Reducing Test Costs, Throughputs
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor — Semiconductor International, 7/16/2008

At SEMICON West's Test, Assembly & Packaging TechXPOT's Yield Management session, presenters demonstrated the need to reduce test costs. Overall, they concentrated on the fact that testing becomes more difficult and costly as chip complexity grows and device average selling prices (ASPs) shrink. The consensus was that the only way yield and productivity can be improved, and time to market met, is through the best and most efficient use of test equipment. A crucial part is how the resulting data is handled and processed. Several strategies were put forward. More

Surface Profiler Tackles Solar Market
Aaron Hand, Executive Editor, Electronic Media — Semiconductor International, 7/16/2008

KLA-Tencor's (Milpitas, Calif.) latest stylus surface profiling system offers advanced features for scientific research and production environments, such as solar cell manufacturing. The P-6 system incorporates measurement technologies developed on advanced semiconductor profiler systems, but comes in a smaller, more economical benchtop unit for samples up to 150 mm, and incorporates several features from the company's automated P-16+ stylus profiler. More

SEMI: Equipment Sales to Fall 20% in 2008
Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor — Electronic News, 7/14/2008

SEMI President and CEO Stanley T. Myers reported at SEMICON West that the industry association expects 2008 semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will fall ~20% this year to $34.12B. SEMI believes the equipment industry will experience a rebound with annual growth of 13% in 2009, and 6% in 2010. Wafer processing equipment is expected to contract 21% this year to $25.4B. More

Wafer Edge Inspection Offers High Throughput, High Resolution
PR Newswire, 7/15/2008

Nikon Instruments Inc. (Melville, N.Y.) introduced its WES-3000 Wafer Edge Inspection Tool, designed to identify defects often experienced with immersion lithography as well as other IC manufacturing processes. The platform incorporates high-throughput, inline inspection with a review station with high-resolution and clear-color images for fast assessment of unknown defects. The WES-3000 reviews the wafer edge area based on the KLARF file input. More

When Will 450 mm Make Economic Sense?
Jonathan Davis, Executive Vice President, Global Expositions, Marketing, Communications and EHS, SEMI — Semiconductor International, 7/15/2008

There is an industry-wide curiosity about the reality behind a wafer size transition to 450 mm. According to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), this transition should happen in 2012 to keep the industry on Moore's Law, and a few companies are pushing hard to make this happen. However, this is an extremely expensive and risky proposition — estimates run to well over $25B at the high end. More

Reduced CapEx for Test
Dan Tracy, Senior Director, and Lara Chamness, Senior Market Analyst, Industry Research and Statistics Group, SEMI — Semiconductor International, 7/11/2008

As a percentage of total spending on semiconductor capital equipment, test equipment has trended below 20% of total spending since the 2000 peak year of semiconductor industry equipment spending. Test equipment figures capture spending on automated test equipment, probers, handlers and other test-related equipment, which added up to a $5.1B market in 2007. Since 2003, the test equipment market has contracted in both absolute spending and as a percentage of the total market. More

Agilent Technologies Acquires Particle Sizing Systems
Business Wire, 7/8/2008

Agilent Technologies Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) acquired Particle Sizing Systems, a privately held company that designs and manufactures instruments that measure the particle size and stability in materials ranging from soft drinks to inkjet inks to semiconductor polishing slurries. Financial terms were not disclosed. The acquisition expands Agilent's growing portfolio of particle analysis solutions and directly addresses customer needs in small nanoparticles and large particle agglomerates. More

Veeco Labs Research Grant Program Launched
Business Wire, 7/1/2008

Veeco Instruments Inc. (Plainview, N.Y.) introduced its Veeco Labs Research Grant Program, designed to stimulate the generation of new scientific investigation for researchers in the atomic force microscopy (AFM) community. This grant program will sponsor selected early adopters of current and future Veeco technologies in several ways to enable the realization of their proposed work. The first of the grants will solicit proposals utilizing the recently released HarmoniX Nanoscale Material Property Mapping Mode, which enables AFM users to simultaneously, and in real-time, acquire high-resolution images as well as high-resolution, quantitative material property maps. More

Standalone Pushes Optical CD Boundaries
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor — Semiconductor International, 7/14/2008

Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. (Rehovot, Israel) introduced a new high-throughput, high-accuracy standalone optical CD platform, designed as a cost-effective alternative to the CD-SEM in lithography and other applications. The Nova T500 follows the company's NovaScan 3090Next metrology tool, and offers a 250 wph throughput (13 measurement sites). Its redesigned optics provide a 30% improvement in precision over the 3090Next. The platform is based on proprietary normal incidence spectral reflectometry. Blog

SEM Enables Rapid Sub-Nanometer 3-D Surface Imaging
Alexander E. Braun, Senior Editor — Semiconductor International, 7/6/2008

FEI Co. (Hillsboro, Ore.) has introduced a new class of instruments, the Magellan family, which the company describes as extreme high-resolution scanning electron microscopes (XHR SEMs). The Magellan XHR SEM enables scientists and engineers to quickly see things they could not see before, such as 3-D surface images at different angles and at resolutions below 1 nm. An important feature of the system is that it images samples at very low beam energies, avoiding distortions otherwise caused by a higher-energy beam penetrating into the material. Blog

Microcontamination Inspection Service

Bump/Probe Mark Inspection System

WS 3840 is an inspection and metrology system for bumped wafers and probe marks. It provides 2-D and 3-D bump metrology inspection, such as height, coplanarity and diameter, and bump defect inspection, such as bridging and probe mark inspection.
Rudolph Technologies Inc., Flanders, N.J.
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Socket Resistance Tester

Aug. 5-7, 2008: Failure and Yield Analysis

Sept. 7-12, 2008: EOS/ESD Symposium

Sept. 9-11, 2008: SEMICON Taiwan

Sept. 15-18, 2008: 34th International Conference on Micro- and Nano-Engineering