Investment & expansion
Ken Sato, president and CEO of TEL, comments: "Molecular Imprints is the leadership company pioneering imprint lithography, so this is an excellent opportunity for TEL to be more closely attuned to emerging nanotechnology developments." Molecular Imprints is currently selling its nanolithography systems based on embossing technology to a broad range of markets, including semiconductor devices, displays, photonics and data storage.
Hynix Semiconductor has contracted with Wuxi City in China for setting up a plant in China. The plant is expected to help Hynix expand its manufacturing facilities for 300mm wafers through an alliance with STMicroelectronics. Hynix plans to complete construction of the China chip plant by H2 2005 and expects to start mass production in 2006.
A shareholder class action in New York against Tower Semiconductor and certain of its directors and shareholders has been dismissed in its entirety. The suit had made claims arising under Sections 14(a) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 14a-9. The court accepted that Tower's status as a foreign private issuer exempts it, its directors and controlling officers from liability under the proxy rules of Section 14(a) of the Securities Exchange Act.
Alliances The National Research Council of Canada's Industrial Materials Institute (NRC-IMI) joined the Nano Imprint Lithography (NIL) consortium that Austrian company EV Group (EVG) formed last year. The consortium is working to commercialise advanced NIL technologies.
Last autumn, the NRC-IMI purchased an EVG520HE semi-automated hot-embossing system to pattern surfaces for various applications, from bio-recognition to magnetic data storage. In addition, DALSA, an Ontario-based maker of processed silicon wafers and packaged silicon chips, purchased EVG's GEMINI wafer bonder cluster tool and a HERCULES thick-polymer lithography tool for high-volume MEMS manufacturing.
