News

Thursday 23rd January 2003

STMicroelectronics reports Q4 2002 sales at $1.79bn, up 23.4% year-on-year. Net income was $160.6mn, almost three times that of the previous year.

Wednesday 22nd January 2003

EMCORE has acquired Agere Systems West Coast USA optoelectronics business for $25mn. The transaction includes assets, products, technology and intellectual property related to Ageres cable TV optical components, telecom access and satellite communications operations.

Wednesday 22nd January 2003

The Singapore-based 300mm joint venture, UMCi, has begun equipment move-in. The venture brings together UMC, Infineon Technologies and EDB Investments, the Singapore governments Economic Development Boards investment arm.

Wednesday 22nd January 2003

SEMIs book-to-bill ratio for the North American semiconductor equipment came in at 0.98 in December 2002. Three-month average bookings were 39% up on December 2001 at $839mn and billings were 5% up at $853mn. The final book-to-bill ratio for November 2002 is given as 0.80.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Established in 1963, TEL played an active role in the early days of the IT revolution. Since the first year of operation, TEL has continued to promote technological innovation and customer success in the semiconductor industry, as well as other high-tech business arenas. TEL offers the most reliable products in the industry by continually strengthening our research and development facilities and core employee base. Our R&D efforts focus on two key objectives: the development of next-generation process technologies, and the constant improvement of equipment reliability and productivity. Our development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, R&D and field engineering groups work collaboratively to provide standard-setting products and service. To persist as the leader in technological innovation, we fine-tune products to fulfill our customers specific needs through evaluation tests and demonstrations. New products and processes are designed in close cooperation with our customers, placing TEL technology on the leading edge and often setting the standards for industry procedures. Our leading product lines include: Oxidation/diffusion; LP-CVD systems Coaters/developers Metrology solutions Cleaning systems Metal PVD systems Metal CVD systems Plasma etch systems Wafer probers The equipment made by TEL enables our customers to transform their concepts into marketable products. In essence, we focus our energy and resources on harnessing technologies that change the world.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

The US Patent and Trademark Office issued its top ten private sector patent recipient table for 2002.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Amkor Technology is to provide subcontractor assembly facilities for Texas Instruments Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology used in projection display systems.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

IC Insights reported its Top Ten semiconductor companies in terms of sales.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Allegro MicroSystems has closed a 100mm bipolar wafer fab and sold the 22,500m2 facility for an undisclosed amount.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Silicon Microstructures (SMI) has begun implementation of a previously announced plan for expansion and renovation of its recently purchased MEMS wafer foundry.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

SUSS MicroTec is to install a lithography line at Taiwan’s National Nano Device Laboratories (NDL) for thin and thick resist MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems) applications.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Electronic design automation (EDA) company Synopsys has made a definitive agreement to buy all outstanding shares of Numerical Technologies common stock at $7.00 a share. Numerical develops subwavelength lithography photomask software.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

NanoInk has closed a $6mn second round of financing led by the Lurie Investment Fund. NanoInk will use the funding to broaden its application-specific development efforts and accelerate delivery of the DPNWriter, scheduled for release in Q1 2003.

Tuesday 21st January 2003

Harvard University scientists have produced nanowire lasers based on the wide bandgap semiconductor, cadmium sulphide

Monday 20th January 2003

The UK University of Newcastle upon Tyne has joined forces with Amtel to create ‘strained silicon’ microchips.

Monday 20th January 2003

A federal district court has ruled that Genus does not infringe two US patents (Nos.6,015,590 and 5,916,365) on atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology owned by European company ASM International.

Monday 20th January 2003

Infineon Technologies reports its Q1 2003 (quarter ended December 31, 2002) results with revenues up 47% on 2002 at EUR1.52bn. The company says that the boost is driven by demand for memory products and chips used in mobile communications. Net losses have been cut back from 2002s EUR331mn to EUR40mn.

Monday 20th January 2003

Swedens Linkoping University is to host a new national centre for research on organic and polymer electronics to develop plastic conducting materials for applications such as solar cells and light emission.

Friday 17th January 2003

Intense Photonics has expanded its capability with an extra 95m2 of cleanroom space at its Scottish compound semiconductor fabrication facility. The new area is for additional optoelectronic life test, assembly and packaging development.

Friday 17th January 2003

Gartner Dataquest reports a 2.7% increase in PC unit shipments for 2002. The 2002 total came to 132.4mn.

Friday 17th January 2003

Japans Semiconductor Leading Edge Technology Consortium (SELETE) will take delivery of n&k Technologys 3300 Analyzer system for 300mm wafers.

Thursday 16th January 2003

IC Insights reported its Top Ten semiconductor companies in terms of sales.

Thursday 16th January 2003

Lithography equipment producer ASML reports a net loss of EUR208mn for 2002 on the basis of net sales worth EUR1.96bn. This compares with net losses of EUR479mn and net sales of EUR1.59bn in 2001. The total number of units produced was 205 including 22 refurbished tools, up from 197 (17 refurbished) in 2001.

Thursday 16th January 2003

Harvard University scientists have produced nanowire lasers based on the wide bandgap semiconductor, cadmium sulphide (Nature, January 16, 2002). The emitted light is in the 495-500nm wavelength (blue-green) range. The wire diameters are 80-200nm. Pumping was achieved in both optical and electrical modes.