Applied Nanotech Holdings Inc. uncrated the THERCOBOND family of highly thermally conductive bonding and printed materials for power electronics and photonics packaging.

Indium Corporation acquired a manufacturing facility in Rome, NY, to expand its production capacities of indium-, gallium-, germanium-, and tin-based materials, as well as other compounds.

Invensas Corporation, Tessera subsidiary, debuted bond via array (BVA) technology, an ultra-high-I/O PoP semiconductor packaging alternative to wide-I/O TSV packaging.

Bhavesh Muni took the helm as global business director for the Advanced Packaging Technologies business of Dow Electronic Materials, covering Dow's semiconductor packaging materials product portfolio and its manufacturing capabilities.

Amkor Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:AMKR) plans to build a state-of-the-art factory and global research and development center in the Incheon Free Economic Zone, which is located in the greater metropolitan area of Seoul, Korea.

Mixed-signal IC maker Silicon Laboratories Inc. (NASDAQ: SLAB) introduced a microcontroller (MCU) die sales program with a minimum order quantity of 1 wafer.

The ASM iHawk Xpress Opto Wire Bonder from backend semiconductor assembly equipment supplier ASM Pacific Technology offers new innovations in transport, copper-wire bonding, and automatic rethreading.

Kulicke & Soffa broke ground on its Singapore global headquarters expansion, near the current leased headquarters location. A state-of-the-art facility in Serangoon will bolster the company’s R&D and manufacturing capabilities, and host service and support functions.

“From 2011 to 2017, the number of DRIE-processed wafers will jump from 5.4M to more than 27M (all wafer sizes). This is >30% CAGR”, explains Dr Eric Mounier, Yole Développement.

TSMC’s Doug Yu challenged the current nomenclature and pronounced that interposer technology should be called “3.5D” instead of 2.5D, since it is and will be capable of much more than the simple 3D packaging stack.

Heraeus introduced its high-reliability composite aluminum/copper (CucorAl) semiconductor bonding wire, which offers strong mechanical and electrical bonds to semiconductor pads, with good thermal properties.

Asia-based ASM Pacific Technology (ASMPT) Group, a supplier of semiconductor assembly, bonding, and packaging equipment, will integrate with the SIPLACE organization in Europe.

CMOS image sensors (CIS) are breaking sales records again, after several years without upward momentum, reports IC Insights. New portable systems and embedded imaging are lifting CIS to $6.3 billion in 2012 and new record sales each year through 2016.

Sales of semiconductor probe cards grew 17% in 2011, reaching $1.17 billion, VLSIresearch reports. While short of a record, 2011 was one of the probe card sector’s best, and it saw a new leader knock FormFactor Inc. out of the #1 spot. The outlook is for sales to be flat in 2012.

The lithography challenges  associated with TSV fabrication for various devices structures are investigated. Warren W. Flack, Manish Ranjan, Gareth Kenyon, Robert Hsieh, Ultratech, Inc., San Jose, CA. John Slabbekoorn, Andy Miller, imec, Leuven, Belgium

A leading, US-based IDM ordered about $5 million of front- and back-end semiconductor automatic optical inspection (AOI) tools from Camtek Ltd.

Semiconductor packaging and test services provider Carsem will assemble and test LED packages, partnering with a key customer and applying semiconductor packaging technologies for better LEDs.