In Brief - Brief Article

Electronics Times, July 24, 2000

Cabot Microelectronics has introduced a dielectric slurry to meet the demands of sub-0.18 micro m technologies. Cabot claims it has used proprietary chemical knowledge to develop a process which produces fewer defects and lowers the concentration of mobile ions introduced during the process. The Semi-Sperse D7300 dielectric slurry offers a 10- fold reduction in post-chemical mechanical planarisation microscratching over available industry standard slurries.

Arizona-based Amkor Technology has expanded its stacked chip scale package (S-CSP) production capacity to 40,000 units per week. It is also increasing its R&D budget for 3D packaging to meet the increased demand for cellphones and other portable devices. Amkor quotes a market research survey by Prismark Partners which indicates that the use of S- CSP flash memory in mobile phones is likely to increase from 2% in 1999 to 45% in 2003. Cellphone production is due to increase to 696 million units in 2003. Vince DiCaprio, vice-president of advanced application development at Amkor, said: "Semiconductor stacking technology offers higher levels of silicon integration without the cost or time-to-market trade-offs associated with system-on-chip or embedded memory approaches."

Agilent Technologies is delivering a small-form-factor fibre optic transceiver for 155Mbits long reach applications. The introduction completes Agilent's suite of SFF transceivers, with short- and intermediate-reach devices already available.