Innovalight specialty PV materials company gets acquired by DuPont after successful integration of its silicon-ink screen-printed selective emitter (SE) into mulitple customer crystalline-silicon production lines.

Prof. Masato Shibuya was awarded the JSAP Takuma Award 2011 for invention of the phase-shift mask (PSM) and opening the field of advanced lithography, as reported by independent PSM inventor Marc Levenson.

SPIE Advanced Lithography 2011 showed few new tools or techniques, but many new materials and integration tricks to extend 193i into double-patterning for IC HVM, while EUV and DSA developments continue according to expert Dr. M. David Levenson of BetaSights.

IEDM 2010 showed evolutions of NAND Flash with ALD IPD and ECC to 1Xnm node processing, and embedded-DRAM (eDRAM) capacitor stacks in porous low-k, meaning mainstream memory technologies will continue to dominate commercial volumes.

Graphene—the 2D hexagonal lattice of carbon—has been under investigation as a new material for electronics applications due to it’s high mobility and other unique properties. At IEDM this year, an entire session (#23) was devoted to showcasing graphene devices, and to sharing the latest processing tricks to grow and (sometimes) transfer the single-atomic-layer of carbon […]

Through-silicon vias (TSV) by IBM and Semtech for ADC/DSP solutions use copper and deep-trench capacitors for RF applications; IEDM 2010 papers show TSV in active chips progressing slowly.

Qcept Technologies’ ChemitriQ5000 may help GlobalFoundries vs. TSMC in gate-first HKMG integration for 32nm foundry customers with fab metrology for control of yield excursions

IEDM 2010 best hints at 22nm node fab tech alternate-channel materials, dual- and tri-gate transistors, and RF, MEMS, lab-on-chip, graphene, analog, memory ReRAM results.

Direct-write, maskless, lithography using e-beams is not ready for 22nm node IC manufacturing, and the SPIE BACUS presentations show EbDW issues include data transfer and inspection.

TSV for 3D integration of heterogeneous ICs used in interposers first, as shown at SEMICON/West, IMAPS, IEDM and companies like ASE, Alchimer, Suss, EVG, Novellus, Vertical Circuits, and IBM.