Company News
Staff -- Semiconductor International, 4/1/2003
- John East, president and CEO of Actel Corp.(Sunnyvale, Calif.), told Electronics Weekly that 0.13 µm production processes are plagued with poor yields and high cost. The problems are likely associated with the introduction of new technologies such as low-k dielectrics. Electronics Weekly is a London-based sister publication of Semiconductor International.
- Dow Chemical (Midland, Mich.) is supplying its 24 SiLKnet Alliance partners with partially processed wafers with various porous SiLK resin (k=2.2) test structures for R&D and back-end-of-line wafer process module development. The test wafers were developed in collaboration with International SEMATECH's Advanced Technology Development facility in Austin, Texas.
- KLA-Tencor (San Jose) introduced a new CD-SEM platform, eCD 1, designed specifically for the 90 and 65 nm technology nodes, 193 nm lithography and the measurement of very high-aspect-ratio structures on 200 and 300 mm wafers. Throughput is 55 wph.
- Yield Dynamics Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) was awarded a U.S. patent (#6,470,229) for the semiconductor data mining methodology in its Yield Mine software. Under development since 1997 and integrated with its Genesis yield management framework, this software reportedly allowed a leading foundry to reduce the analysis time to find root causes of yield excursions by a factor of five.
- Advanced process control (APC) software supplier IBEX Process Technology (Lowell, Mass.) released version 1.6 of its Dynamic Neural Controller APC software. The software uses artificial intelligence methodologies to improve yield by preventing misprocessing and reducing operating cost due to maintenance actions. Alarm features alert engineers when metrology operations are about to exceed specifications.
- Tokyo Electron Ltd.'s Timbre Technologies (Santa Clara, Calif.) introduced 3-D scatterometry capability for its Optical Digital Profilometry (ODP) systems. The technology combines hole and post-grating diffraction physics with the company's ODP algorithms to allow engineers to perform contact/via CD and profile metrology on 3-D structures.
