News from Semiconductor International

Solar Industry Faces Stiff Price Drops
The solar industry faces steep price declines again in 2010, although prices will drop at a more moderate pace than last year, predicted iSuppli. While installed watts will grow by 64% this year, the market research firm said module prices will decline by an estimated 20%, following a 37.8% drop in 2009. more » » » 

Q-Cells Racks Up Huge Preliminary Loss in 2009
PV cell maker Q-Cells SE reports reorganization efforts have led to a large series of write-downs and other efforts to clean up its balance sheet. For the full year, the firm generated a loss of 1.36 billion euros ($1.8B), with write-downs accounting for ~952 million euros ($1.29B) of the total. more » » » 

Argonne Launches Solar Energy Research Initiative
The Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announces its Alternative Energy and Efficiency Initiative, an effort to achieve "revolutionary advances" towards widespread use of solar energy through PV and other advancements. more » » » 

Hitachi High-Tech, XeroCoat Sign Agreement on Anti-Reflective Coatings
Hitachi High-Technologies and XeroCoat are looking to capture a significant share of the solar market by providing anti-reflective equipment and materials. more » » » 

Concentrix Solar to Deploy 1 MW CPV Plant at Chevron Facility
Solar CPV technology provider Concentrix Solar will provide CPV technology for a Chevron Plant in New Mexico. more » » » 

Anwell Reports Conversion Efficiency in Its Thin-Film Solar Panels
Solar equipment manufacturing firm Anwell Technologies Ltd. reports its thin-film solar panels have achieved conversion efficiency ratings better than the industry average. more » » » 

Expect Growth of Materials Used in Solar Cell, Module Production
PV industry consulting firm Linx-AEI projects the market for chemicals and materials used to make PV solar cells and modules will reach $15B by 2015. more » » » 

Despatch Reports 30 UltraFlex Furnace Orders Across Europe, Asia
Despatch Industries reports it has sold 30 UltraFlex firing/drying furnaces to solar manufacturers throughout the two continents. more » » » 

Natcore Inks Solar Products Deal With Chinese Consortium
Solar R&D firm Natcore Technology has formed a joint venture company in China that will develop and manufacture film-growth equipment and materials. more » » » 

Call for Entries: Intersolar to Award PV Solar Innovation
The Intersolar Award program is adding recognition for PV production technology and extending eligibility to exhibitors at its North American event. more » » » 

Mitsubishi Electric Develops New PV Inverter Technology
Mitsubishi Electric Corp. has developed technology to maximize output power in PV systems by incorporating a new maximum power-point tracking (MPPT) system in inverters. more » » » 

T-Solar, Solarpack to Sell 173 GWh PV Solar Annually to Peru
T-Solar and Solarpack, Spanish PV solar energy solutions providers, have agreed to provide the government of Peru with four PV plants, with a total capacity of 80 MW. more » » » 

CNPV Signs Strategic Partnership With Photovoltaic Experts GmbH
CNPV Solar Power SA, a Chinese solar PV product provider, will supply German PV solar developer Photovoltaic Experts GmbH with 30 MWp of PV modules. more » » » 

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3-D Interconnects Shape Future Solutions

from Semiconductor International
An IEEE meeting in Santa Clara, Calif., attracted several leaders of 3-D IC technology development, who presented a list of challenges to the TSV-creation infrastructure. more » » » 

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3-D Interconnects Shape Future Solutions

from Semiconductor International
An IEEE meeting in Santa Clara, Calif., attracted several leaders of 3-D IC technology development, who presented a list of challenges to the TSV-creation infrastructure. more » » » 

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Scientists to Conquer Casimir Effect, Enable NEMS

From Semiconductor International

If Argonne National Laboratory researchers are successful in their quest to nullify Casimir force effects, NEMS implementations will take off. more » » » 

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Veeco Revs MOCVD Tool for LED Market

From Semiconductor International

Veeco Instruments is selling a newly designed MOCVD system to LED manufacturers, claiming higher efficiencies from a redesigned flow flange and reduced cleaning cycles. The company said it expects the booming LED backlighting market to help drive demand for ~400 MOCVD tools industry-wide next year. LEDs increasingly are being used to provide backlighting in thin LCD televisions, monitors and laptop displays. more » » » 

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News from Semiconductor International

Pressure Builds on Gate-First High-k
Problems with the gate-first approach to high-k/metal gate deposition may force IBM to switch to the gate-last approach pioneered by Intel, technologists said at IEDM. GlobalFoundries and other members of the Fishkill Alliance are putting pressure on IBM to reconsider its gate-first approach, which technologists said has problems with yields, threshold voltage stability and mobilities. more » » »  

Nvidia's Chen Calls for Zero Via Defects
Nvidia needs zero defects from its foundry partners, particularly in the vias on its leading-edge graphics processors, said John Chen, vice president of technology and foundry operations at the GPU powerhouse. With 3.2 billion transistors on its 40 nm graphics processor now coming on the market, the 7.2 billion vias have become a source of problems that the industry must learn to deal with, Chen said in a keynote speech at IEDM. more » » »  

Stanford Scientists Present Flexible Retinal Implants at IEDM
Stanford University scientists presented R&D progress on a flexible retinal implant at the 2009 IEDM in Baltimore. When hit by the light, the solar cells inject current patterns corresponding to the projected images into neural tissue, which ultimately arrive at the visual cortex via the optic nerve, which sends signals to the brain.
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TSMC's Burn Lin Touts E-Beam, Slams EUV
In an IEDM presentation, TSMC lithography director Burn Lin made an impassioned plea for more resources devoted to multi-column e-beam lithography. EUV lithography, by comparison, has such a large energy footprint that Lin said it will need a nuclear power plant next to any high-volume fabs running multiple EUV scanners. "The costs of EUV are not acceptable," Lin added. more » » »  

Toshiba Develops Steep Channel Doping for 20 nm CMOS
Toshiba researchers at IEDM described a channel doping scheme that forms three layers on the surface of the channel: epitaxial silicon, carbon-doped silicon and boron-doped silicon.
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IBM Gains Confidence in 22 nm ETSOI
At the IEDM conference in Baltimore, IBM researchers indicated that a fully depleted CMOS on extremely thin SOI wafers may be the way to go at the 22 nm node. The approach allows reduced short channel effects, and supports gate length scaling to 25 nm and beyond. The fully depleted technology involves Soitec, which supplies wafers with a thin silicon layer on top of the buried oxide.more » » »  

Researchers Describe Use of Diblock Copolymer Lithography at IEDM
Researchers from Stanford developed a top-gated field-effect transistor featuring 20 nm contact holes using diblock copolymer lithography. The material can self-assemble into a regular array of holes on the order of 20 nm or smaller in diameter.
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UMC Takes Hybrid Approach to 28 nm High-k
At IEDM, foundry UMC described a hybrid approach to high-k/metal gate deposition that seeks to take advantage of both the gate-first and gate-last approaches for 28 nm transistors. The hybrid scheme compares with a gate-last method supported by rival Taiwan foundry TSMC, and a gate-first approach by GlobalFoundries for the 28 nm generation. more » » »  

IQE, Intel Describe InGaAs on Si Devices With High-k
IQE and Intel presented a joint paper at IEDM on the development of InGaAs on silicon devices with high-k gate dielectrics. IQE's facility in Bethlehem, Pa., produced the blanket InGaAs QWFET epi wafers grown on silicon substrates using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).
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Silicon May Prevail Despite Power Fears
Speakers at an IEDM short course on scaling challenges said planar devices made in bulk silicon CMOS are likely to continue to be the basic technology platform for the next decade, despite concerns about power consumption. Although III-V and germanium channels offer high mobilities and lower operating voltages, the challenges of cost, manufacturing complexity and finding a workable gate dielectric may prevent adoption. Scott Thompson, organizer of the short course, said one exception may be Intel, which he said is seriously considering a tri-gate transistor for the outer nodes. more » » »  

Technologists Chart Directions in Technologies at Sematech Workshop
The fifth annual Sematech workshop, co-sponsored by Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) and Aixtron AG and held in conjunction with IEDM, featured a complementary set of more than 40 presentations and panel discussions.
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ASMI Hosts Seminar on ALD at IEDM
The ASM International seminar, held on the last day of IEDM, focused on the materials, equipment and process innovations that enable high-k and metal gates in volume manufacturing, including processes using atomic layer deposition (ALD) and plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD).
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IEDM Confronts Logic Scaling Challenges
IEDM included presentations on new annealing techniques, finFETs, compound semiconductors and random telegraph noise. The conference, with 215 paper presentations, was preceded by a Sunday short course on scaling challenges organized by TSMC's Howard C.H. Wang. more » » »  

Numonyx Presented Phase Change Memory Research Results at IEDM
Numonyx researchers presented their latest findings on phase change memory (PCM). STMicroelectronics and Numonyx were able to fully integrate a 4 Mb PCM macrocell on a 90 nm CMOS platform, and described 45 nm advances as well.
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Defect Detection Drives to Greater Depths

Equipment suppliers are scrambling to develop new methods to detect particles that are smaller, visible and non-visible, while maintaining throughput. more » » »  

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