News

Wednesday 26th February 2003

The worldwide semiconductor market is forecast to grow 8.9% in 2003, with revenue totalling $167bn, up from $153.4bn in 2002, according to quarterly forecast estimates from Gartner Dataquest. The slowdown at the end of 2002 is continuing in Q1 2003.

Wednesday 26th February 2003

Intel plans to convert its 200mm Fab 12 to 300mm production. The facility is located in Arizona. Costs for the conversion project are estimated at $2bn.

Wednesday 26th February 2003

DRAM companies have been announcing chips and modules compliant with the double data rate 400Mbits/sec (DDR400) specification. Among the chip manufacturers with DDR400 products are Germanys Infineon Technologies, South Koreas Samsung and Hynix and Japans Elpida (former joint venture of NEC and Hitachi).

Monday 24th February 2003

Ashland Electronic Chemicals is to be the primary outsourcing manufacturer for ASMLs Thermal division under a multi-year contract. The agreement includes responsibility for sourcing and procurement of all materials, and assembly and testing of all toolsets. ASML Thermal offers large-batch and single-wafer thermal processing furnaces and atmospheric pressure chemical vapour deposition (APCVD) systems.

Monday 24th February 2003

Concrete results from the European Commissions nanotechnology projects from the Fifth Framework (FP5) programme have been put up on the Commissions Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) website.

Friday 21st February 2003

Taiwans National Central University (NCU) has reported successful operation of electrically pumped violet laser diodes, developed on their Aixtron AIX 200/4 RF deposition system.

Friday 21st February 2003

What started as research into transistor reliability could lead to a new silicon chip based "nano-lamp". A scientist at Netherlands University of Twente, Phuong Le Minh, found that a controlled breakdown in semiconductor oxide layers of the transistor/antifuse structure of memory cells can emit light.

Friday 21st February 2003

Researchers have used the highly conductive surface layer induced in diamond by hydrogen termination to create in-plane gate transistors (Applied Physics Letters, February 10, 2003). Oxidised lines of 100nm blocked of leakage current down to 0.3pA/micron at 100V at room temperature.

Friday 21st February 2003

TriQuint Semiconductor has completed a 1100m2 test facility in Tianjin, China. Sawtek, a TriQuint subsidiary, will operate the plant, providing assembly, test, mark, tape and reel support for cellphone products. TriQuint began construction on the facility in November 2002.

Friday 21st February 2003

Mattson Technology has signed a definitive agreement to sell its Wet Products division to SCP Global Technologies, a wet processing equipment provider. The sale is subject to certain conditions with closure due Q1 2003. As part of the transaction, Mattson Technology will retain the rights to all future royalty and settlement payments under a legal agreement with Dainippon Screen Manufacturing.

Friday 21st February 2003

JMAR Technologies is to reorganise and sell some operations. JMAR Research, JMAR/SAL NanoLithography, and JMAR Semiconductor will be merged into one corporation with three divisions (Research, Systems and Microelectronics, respectively). JMAR Precision Systems - a motion and metrology equipment manufacturing operation - will be sold.

Friday 21st February 2003

IC Insights is forecasting an average annual growth rate for the compound semiconductor IC market of 22% for the period 2002-2007. The expectation for the total IC market is 10% for the same duration.

Friday 21st February 2003

US cleanroom environment supplier Daw Technologies and its sister company Daw Process Systems have opened a new office in South Wales, UK.

Friday 21st February 2003

University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) researchers have developed a method for growing conducting polymers called Surface Polymerisation of Ion-Assisted Deposition or SPIAD (Journal of the American Chemical Society, online since February 6 and in print March 5, 2003).

Friday 21st February 2003

French microsystem supplier MEMSCAP announced a global reorganisation "in order to better adapt and react to the market evolution". The company is hoping to achieve positive earnings before interest and tax from Q4 this year.

Friday 21st February 2003

The Europractice IC Service has launched a service that it says reduces the minimum for fabrication costs by a factor of up to ten. The new [email protected] programme will enable universities and research laboratories worldwide to fabricate very small designs at a cost of a few hundred euro.

Thursday 20th February 2003

Infineon Technologies and Saifun Semiconductors of Israel have set up Infineon Technologies Flash GmbH & Co. KG to develop Flash memory products. The joint venture has plans to integrate DRAM and Flash expertise. Infineon Flash stems from the Ingentix joint venture set up in 2001 by Infineon and Saifun. Infineon now holds 70% of the joint venture with headquarters in Dresden, Germany. As a result it is expected that 40 new jobs will be created in the area.

Thursday 20th February 2003

DRAM companies have been announcing chips and modules compliant with the double data rate 400Mbits/sec (DDR400) specification. Among the chip manufacturers with DDR400 products are Germanys Infineon Technologies, South Koreas Samsung and Hynix and Japans Elpida (former joint venture of NEC and Hitachi).

Thursday 20th February 2003

Researchers from Munich-based universities and from German chemical company Covion have developed a class of electroluminescent (EL) polymers that can be patterned in a way similar to standard lithography photoresists (Nature, February 20, 2003). In other words, the polymer is spin coated onto a substrate and then photographically patterned and processed.

Wednesday 19th February 2003

Shipley opened a $30mn advanced technology centre in Massachusetts dedicated to the development of lithography, interconnect, low-k dielectric and other critical materials needed to produce the newest generations of microelectronic devices.

Wednesday 19th February 2003

SEMIs book-to-bill ratio for North American semiconductor equipment suppliers was 0.92 in January 2003 (preliminary).

Wednesday 19th February 2003

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Wednesday 19th February 2003

Intel plans to convert its 200mm Fab 12 to 300mm production. The facility is located in Arizona. Costs for the conversion project are estimated at $2bn. Construction work is due to begin in H1 2004 with production scheduled for late 2005. The converted fab will start up production on 65nm process technology.

Wednesday 19th February 2003

German company Singulus Technologies has launched a thin-film sputtering system aimed at production of magnetic RAM on 300mm wafers.