiang Storage (not to be confused with GuangDong ChangJiang Storage Battery), but it is over half owned by the Chinese government’s Tsinghua Unigroup. Total investment in XMC/YRST by Tsinghua Unigroup is reported by…
China to be 15% of World Fab Capacity by 2018
Currently there are eight Chinese 300mm-diameter silicon IC fabs in operation as 2016 comes to a close. Chinese IC fab capacity now accounts for approximately 7% of worldwide 300mm capacity, as reported by VLSIresearch in a recent edition of its Critical Subsystems report (https://www.vlsiresearch.com/public/csubs/). This will expand rapidly, as ten are now under construction and two more have been announced. China’s 300mm fabs are located in ten cities. “Total Chinese…
Reliable ICs from unreliable devices
In an article published in the most recent issue of imec’s online magazine (http://magazine.imec.be/) titled “Chips must learn how to feel pain and how to cure themselves,” researchers Francky Chatthoor and Guido Groeseneken discuss how to build reliable “5nm-node” ICs out of inherently unreliable transistors. Variability in “zero time” and “over time” performance of individual transistors cannot be controlled below the “7nm-node” using traditional guard-banding in IC design. “Maybe it…
CSP Market Forecast – Strong
Chip-Scale Packages (CSP) continue to be in strong demand for IC needing the smallest form-factors for applications including automotive, industrial applications to mobile phones and wearable electronics, according to leading market research firm TechSearch International. TechSearch’s latest CSP market forecast shows a 8% CAGR from 2015 to 2020, despite a slowing growth rate for smartphones. One of the categories with the strongest growth is the quad flat no-lead (QFN) package…
Sentimental Feelings – Looking Back and Forward to MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress
By Karen Lightman, Executive Director, MEMS & Sensors Industry Group I’m feeling sentimental as I prepare with the MEMS & Sensors Industry Group (MSIG) team for our annual MEMS & Sensors Executive Congress. Maybe it’s because this will be the last Executive Congress before MSIG becomes a strategic association partner of SEMI (here’s the announcement in case you missed it). I remember the first time we hosted the Congress in…
Dan Rose departs material realm
With sadness I post that Daniel J. Rose, Ph.D.—founder of Rose Associates—passed away on September 20, 2016, due to complications of Alzheimer’s disease. Dan Rose received a Ph.D. in materials engineering from the University of British Columbia, and subsequently spent five years managing packaging manufacturing operations at Fairchild Semiconductor. He worked with and become friends with industry luminaries such as Intel’s founder Robert Noyce, and National Semiconductor’s founder Charlie Sporck.…
Process Watch: Salami slicing your yield
By David W. Price and Douglas G. Sutherland Author’s Note: The Process Watch series explores key concepts about process control—defect inspection and metrology—for the semiconductor industry. Following the previous installments, which examined the 10 fundamental truths of process control, this new series of articles highlights additional trends in process control, including successful implementation strategies and the benefits for IC manufacturing. Introduction In a previous Process Watch article [1], we showed…
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