As reported in more detail at Solid State Technology, during the IEEE IITC now happening in Grenoble, imec and Lam showed a new Electroless Deposition (ELD) cobalt (Co) process that is claimed to provide void-free bottoms-up pre-filling of vias and…
IoT, Healthcare and 5G to Drive RF and Microwave
Industry trends to the Internet of Things, advanced healthcare and 5G are good news for everyone involved in technologies associated with RF, microwave, millimeter wave, and THz frequencies, many of whom will be attending “Microwave Week” in Phoenix, May 17-22.
CMP Slurry Trade-offs in R&D
As covered at SemiMD.com, the CMP Users Group (of the Northern California Chapter of The American Vacuum Society) recently held a meeting in Albany, New York in collaboration with CNSE, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, and SEMATECH. Among the presentations were deep…
Karen’s Hamburg MEMS Roadtrip – A Great Gig
My favorite kind of business travel is when I can combine it with either a visit with friends/family or a site visit to a MEMS Industry Group (MIG) member company. This month, before I headed to Copenhagen to host MEMS Executive Congress Europe 2015, I had the pleasure of doing both.
Batteries? We don’t need no stinking batteries.
We’re still used to thinking that low-power chips for “mobile” or “Internet-of-Things (IoT)” applications will be battery powered…but the near ubiquity of lithium-ion cells powering batteries could be threatened by capacitors and energy-harvesting circuits connected to photovoltaic/thermoelectric/piezoelectric micro-power sources. At…
IoT and The ConFab 2015
The keynotes and other key speakers have been announced for The ConFab 2015, to be held May 19-22 at The Encore at The Wynn in Las Vegas.
Oscar for DMD Inventor Hornbeck
Kudos to Dr. Larry J. Hornbeck, the extended team at Texas Instruments (TI) that has worked on Digital Micromirror Device (DMD) technology, and to the TI executives who continued to fund the R&D through years of initial investment losses. Hornbeck…
Reframing the Roadmap: ITRS 2.0
The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductor (ITRS) is being reframed to focus more on end applications, such as smartphones and micro-servers. Labeled ITRS 2.0, the new roadmap is a departure from a strong focus maintaining the path defined by Moore’s Law.
Micro-Buckled 3D Silicon Scaffolds
A new silicon microstructural solution announced this month is so powerful in creating 3D patterns from 2D surface machining that I just have to share. The figure shows 3D silicon microstructures formed by compressive buckling. The method can be used…
Exponentially Rising Costs Will Bring Changes
Scott McGregor, President and CEO of Broadcom, sees some major changes for the semiconductor industry moving forward, brought about by rising design and manufacturing costs.
