32 nm Marked by Litho, Transistor Changes
Laura Peters, Lead Technical Editor — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

The transition from 45 to 32 nm is likely to involve some key material changes and a major change in lithography to double patterning for critical layers. Selections will be driven by costs and specific product needs. More

Fab Spending Tapers in 2008
Christian Gregor Dieseldorff, SEMI, San Jose — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Megafabs will soon be dwarfed by $9B-10B "monster" fabs, with 200,000 wpm (in 300 mm) capacity. Because of the expected increase in demand for memory chips, mainly flash, this trend will not be slowed by reduced capex spending in 2008. More

Sustainable Chamber Cleaning Solutions: The Back End of the Front End
Peter Lai and Paul Stockman, Linde Electronics, Murray Hill, N.J.; Greg Shuttleworth, Linde Electronics, Thornton Cleveleys, UK — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Sustainable and production-proven chamber cleaning solutions allow device manufacturers to deliver increased productivity and reduce environmental impact while "taking out the trash." More

2008 Economic Forecast: Fairly Unpredictable
Staff — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

With the low average selling price of memory devices and reductions in capex plans, many forecasters are indicating a slower initial 2008, although the duration of a slowdown is hard to quantify. More

Executive Outlook: Driving Productivity, CoO in 2008
Staff — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Shrinking margins are forcing even greater emphasis on efficiency, productivity and cost-of-ownership. Even so, technology challenges have not let up. Thirty-three executives give their perspectives on what to expect in the coming year. More

Editorial: 2008: A Year of Cautious Optimism
Peter Singer, Editor-in-Chief — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Most analysts are expecting 2008 to be a good year for the semiconductor industry. It is a presidential election year in the United States and an Olympic year, both of which tend to spur global economic growth. On the other hand, the United States is still feeling the effects of the subprime mortgage crisis, rising oil costs and the fear of a possible recession in 2008. More

Expert Perspective: Lower Thermal Budgets Affect Contamination
Jerry Riddle, Chairman, Tiger Optics LLC, Warrington, Pa. — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Tool builders and fab operators are constantly seeking ways to lower thermal budgets to speed throughput and use less resources, utilities and energy. For example, in some epitaxial deposition processes, engineers have been able to operate the processes at lower temperatures and still meet rigorous thin-film performance specifications. However, what engineers have discovered is that with the lower-temperature process, contaminants that were not there at higher temperatures are increasingly present and remain in the process tools, pressure vessels, carriers and, in some cases, on the surface of the wafers. More

Movers & Shakers: Darlene Solomon, Agilent Technologies
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor — Semiconductor International, 1/1/2008

Darlene Solomon, Agilent's CTO and vice president of Agilent Laboratories, talks about the company's technology roadmap and the hurdles that face the industry as it approaches fundamental limits in metrology. More

Wafer Pre-Alignment

In-Sight 1820 is a vision-based wafer pre-aligner. It uses the company's NotchMax alignment technology to provide precise non-contact measurement of wafer position and orientation.
Cognex Corp., Natick, Mass. More

Wafer Probe Card

TrueScale PP40 is a wafer probe card designed to enable high-efficiency and high-parallelism wafer probing on advanced wire bond logic and SoC devices. It supports pad pitches down to 40 µm, allowing manufacturers to shrink the size of the test pads.
FormFactor Inc., Livermore, Calif. More

Wafer Inspection Tool

AW200 Series C-SAM is an acoustic micro imaging system that performs automated inspection, analysis and sorting of bonded wafers up to 200 mm.
Sonoscan Inc., Elk Grove Village, Ill. More