Air Products has said that its Taiwan subsidiary Air Products San Fu Co. Ltd. has signed a long-term contract with Rexchip Semiconductor to supply nitrogen and other bulk gases to its two 300mm fabs in the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP) in Houli, Taichung. 

MEMC Electronic Materials has entered into a 10-year definitive agreement valued at between $7 and $8 billion to supply solar grade silicon wafers to Conergy at pre-determined prices. The supply deal will start in the third quarter of 2008, MEMC said. 

H.C. Starck will open a new facility in Euclid, OH that consolidates a major part of its U.S. operations into a single unit for customer, technical and support services with the closure of its East Rutherford, NJ and Latrobe, PA facilities. 

KMG Chemicals has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the High-Purity Process Chemicals (“HPPC”) business from Air Products and Chemicals that had revenues in the last 12 months of approximately $90 million for $74.6 million. 

Gartner believes that a key market for SOI-based wafers will consist of microprocessors used in mobile phones and PDAs, which could see the demand for SOI wafers top an extra 500,000 per annum. With ARM and others now collaborating within the recently formed SOI Industry Consortium, the mobile MPU space could see SOI become a mainstream technology due to its ability for low power consumption levels compared with bulk silicon. 

G24 Innovations Limited (G24i) and BASF are to start development of ionic liquids to further boost the conversion efficiencies and long-term stability of G24i’s proprietary dye-sensitized thin film solar cell technology used with flexible substrates. 

Silicon suppliers are expecting wafer shipments to continue to grow on an annual basis through 2010, according to a new survey from SEMI. The results show silicon shipments reaching 8,696 million square inches in 2007, 9,695 million square inches in 2008, 10,257 million square inches in 2009, and 10,840 million square inches in 2010. 

A new consortium has been launched to generate greater awareness within the semiconductor industry as to the benefits of using silicon-on-insulator (SOI) for IC designs across multiple markets other than those benefits associated with the wafer technology to date.