News & Features

Is Fracking – the nickname for the process of releasing natural gas by using water, salt, and sand to fracture rocks – safe? I don’t know … and I am beginning to think we will NEVER know for sure. There are three main reasons for this: – What constitutes ‘fracking’ varies according to who you ask. For some it is the entire end-to-end process involved in getting natural gas from deep in the shale layer, while for others it is strictly the part of the process in which water and chemicals are used to free the gas. In local ‘town…

If you have never worked in the semiconductor industry, much of what goes on seems like intentionally obfuscated jargon and black magic. And for many years it was – or at least it seemed to be – as empirical knowledge outstripped theoretical understanding, and yields were more a factor of skilled process engineers at the knobs than of robust and thoroughly understood processes running in statistical control. When I got involved in the semiconductor industry, wafer size was 100mm (4 inches) with a ‘flat’ along one or both edges, and a rather ‘generous’ edge exclusion area and ‘kerf’ between device…