News

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.

Thursday 16th January 2003

While Samsung plans to boost its capital expenditure by 39%, Intel has got the knife out with a 17-26% cut in budget.

Wednesday 15th January 2003

The Economist Intelligence Unit reports global semiconductor sales up 1.1% in 2002.

Wednesday 15th January 2003

Intel released its Q4 and 2002 financial results along with expenditure projections.

Tuesday 14th January 2003

The US Patent and Trademark Office issued its top ten private sector patent recipient table for 2002. Preliminary counts give IBM top billing (as in 2001) with 3288 patents.

Tuesday 14th January 2003

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

Monday 13th January 2003

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Monday 13th January 2003

Dutch researchers have fabricated an organic electroluminescent device that shows a fully reversible voltage-dependent switch between green and red light emission (Nature, January 2, 2003).

Monday 13th January 2003

Credence Systems has acquired all of the assets of German mixed-signal IC test system producer SZ Testsysteme for a total of $4.7mn. Credence now owns SZ Testsystemes portfolio of automatic test equipment (ATE), which is primarily focused on the advanced analogue, power, automotive and communications markets.