The Week In Review: Manufacturing
Looking to propel the next wave of OLED displays, Applied Materials has rolled out two new systems. The tools enable the volume production of OLED displays for both mobile products and TVs. In...
View ArticleManufacturing Bits: Oct. 20
Singapore opens R&D center The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has officially opened its new R&D center in Singapore. The center, dubbed Fusionopolis Two, is a $450 million...
View ArticleLam To Acquire KLA-Tencor
In a major and surprising move in the fab tool business, Lam Research has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire KLA-Tencor for about $10.6 billion in cash and stock. Lam’s proposed move to...
View ArticleTaming Mask Metrology
For years the IC industry has worried about a bevy of issues with the photomask. Mask costs are the top concern, but mask complexity, write times and defect inspection are the other key issues for both...
View ArticleNext Generation Technology For Flexible OLED Displays
By Max McDaniel James Xiao, vice president and general manager of the Display CVD & EPG Division, AKT, at Applied Materials, provides a high-level overview of new thin film encapsulation technology...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
In a major and surprising move in the fab tool business, Lam Research has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire KLA-Tencor for about $10.6 billion in cash and stock. “Lam Research and...
View ArticleChina’s Fab Tool Biz Heats Up
For years, China has been a steady growth market for suppliers of semiconductor equipment. Internally, though, the country is comprised of trailing-edge fabs and IC-assembly houses, which means...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Lam Research’s proposed move to acquire KLA-Tencor is still generating a buzz in the industry. One executive from Lam has explained the reason for the deal. Meanwhile, analysts are also weighing in....
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
China is investing billions of dollars in the IC industry and equipment sectors. The nation is also in the midst of an acquisition and an investment spree, especially in IC packaging. For example,...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
IC Insights released its preliminary top IC rankings in terms of sales for 2015. In the rankings, Intel remains in first place in terms of chip sales in 2015, followed by Samsung and TSMC....
View ArticleMeasuring FinFETs Will Get Harder
The industry is gradually migrating toward chips based on finFET transistors at 16nm/14nm and beyond, but manufacturing those finFETs is proving to be a daunting challenge in the fab. Patterning is the...
View ArticleCan Nano-Patterning Save Moore’s Law?
For years the academic community has explored a novel technology called selective deposition. Then, more than a year ago, Intel spearheaded an effort to bring the technology from the lab to the fab at...
View ArticleFan-Out Packaging Gains Steam
Fan-outs are creating a buzz and gaining steam in the market at a pace far beyond what anyone would have expected even at the start of the year. The approach, which has been around for several years,...
View ArticleWhat’s Next In Mobile Displays
The next wave of smartphones and wearables is invading the market. These systems will feature a new class of high-resolution displays, and in the near future displays will become foldable and rollable,...
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Rise Of The Old Fab
Growth in the Internet of Everything, along with the beginning of a shift toward systems in package, are creating buzz in a rather unlikely place—established and well-worn process nodes where equipment...
View ArticleFab Tool Biz Looks Cloudy
Amid a slowdown in the foundry and DRAM sectors, the outlook for the semiconductor equipment industry looks somewhat cloudy, if not challenging, in 2016. In fact, for equipment vendors, 2016 could...
View ArticleThe Week In Review: Manufacturing
Samsung plans to make a major entry into the drone market, according to reports. “Samsung is not alone in focusing on the drone market,” said Will Strauss, president of Forward Concepts, in a research...
View ArticleInside Inspection And Metrology
Semiconductor Engineering sat down to talk about inspection, metrology and other issues with Mehdi Vaez-Iravani, vice president of advanced imaging technologies at Applied Materials. What follows are...
View ArticleWill 5nm Happen?
Chipmakers are ramping up their 16/14nm finFET processes, with 10nm finFETs expected to ship sometime in late 2016 or early 2017. So what’s next? The foundries can see a path to extend the finFET...
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Display Landscape Heats Up At CES 2016
I was one of the 170,000+ people who attended the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month and thought I’d share some observations; first, about the consumer technologies on...
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