The award-winning entry was inspired by the Namib Desert Beetle, but other teams used solar-powered hot plates, conifer bark filters, and reverse osmosis in their projects engineered to provide “Clean Water for All” as part of the Applied Materials Clean Tech Competition.

The Applied Materials Clean Tech Competition (CTC), a research and design challenge program for 15-18 year old students, attracted overwhelming interest in Singapore with participation from 330 students, forming 91 teams across 23 schools.Launched for the first time in Singapore, this annual competition aims to address a significant global issue, and this year’s theme focused on “Clean Water for All.”Following months of vigorous prototyping, innovative research and design, Hwa Chong Institution emerged as the winner of the Applied Materials Clean Tech Competition  in Singapore. Their team’s innovative project on utilising calcium carbonate found in clam shells to remove toxic metal ions from waste water showcased their talent to solve critical global water problems through affordable eco-friendly solutions.

Applied Materials employees are taking to the streets, the mountains, the parks and the classrooms as part of the Company’s EarthWorks campaign that celebrates Earth Day and encourages employees and their families to learn, explore and get involved this Spring.Over the next few weeks, we will be planting trees in Alzenau, Germany, enjoying an Earth Day festival in San Jose, California, and participating in cleanup projects at Mount Fuji in Japan and at various historical sites in Korea. “Litter Gitters” will be out in full force in Whitefish, Montana and Austin, Texas employee volunteers will join the “sweep” of the city to remove waste.

Paving the way for the manufacture of 3D-integrated stacked chips, technologists and engineers at Applied Materials have recently completed electrical characterization of through-silicon via (TSV) structures.  This development is vitally important since TSVs are the vertical interconnections that carry power and high-bandwidth speed signals between the stacked die of layered logic and memory devices. The critical functions performed by TSVs require thorough mechanical and electrical characterization.

Applied Materials recently hosted Congressman Lamar Smith, representative for the 21st Congressional District of Texas, at the company’s Austin facility for an in-depth overview of the semiconductor industry, global challenges and opportunities ahead and Applied’s leadership role in the industry. Congressman Smith chairs the influential Science, Space and Technology Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, which has jurisdiction over important programs within the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation. 

Recently more than 270 students from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Hsinchu, Taiwan, crowded into the campus auditorium to hear Mike Splinter, Chairman and CEO of Applied Materials deliver a talk about the fast-paced and challenging environment of the semiconductor industry.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, (IEEE) has bestowed the title of Fellow on Dr. Randhir Thakur, executive vice president and general manager of Applied Materials’ Silicon Systems Group, for his groundbreaking contributions to microchip fabrication.To celebrate Randhir’s ongoing achievements, we made this video highlighting one of the semiconductor industry’s most prolific inventors and successful leaders.

More than 2.5 million terabytes of “Big Data” is created every day – a truly astronomical sum. The challenge is how to extract strategic insight and actionable information from these mountains of data. Semiconductor Manufacturing and Design magazine recently examined Big Data in microchip fabrication. The article includes perspectives from leading chipmakers and discusses Applied’s remarkable data-mining technology as a solution.

In a fast-moving world, disruptive technological change is a constant, and for most companies, one of the central challenges of the coming decades will be how to innovate fast enough to stay ahead of customer needs