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Stepper
A stepper or wafer stepper is a device used in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). It is an essential part of the process of photolithography, which creates millions of microscopic circuit elements on the surface of silicon wafers out of which chips are made. It is similar in operation to a slide projector or a photographic enlarger. The ICs that are made form the heart of computer processors, memory chips, and many other electronic devices. ''Stepper'' is short for step-and-repeat camera. The stepper emerged in the late 1970s but did not become widespread until the 1980s. This was because it was replacing an earlier technology, the mask aligner. Aligners imaged the entire surface of a wafer at the same time, producing many chips in a single operation. In contrast, the stepper imaged only one chip at a time, and was thus much slower to operate. The stepper eventually displaced the aligner when the relentless forces of Moore's Law demanded that smaller feature sizes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photolithography
Photolithography (also known as optical lithography) is a process used in the manufacturing of integrated circuits. It involves using light to transfer a pattern onto a substrate, typically a silicon wafer. The process begins with a photosensitive material, called a photoresist, being applied to the substrate. A photomask that contains the desired pattern is then placed over the photoresist. Light is shone through the photomask, exposing the photoresist in certain areas. The exposed areas undergo a chemical change, making them either soluble or insoluble in a developer solution. After development, the pattern is transferred onto the substrate through etching, chemical vapor deposition, or ion implantation processes. Ultraviolet, Ultraviolet (UV) light is typically used. Photolithography processes can be classified according to the type of light used, including ultraviolet lithography, deep ultraviolet lithography, extreme ultraviolet lithography, extreme ultraviolet lithography ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aligner (semiconductor)
An aligner, or mask aligner, is a system that produces integrated circuits (IC) using the photolithography process. It holds the photomask over the silicon wafer while a bright light is shone through the mask and onto the photoresist. The "alignment" refers to the ability to place the mask over precisely the same location repeatedly as the chip goes through multiple rounds of lithography. Aligners were a major part of IC manufacture from the 1960s into the late 1970s, when they began to be replaced by the stepper. Currently, mask aligners are still used in academia and research, as projects often involve devices made using photolithography in smaller batches. In a mask aligner, there is a one-to-one correspondence between the mask pattern and the wafer pattern. The mask covers the entire surface of the wafer which is exposed in its entirety in one shot. This was the standard for the 1:1 mask aligners that were succeeded by steppers and scanners with reduction optics. There are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Photomask
A photomask (also simply called a mask) is an opaque plate with transparent areas that allow light to shine through in a defined pattern. Photomasks are commonly used in photolithography for the production of integrated circuits (ICs or "chips") to produce a pattern on a thin wafer of material (usually silicon). In semiconductor manufacturing, a mask is sometimes called a reticle. In photolithography, several masks are used in turn, each one reproducing a layer of the completed design, and together known as a mask set. A curvilinear photomask has patterns with curves, which is a departure from conventional photomasks which only have patterns that are completely vertical or horizontal, known as manhattan geometry. These photomasks require special equipment to manufacture. History For IC production in the 1960s and early 1970s, an opaque rubylith film laminated onto a transparent mylar sheet was used. The design of one layer was cut into the rubylith, initially by hand on an i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Micralign
The Perkin-Elmer Micralign was a family of aligners introduced in 1973. Micralign was the first projection aligner, a concept that dramatically improved semiconductor fabrication. According to the Chip History Center, it "literally made the modern IC industry". The Micralign addressed a significant problem in the early integrated circuit (IC) industry, that the vast majority of ICs printed contained defects that rendered them useless. On average, about 1 in 10 complex ICs produced would be operational, a 10% yield. The Micralign improved this to over 50%, and as great as 70% in many applications. In doing so, the price of microprocessors and dynamic RAM products fell about 10 times between 1974 and 1978, by which time the Micralign had become practically universal in the high-end market. Initially predicting to sell perhaps 50 units, Perkin-Elmer eventually sold about 2,000, making them the by far largest vendor in the semiconductor fabrication equipment space through the second ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Diamond Laboratories
The Harry Diamond Laboratories (HDL) was a research facility under the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) and later the U.S. Army. It conducted research and development in electronic components and devices and was at one point the largest electronics research and development laboratory in the U.S. Army. HDL also acted as the Army's lead laboratory in nuclear survivability studies and operated the Aurora Pulsed Radiation Simulator, the world's largest full-threat gamma radiation simulator. In 1992, HDL was disestablished, and its mission, personnel, and facilities were incorporated into the newly created U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL). As part of this transition, the Army designated the HDL building as the site of ARL's new headquarters. The installation was named in honor of pioneer radio engineer and inventor Harry Diamond, who led the Ordnance Development Division during World War II. Diamond contributed greatly to the fundamental concept and design of proximity fuzes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
ASM International
ASM International N.V. (with ASM standing for Advanced Semiconductor Materials) is a Dutch-headquartered multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, sells, and services equipment used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. Its products are utilized by semiconductor manufacturers in fabrication plants for processes such as atomic layer deposition, epitaxy, chemical vapor deposition, and diffusion. The company was founded by Arthur del Prado (1931-2016) in 1964. From 2008 until 2020, son of Arthur del Prado, Chuck del Prado was CEO. ASM pioneered important aspects of many established wafer-processing technologies used in industry, including lithography, deposition, ion implantation, single-wafer epitaxy, and in recent years atomic layer deposition. Semiconductor equipment companies ASML, ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT) and Besi are former divisions of ASM. ASM headquarters is located in Almere, the Netherlands. The company has R&D sites in Almere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
GCA Corporation
GCA Corporation (formerly GCA Savvian Corporation) was a multinational investment bank headquartered in San Francisco, United States. It was sold to Houlihan Lokey in October 2021. Services The company offers financial services including mergers and acquisitions advisory services for both public and private companies in buyside, sellside and going-private transactions. The company provides services for hostile defenses, reorganization proceedings, recapitalizations and restructuring services. The company also provides restructuring advisory services and capital markets services, such as placement of common and preferred stock, mezzanine debt, convertible debt, equity lines and roll-up financings, as well as initial public offering advisory services. In addition, it offers secondary direct placement and due diligence and invests in private equity, mezzanine financing, and public equity and debt markets. The company provides its services primarily to technology, media, commun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sales
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. A period during which goods are sold for a reduced price may also be referred to as a "sale". The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in an interaction with a ''buyer'', which may occur at the point of sale or in response to a purchase order from a customer. There is a passing of title (property or ownership) of the item, and the settlement of a price, in which agreement is reached on a price for which transfer of ownership of the item will occur. The ''seller'', not the purchaser, typically executes the sale and it may be completed prior to the obligation of payment. In the case of indirect interaction, a person who sells goods or service on behalf of the owner is known as a salesman or saleswoman or salesperson, but this often refers to someone selling goods in a store/shop, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wafer (electronics)
In electronics, a wafer (also called a slice or substrate) is a thin slice of semiconductor, such as a crystalline silicon (c-Si, silicium), used for Semiconductor device fabrication, the fabrication of integrated circuits and, in photovoltaics, to manufacture solar cells. The wafer serves as the substrate (materials science), substrate for microelectronic devices built in and upon the wafer. It undergoes many microfabrication processes, such as doping (semiconductor), doping, ion implantation, Etching (microfabrication), etching, thin-film deposition of various materials, and Photolithography, photolithographic patterning. Finally, the individual microcircuits are separated by wafer dicing and Integrated circuit packaging, packaged as an integrated circuit. History In the semiconductor industry, the term wafer appeared in the 1950s to describe a thin round slice of semiconductor material, typically germanium or silicon. The round shape characteristic of these wafers comes f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holland
Holland is a geographical regionG. Geerts & H. Heestermans, 1981, ''Groot Woordenboek der Nederlandse Taal. Deel I'', Van Dale Lexicografie, Utrecht, p 1105 and former provinces of the Netherlands, province on the western coast of the Netherlands. From the 10th to the 16th century, Holland proper was a unified political region within the Holy Roman Empire as a county ruled by the counts of Holland. By the 17th century, the province of Holland had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the newly independent Dutch Republic. The area of the former County of Holland roughly coincides with the two current Provinces of the Netherlands, Dutch provinces of North Holland and South Holland into which it was divided, and which together include the Netherlands' three largest cities: the Capital of the Netherlands, capital city (Amsterdam), the home of Port of Rotterdam, Europe's largest port (Rotterdam), and the seat of government (The Hague). Hollan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computervision
Computervision, Inc. (CV) was an early pioneer in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing ( CAD/CAM). Computervision was founded in 1969 by Marty Allen and Philippe Villers, and headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts, United States. Its early products were built on a Data General Nova platform. Starting around 1975, Computervision built its own "CGP" (Computervision Graphics Processor) Nova-compatible 16-bit computers with added instructions optimized for graphics applications and using its own operating system known as Computervision Graphic Operating System (CGOS). In the 1980s, Computervision rewrote their code to operate on Unix-based platforms. Computervision was acquired by Prime Computer in 1988 for $434 million. Prime subsequently adopted the Computervision name. On December 12, 1998 Parametric Technology Corporation acquired Computervision. CADDS product history Computervision's first product, CADDS-1, was aimed at the printed circuit board layout and 2-D draftin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
