Texas Instruments has a new silicon-germanium (SiGe) complementary bipolar-CMOS manufacturing process (BiCom-III) that increases speeds up to 3x over other currently available complementary bipolar processes. The new SiGe process is claimed as the industry's first to integrate both NPN- and PNP-type bipolar transistors. This reduces noise by 50% noise for operational amplifiers and other high-performance mixed signal products. The process also used silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and deep trench isolation. The 0.4micron emitter NPN and PNP transistors are rated at 30kV and 10kV, respectively.

The process was developed in company facilities in Freising, Germany. Final
qualification is due in Q3 2002 with 200mm volume manufacturing by the end
of the year.

University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers claim a 34% improved
performance from chips cooled by a water liquid-spray over conventional
methods.
The heat is removed by combining the effects of convection with
vaporisation. More traditional methods include liquid immersion or
forced-convective (fan) cooling. The components of heat disbursed by
convection and vaporisation were about equal. Atomising the liquid increases
the surface area, increasing evaporation. The top surface of the silicon
dies were coated with Parylene-C, a conformal polymer with excellent
dielectric properties.
The 4.86x1.53mm nozzle matrix consists of 28x18 holes. The array was
constructed to match the active cells of the chip. The 35micron nozzle
matrix was built in silicon using reactive ion etch (RIE) techniques.
The UCLA method creates a microspray for each individual chip. Previous
spray-cooling in electronics has been more global at the board level. The
team tested the technique with two types of power chip - insulated bipolar
gate transistors (IGBTs) and LD-MOSFETs. The 34% improvement came with the
IGBTs. The same technique on the LD-MOSFET was "an order of magnitude more
effective at removing heat". Spray-cooling a 60W RF power amp disburses
about 20W of heat.
Generally, chips begin to fail at 150C and cease to function at 200C. Such
conditions are a major challenge where power amplification takes place. Of
particular interest to the researchers were applications for unmanned aerial
vehicles working in desert conditions where temperatures can vary by as much
as 100C between day and night. Such conditions "lead to very high
temperatures - too high for silicon to survive," says Professor Elliott
Brown, a leader of the research.
The next application up for investigation is widebandgap semiconductors that
run even hotter than LD-MOSFETs.
The results were presented at the Intersociety Conference on Thermal and
Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems in June (San Diego).

ASM International's US subsidiary will collaborate with materials analysis
company Accurel Systems International to open a secondary ion mass
spectrometry (SIMS) laboratory. The facility will be sited on ASM's Arizona
campus. Accurel will provide on-site SIMS support for the development of
ASM's Epsilon reactor and for customer demonstrations. Accurel has
particular expertise in analysis of SiGe.

Agilent Technologies has a new family of colour and monochrome CMOS image
sensors. The sensors are supplied in a 25% smaller and 50% thinner
surface-mount package than previous versions. The VGA colour image sensors
measure 640x480 pixels and the CIF monochrome sensors 352x288pixels. There
are four new devices available in production volumes.