Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to create the integrated circuits that are present in everyday electrical and electronic devices. It is a multiple-step sequence of photolithographic and chemical processing steps during which electronic circuits are gradually created on a wafer made of pure semiconducting material. Silicon is almost always used, but various compound semiconductors are used for specialized applications.
Applied Materials, Inc. is an American corporation that supplies equipment, services and software to enable the manufacture of semiconductor chips for electronics, flat panel displays for computers, smartphones and televisions, and solar products. The company also supplies equipment to produce coatings for flexible electronics, packaging and other applications. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, in Silicon Valley.
Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing the fabrication of the devices to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. Foundries are typically, but not exclusively, located in mainland China and Taiwan because of the generally low cost of labor. Thus, fabless companies can benefit from lower capital costs while concentrating their research and development resources on the end market.
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) is a semiconductor foundry company headquartered in Shanghai, China and incorporated in the Cayman Islands providing integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing services on 350 nm to 14 nm process technologies. SMIC has wafer fabrication sites throughout mainland China, offices in the United States, Italy, Japan, and Taiwan, and a representative office in Hong Kong. Notable customers include Qualcomm, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments.
Maxim Integrated is an American, publicly traded company that designs, manufactures, and sells analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits.
Dr. Mehrdad Nikoonahad is an Iranian-American electrical engineer, technologist, innovator and entrepreneur.
Lam Research Corporation is an American corporation that engages in the design, manufacture, marketing, and service of semiconductor processing equipment used in the fabrication of integrated circuits. Its products are used primarily in front-end wafer processing, which involves the steps that create the active components of semiconductor devices and their wiring (interconnects). The company also builds equipment for back-end wafer-level packaging (WLP), and for related manufacturing markets such as for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS).
A mask shop is a factory which manufactures photomasks for use in the semiconductor industry. There are two distinct types found in the trade. Captive mask shops are in-house operations owned by the biggest semiconductor corporations, while merchant mask shops make masks for most of the industry.
In silicon wafer manufacturing overlay control is the control of pattern-to-pattern alignment necessary in the manufacture of silicon wafers.
'Entegris, Inc. is a provider of products and systems that purify, protect, and transport critical materials used in the semiconductor device fabrication process.
A micropipe, also called a micropore, microtube, capillary defect or pinhole defect, is a crystallographic defect in a single crystal substrate. Today this is of great interest to makers of silicon carbide (SiC) substrates which are used in a variety of industries such as power semiconductor devices for vehicles and high frequency communication devices.
Orbotech Ltd. is a technology company used in the manufacturing of consumer and industrial products throughout the electronics and adjacent industries. The company is a provider of yield enhancement and production solutions for electronics reading, writing and connecting, used by manufacturers of printed circuit boards, flat panel displays, advanced packaging, micro-electro-mechanical systems and other electronic components. The company is headquartered in Yavne, Israel and operates in North America, Europe, Japan and Asia-Pacific.
Nuvoton Technology Corporation is a Taiwan-based semiconductor company established in 2008. It spun off from Winbond Electronics Corp. as a wholly owned subsidiary.
SÜSS MicroTec SE is a supplier of equipment and process solutions for the semiconductor industry and related markets. The microstructuring systems like photolithography tools are used for manufacturing of processors, memory chips, MEMS, LED and other micro system devices.
Tokyo Electron Limited, or TEL, is a Japanese electronics and semiconductor company headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (TowerJazz) and its fully owned U.S. subsidiaries Jazz Semiconductor , and TowerJazz Texas operate collectively under the brand name TowerJazz. TowerJazz manufactures integrated circuits offering a range of customizable analog specialty process technologies, including SiGe, BiCMOS, SOI , mixed-signal and RFCMOS, CMOS image sensors , power management (BCD), and non-volatile memory (NVM) as well as MEMS capabilities. TowerJazz also owns 51% of TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co. (TPSCo) , an enterprise with Panasonic Corporation.
VIEW Engineering was one of the first manufacturers of commercial machine vision systems. These systems provided automated dimensional measurement, defect detection, alignment and quality control capabilities. They were used primarily in the Semiconductor device fabrication, Integrated circuit packaging, Printed circuit board, Computer data storage and Precision assembly / fabrication industries. VIEW's systems used video and laser technologies to perform their functions without touching the parts being examined.
Kenneth L. Schroeder was an American technology-focused corporate executive. Schroeder served as CEO of KLA-Tencor, a supplier of process control and yield management products for the semiconductor and related microelectronics industries.
Nova Measuring Instruments is a publicly traded company, headquartered in Israel, a leading innovator and a key provider of metrology solutions for advanced process control used in semiconductor manufacturing. Shares of the company are traded on the NASDAQ Global Market and on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
Rudolph Technologies, Inc. is an American semiconductor company. Formed in 1940 and traded as NYSE: RTEC on the New York Stock Exchange, it is a provider of process characterization equipment and software for semiconductor, data storage, flat panel display and micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) manufacturing industries. The company’s product offering includes automated defect inspection and metrology systems, probe card test and analysis systems, and lithography step-and-repeat systems. In addition, Rudolph provides a broad range of software products designed to improve yield, control processes and reduce manufacturing costs.
