Trina Solar announced its research agreement with the Solar Energy Research Institute of Singapore to develop an all-back-contact high-efficiency silicon wafer solar cell using Trina solar's monocrystalline wafers.

ASML has announced that four TWINSCAN XT:1900Gi lithography systems have joined its "One Million Wafer Club" of scanners that have processed more than one million silicon wafers within 12 months, underlining the importance and acceptance of this advanced technology in mainstream chip manufacturing.

"Applied's stronger second quarter results were led by revenues and profitability gains in our silicon and FPD businesses," said Mike Splinter, chairman and CEO of Applied Materials. "Global demand for computing and consumer electronics is giving our customers the confidence to make significant capacity additions, fueling what we believe will be a multiyear growth cycle..."

MEMC Electronic Materials will raise its prices for silicon wafers in both the second and third quarters by the "low- to mid-single digits." SEH, Sumco, Wacker and others are also believed to be raising their silicon wafer prices.

In the US, we've seen chipmakers shut down their fabs one-by-one over the years. How can we reverse that trend? One possible solution: Why not tell the Asian silicon foundries (TSMC, UMC, SMIC, etc.) that they must build fabs in the US?

DuPont Apollo has announced the opening of its silicon based thin-film photovoltaic module manufacturing facility. The 538,000-square-feet facility will have an annual capacity of up to 50 megawatts with a thin-film-on-glass PV module production line. Full-scale commercial production is slated for the first quarter of 2010.

Researchers have demonstrated a tiny chip based on silicon that could be used to diagnose dozens of diseases. The design is simpler and requires less blood be taken.

Applied Materials has acquired substantially all the assets, including the intellectual property, of Advent Solar for an undisclosed cash amount. Advent Solar is a developer of advanced technology for crystalline silicon (c-Si) PVs.

Rambus has evolved its mobile memory technology further in its second generation silicon, which brings its high-bandwidth mobile memory controller to an achievable power efficiency of 2.2mW/Gbps.

Suntech Power has announced that it has beaten all previous records for multicrystalline silicon module conversion efficiency. The new world record conversion efficiency (aperture area only) was measured at 16.53%.

Japan's Sumco, the world's No.2 maker of silicon wafers used to make chips, said it tumbled to a first-half loss on weaker wafer demand from chipmakers.

A new Microelectronics Innovation Center is being formed at the Université de Sherbrooke in Bromont, Québec, to focus on 200mm MEMS and 3D wafer-level packaging, and advanced technologies associated with the assembly and packaging of silicon chips.

Pure Wafer, a provider of silicon wafers and wafer services based on reclaimed wafers, has announced plans to raise £2.3 million (US$3.8 million) and restructure its debt, along with its delayed interim financial results to Dec. 30, 2008.

A Yale University team led by Professor TP Ma has proposed a DRAM that marries a ferroelectric material with a silicon transistor. While the polarization of the ferroelectric decays, the structure, refresh cycle, power consumption and speed of the FeDRAM could offer advantages over conventional DRAMs, Ma said.

Spruce Pine, a modest, charmingly low-key town in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina, is at the heart of a global billion-dollar industry.

The ever-optimistic Kinam Kim of Samsung Electronics noted that some people in industry say the limit of scaling is ~5 nm, to which he said, "I do not agree."

China is working on a plan to establish a union in silicon materials industry so as to cope with the ongoing financial crisis, said Zhu Lihui, secretary general of the semi-conductor materials branch under China Electronics Materials Industry Association.