Nanomanufacturing company Molecular Imprints is planning to expand its operations in Austin, Texas with the lease of 19,000 sf near its current 16,000-sf location. Molecular Imprints will also open new distribution centers in Germany and Japan for its semiconductor chip imprinting machinery.
Infineon Technologies North America Corp. has opened a new 100,000-sf facility in Cary, N.C. Infineon, based in Munich, Germany, will use the space to accommodate semiconductor chip design and management operations. The company plans to invest a minimum of $8-million in the facility over the next five years.
Ktech is moving into an 83,400-sf facility in Sandia, N.M., to expand its commercial activity in the semiconductor, sensor, material coatings, and robotics industries. Ktech is a Sandia National Laboratories contractor, supplying operations, engineering, and maintenance services to the Department of Energy’s Pulsed Power Research Center. Ktech’s operations were previously located in six offices in the Albuquerque area.
Marvell Semiconductor will locate its new headquarters in four buildings recently purchased in Santa Clara, Calif. Totaling nearly 900,000-sf, the buildings are sited on almost 34 acres. Marvell, a fabless semiconductor subsidiary of Marvell Technology Group, will engage in operations including research and development, administration, and sales and marketing in the new facilities. The two-year relocation will begin in early 2004.
Celestica has relocated within the city of Raleigh from 26,000 sf to 70,000 sf at the Globe Center Corporate Park. Celestica, a manufacturer of products for technology companies on an outsource basis, will house operations including printed circuit assembly, systems assembly, engineering design, and sales in the facility. The relocation project entailed a $2-million investment.
Maxim Integrated Products has purchased a San Antonio warehouse formerly occupied by Phillips Semiconductors for $40 million. The 330,000-sf facility is sited on a 168-acre campus and features a submicron 8-inch wafer fab able to produce eight million components annually. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Maxim expects to resume production of silicon wafers in the new facility by year-end 2004.
San Jose State University has opened its newly updated Microelectronics Process Engineering Fabrication Facility at the College of Engineering. The 3,400-sf fab and academic program were made possible by donations from corporate sponsors including Intel Corp. and Applied Materials Inc., as well as funding from the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the National Science Foundation.
MMC Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Milpitas-based Maxtor Corp., will expand its disk-drive media manufacturing operations with the lease of 183,000-sf in Fremont, Calif. Housing 65,000 sf of cleanrooms, the facility will be occupied in addition to MMC's 140,000-sf location in San Jose.
SUNY Albany is working with International Sematech to create an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) Resist Test Center at Albany Nanotech. Slated for completion in April 2004, the center will be housed in the NanoFab II facility which is currently under construction. The center’s nine employees will test a photosensitive chemical called resist that can transfer a circuit pattern onto a semiconductor wafer. Sematech’s $403 million computer chip research center is also located at Albany Nanotech.
Oasis Semiconductor is nearly quadrupling its size with a move from 7,353 sf to 30,000 sf at Waltham Weston Corporate Center in Waltham, Mass. Oasis is a supplier of silicon chips to the office automation market. The move will shift Oasis from the first to the fourth floor of the six-story, 300,000-sf building.
TDK Semiconductor has relocated its worldwide headquarters from Tustin to a new building in Irvine, Calif. Located in the Irvine Spectrum business park, the facility will house the design center, marketing, sales, engineering, finance, and administration. TDK Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Tokyo-based TCK Corp., produces analog and mixed-signal products for digital cable and satellite applications.
Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) is planning to construct its next major semiconductor manufacturing plant in Richardson, Texas. TI will invest approximately $3 billion in the 300mm silicon wafer plant in the years following groundbreaking in late 2005. The plant will employ up to 1,000 people when fully operational. The siting of the plant in Texas will provide over $300-million in new funding from private and public sources for the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. will open a new chip design center in Hyderabad, India by year-end 2003. Cypress, based in Silicon Valley, currently operates 18 design centers worldwide. The new facility will complement Cypress’ current Indian design center in Bangalore.
Semiconductor equipment maker Brooks Automation has opened a new 18,000-sf cleanroom at its headquarters in Chelmsford, Mass. The facility will consolidate operations previously sited in Billerica; Longmont, Colo.; Mountain View, Calif.; and Valencia, Calif.
The University at Albany SUNY has selected M+W Zander to design and construct the new Nanotechnology Design and Research Center. M+W Zander U.S. Operations, a subsidiary of M+W Zander, Stuttgart, will plan and construct the entire complex with an area of 20,000 square meters including a cleanroom with an area measuring 3,500 square meters. The order volume of the first project phase, which is scheduled for completion in early 2004, amounts to $15-million. The new research complex is intended for R&D of pioneering processes and technology used in semiconductor manufacture.
