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“Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you,” are the familiar words of Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant during the world’s very first phone call on March 10, 1876. Shortly after this...

Imagine being able to deposit a film of material just a few atomic layers at a time. As impossible as that sounds, atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a reality. In fact, it’s being used in an...

Household kitchens have been revolutionized by chips (we’re talking the non-edible kind). Some of us may bask in fond memories of “low-tech” cooking like toasting marshmallows over an open...

This year, more than a billion people from over 193 countries are expected to participate in Earth Day activities. Marking its 47th anniversary on Saturday, April 22, 2017, Earth Day is an annual...

Panel-level fan-out chip manufacturing – using large square or rectangular substrates instead of wafers – is being developed as a means to lower the cost of back-end processes for some...

User experience designers around the world recognize that a screen isn’t always the most logical interface for every task or every person. Currently, much of our time is dominated by screens. At...

Ever open the body of your smartphone (perhaps unintentionally) and see small, black rectangles stuck on a circuit board? Those black rectangles are packaged chips. The external chip structure...

The next major trend in consumer wearables may be smart fashion. For years, high fashion designers and celebrities have been incorporating smart technology into their clothing for visual effects....

Did you know that different patterns require different types of multiple patterning? Today’s advanced chips are more complex than ever before, with transistors and other structures that are...

Greek philosopher Democritus (460-370 BC) first proposed the existence of an ultimate particle, which he described as “atomos.” He probably never dreamed that one day there would be devices so...

The lines between science fiction and reality continue to blur thanks to technological advances in devices like thermal imaging equipment, 3D printing, and even neural implants. Technology –...

From smartphones to televisions to refrigerators, it is hard to go more than a few hours without using a semiconductor-enabled device. In fact, since the mid-20th century, semiconductors have been...

Transistors are at the heart of our cherished electronics. Millions, or even billions, of these tiny switches go to work for us when we check our mobile phones, use our computers, start our...

Multiple patterning is an innovative approach to scaling semiconductors, but it also poses significant challenges controlling process variations. Lam’s Rick Gottscho, executive vice president of...

The semiconductor industry uses so many unique terms, it practically has its own language. To keep up on the latest developments, knowing that “language” can be really helpful. For instance,...

Dave Hemker, CTO at Lam Research, sat down with Semiconductor Engineering to look at some of the key issues on the process and manufacturing side, and some of the key developments that will...

“‘There’s a law about Moore’s law,’ jokes Peter Lee, a vice-president at Microsoft Research: ‘The number of people predicting the death of Moore’s law doubles every two years.’”...

Since its introduction in the 1980s, NAND flash memory has radically changed how we store our digital data. Remember ordering duplicate photos when getting camera film developed or burning your...

When it comes to aspect ratios – how tall an object is vs. how wide it is – even the tallest buildings in the world hardly compare to the extreme dimensions in the semiconductor industry,...

We often hear the word “inflection” used in the semiconductor industry, but what does it mean? In general, inflection refers to a point of change. In mathematics, for instance, an inflection...

One of the most astounding aspects of semiconductor chips is their incredibly small scale. Practically measured in atoms, some feature dimensions are on the order of nanometers (nm) – that’s...

With the new year underway, you may be wondering what lies ahead for the semiconductor world. Once again, Solid State Technology has checked in with industry leaders for their thoughts on the...