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Leading foundry, TSMC has recently placed a batch of accumulated purchase orders with two metrology tool specialists, KLA-Tencor and FEI. A regular recipient, KLA-Tencor received orders worth approximately US$30.9 million from mid-July through to mid-August. Read more >>

X-FAB Silicon Foundries Group is to form a strategic partnership with sensor and IC systems-provider Micronas.

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Although the bigger value orders seen placed by TSMC in the earlier part of the year have vanished again, Applied Materials is continuing to pick-up regular small to mid-sized equipment orders from the leading foundry. Read more >>

Top foundry, TSMC has placed accumulated purchase orders since mid-April worth approximately US$18.6 million with Novellus Systems. Popular with other Taiwan-based IC manufacturers such as TSMC rival, UMC and memory manufacturer, Inotera, officially released purchase orders from TSMC to Novellus have been limited in 2011.

Normal trade terms have been applied to the purchases, which include 90% of total payment within 30 days after shipment and the remaining 10% within 30 days after acceptance. Read more >>

Samsung Electronics has adopted Nanometrics ‘UniFire’ metrology tool for advanced wafer scale packaging after successfully completing evaluations for development of through-silicon via (TSV) technology. Nanometrics’ said that its UniFire system has now been adopted by five of the top seven semiconductor manufacturers worldwide for wafer scale packaging for advanced TSV and micro bump process control. Read more >>

Though not competing with major rivals, TSMC and Globalfoundries in the capital expenditure stakes in 2011, UMC is still placing strategic orders with equipment suppliers this year. The latest order from UMC is with Applied Materials, valued at approximately US$17.95 million.
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Leading foundry, TSMC has placed a new batch of equipment purchase orders with metrology leader, KLA-Tencor. Following-on from a US$44 million order, earlier this year, the value of the latest TSMC order is approximately US$29.1 million. Read more >>

A major advance has been achieved in the reliability of RF MEMS electrostatic actuators, according to CEA-Leti. The research organisation said that its RF MEMS switch technology has reached a new level of maturity, allowing it to provide customers with a significantly improved manufacturing process. Read more >>

A multiyear Collaborative Development Program (CDP) and IP licensing agreement has been signed between Globalfoundries and Intermolecular to enable a fast-track method to develop process modules that will be integrated into the foundry’s fabs, worldwide. Most of the development work will be performed at Intermolecular’s HPC (High Productivity Combinatorial) R&D Center in San Jose, California. Read more >>

ASM International has said it has reached a new milestone with the shipment of over 500 atomic layer deposition (ALD) reactors for use in semiconductor manufacturing. According to the company it now has ALD reactors in operation at a majority of advanced logic and memory fabs worldwide. The figure also includes Plasma Enhanced ALD systems which provide an advantage for certain applications, such as very low temperature processing. Read more >>