I’m on a train from Madrid to Valencia, Spain, where I will attend the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition this week. As I look out over the rolling hills, I’m reminded of another solar event on the beautiful land surrounding San Francisco. As a pleasant final cap to a grueling SEMICON West/Intersolar North America week in mid-July, I joined Advanced Energy (Fort Collins, Colo.) for a tour of Cline Cellars, a winery in Sonoma, Calif.

 

We got the standard Cline Cellars tour, complete with the history of what was once a mission site, as well as fascinating tidbits about how wine is made. But our tour stopped perhaps longer than most do when they reach the site of th...Read More

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SEMI (San Jose, California), has released its final post-SEMICON West show report and, considering that the event took place during a time when our industry finds itself in one of its recurring doldrums, it looks very good. This once again demonstrates that it’s still by far the most important annual event for the global microelectronics industry, with considerable interest for those involved in photovoltaics, MEMS, solid-state lighting, flexible electronics and other related technologies.

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Waiting in the SFO airport to return to Chicago, I saw a news story on electric cars. The electric car shown on the screen had a prominent slogan -- not on the back bumper but across the front chassis saying “Look Ma, No Gas!” The little white vehicle was similar to the Volkswagen Beetle. I was thinking it looked a little more like the old VW Bug because it was quite a bit smaller than the Beetle.

 

It’s so fun to see the electric car come to fruition and mass marketing. For those of you who haven’t seen it I recommend a movie called “Who Killed the Electric Car?” It tells the story of General Motor’s ambitious experiment in electric car...Read More

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As expected, Moscone West was hopping this year more than I’ve ever seen it. As I mentioned in my last post about Intersolar, SEMI has made attempts in the past to get people to venture out of the North and South halls, but the beer gardens and oompah bands nonetheless left the packaging suppliers in the West feeling a bit unloved. This year was different. The solar pull was just too strong, and people were coming over in droves.

 

Perhaps no exhibitor epitomizes this shift better than our industry’s own dominant player, Applied Materials. It was hard to avoid the buzz they created at SEMICON West this year. Even sitting at the Lithography Brea...Read More

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An important part of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) committee’s mission is to identify the next big thing. Several possible phenomena are being explored to determine what will replace current flow in the so-called “next CMOS switch.” In the meantime, CMOS will be extended by carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene, at least, that is what Jim Hutchby, one of the chairs of the emerging research devices group disclosed at the ITRS briefing earlier today. Graphene or CNTs are being evaluated as possible high-mobility channel materials in MOSFETs. In addition, spin and spin transport of graphene and CNTs may provide the mechanism needed to enable spintronics. But the fun really doesn’t stop there. Other phenomena such as quantum confinement, excitons and berry phase effects are being observed. As Alain Diebold, chair of the metrolog...Read More

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Although both as journalists and members of the industry we wouldn’t miss coming to SEMICON West, after a couple of days of several very intense meetings with representatives of some of the companies attending, and covering the various events for both the Show Daily (for which we are responsible again this year) and for our Website, it's nice to have the chance to ditch the suit and escape into something pleasant and laid back.

One of these rare escapes is the yearly Semitool (Kalispell, Montana) cruise around the San Francisco ...Read More

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Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more:

Or close up the wall up with our swollen feet…

(With deepest apologies to William Shakespeare.)

 

Amazingly enough, folks, it’s SEMICON West time again! It seems as if the previous one took place only about three months ago. Of course, after more than 15 years of attending the thing, one’s bound to get a feeling of déjà vu, a sort of Twilight-Zone sensation of a hauntingly recurring event, of racing hamster-like down a M&oum...Read More

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SEMICON West, one of our busiest shows of the year, just keeps getting busier. We used to have five days to cover everything — Monday through Wednesday up in San Francisco covering the front end, heading down to San Jose Wednesday night to finish out the week in the back end. And those were the days before Semiconductor International took over the show daily, and before SEMI started up its TechXPOT programs. Now we have just three days to get and write all the news we can for the show’s printed Daily News, our own ongoing online news and daily NewsBreak newsletters — not to mention the usual bit of face time with the sources that help us out so much throughout the year.

 

(I know. You’ve taken out your violins,...Read More

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SEMICON/West has been evolving into a slightly different show every year. In many ways, it has become much more regional in its attendance, and it has lost much of its pull as a truly international show as SEMI added regional shows across Asia. This year, it takes a new step with the co-location with Intersolar North America. While, in some respects, people might expect this to cause many visitors to flock from the traditional North and South halls to the sunnier third floor of the West hall, it's important to note the photovoltaics involvement of many of the traditonal semiconductor equipment and materials vendors themselves. Such involvement, no doubt, was a key driver behind the collaboration between the organizations behind Intersolar with SEMI. 
SEMI strives to keep West relevant and current as well, with a fine line up of activities. One panel on 3-D technologies alre...Read More

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There was lots to be said about extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography at SEMICON West — some of it good, some of it not so good. On the one hand, Cymer announced that it would be ASML's EUV source supplier going forward. Along with that announcement, Cymer detailed the advances made in its laser-produced plasma (LPP) source design (Cymer switched from DPP to LPP three years ago). Cymer has managed to get IF power up to 50 W, which is significant progress in output power. And the lithography source manufacturer promises to reach 100 W by the end of the year (and, according to Cymer's Nigel Farrar, the company has hit every one of its marks since setting its roadmap at the beginning of last year). That's downright close to the target the industry has been aiming for to achieve production throu...Read More

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Double patterning has gone from the fall-back position for EUV to the front-and-center stage technology for extending 193 nm lithography. The speed at which flash devices are transitioning (now the minimum feature and pitch driver) means there will not be enough time to develop EUV for the 32 nm node. A few things need to happen to make double patterning a reality. Overlay is a big one. Having the necessary design tools in place is key too. But for companies that have already done double patterning for prototype devices, perhaps this transition will be slightly easier than, say, going to immersion lithography.

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After years of driving specifications for particles and other contamination to smaller and smaller dimensions, the industry is getting to a new level: If we can't measure it, we don't know if it's there. Somewhere around 40 nm, we can no longer detect defects, so rather than ask for better and better specifications from gases, chemicals and on wafers, we need to control the processes better. This is the gist of the new ITRS Yield session, which is being updated at the show today and will be revealed towards the end of this year. Big (or small) things may be in store.

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