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300mm equipment at Qimonda’s Dresden fab being sold
Macquarie Electronics has been selected to sell core equipment from Qimonda’s 300mm fab in Dresden Germany, according to an EETimes report. The semiconductor equipment reseller and lease specialist, part of Macquarie bank is to offer selected mainstream tools for sale from Applied Materials, KLA-Tencor, Tokyo Electron, and ASML, the report says.
Read more >>Micron holds CapEx at ’08 levels; shifts spending to DRAM
Still in spreadsheet preservation mode after 10 sequential quarters of financial losses, Micron Technology has said that it will maintain capital spending at 2008 levels during its next financial year, which starts next quarter. According to Micron’s CFO, Ronald Foster in a scheduled quarterly conference call to discuss FY3Q09 results, CapEx would be in the range of US$650 million and US$700 million. Spending so far in its current financial year has reached US$566 million, with US$93 million spent in the last quarter.
Read more >>Chartered Semiconductor expects higher fab utilization in 2Q’09
In April, 2009 Chartered Semiconductor noted that demand would bounce back in the second quarter, pushing fab utilization rates into 58% range. At that time the company cited increasing demand for leading-edge devices as the catalyst. In a new update, Chartered now expects utilization rates to be in the range of 61% +/- 2% on the back of growing demand from mature technology customers, rather than leading-edge.
Read more >>Product Briefings
New Product: Tiger Optics’ gas phase AMC analyzer measures parts per trillion trace levels
Product Briefing Outline: Tiger Optics has introduced the ‘Tiger-i’ cleanroom analyzer for gas phase airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs). The Tiger-i line employs Tiger Optics’ patented Continuous Wave Cavity Ring-Down Spectroscopy (CW-CRDS) technology that is claimed to provide accurate and immediate, calibration-free analysis.
Read more >>Top 5 new products for 2008
One of the equipment suppliers that consistently brings out new products is KLA-Tencor. However, the metrology supplier rarely figures in the most popular rankings in any given year. That has changed in 2008 with its TeraFab tool. Although only released recently, the fifth most popular product was from TEL and Novellus for copper interconnects.
Read more >>New Product: Edwards ‘Sirius 6000’ plasma abatement system targets etch processes
Product Briefing Outline: Edwards has launched the ‘Sirius 6000’ abatement system. Designed for low cost-of-ownership, the Sirius 6000 system addresses greenhouse gas abatement challenges arising from dielectric and polysilicon etch processes used in semiconductor manufacturing. The design uses an energy efficient microwave plasma in a carefully controlled chemical environment and an integrated wet scrubber to reduce fab greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 95 percent over a wide range of total flow rates and perfluorocompound (PFC) concentrations.
Read more >>White Papers
Edition 38: Chiller plant optimization
By Terrence Morris & Steve Blaine PE, CH2M HILL, Oregon, USA
Outside of the process tools themselves, the chilled water plant is typically the single largest consumer of electrical energy in a semiconductor facility. This load includes not just chillers but also cooling tower fans, primary pumps, secondary pumps and condenser pumps. In order to meet the cooling requirements for any particular heat load, many different combinations of this equipment can be run. However, electricity consumption varies considerably depending on the combination of equipment used and the operating levels of the individual components. Selecting the optimal mix of equipment and operating levels presents a substantial challenge for an automatic control system and plant operators. Typically, no method is available to predict the effect of interactions and variations in load demand and outside air. This makes it challenging, if not impossible, to find an equipment mix that achieves optimal energy use. In response to this challenge, we set out to create a model/tool that would allow operators to automatically determine the optimal equipment mix to satisfy cooling requirements and minimize energy use. This paper describes how this model was created and how it works.
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