Yearly Archives: 2015

San Jose, Calif., October 29, 2015 — Ziptronix, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Tessera Technologies, Inc. and a leader in low temperature wafer bonding technology, today announced it has entered into a development agreement with Fraunhofer IZM-ASSID. The companies will work together to integrate Ziptronix Direct Bond Interconnect (DBI®) technology into Fraunhofer’s state of the art 300mm wafer production line and demonstrate DBI as the industry’s finest pitch, thinnest and lowest total cost-of-ownership 3D integration solution.

Increasingly, the industry is looking toward 2.5D and 3D-IC solutions as the most cost effective and efficient means of delivering the next generation of high performance computing and consumer electronic products. However, conventional approaches rely heavily on thru silicon vias (TSVs), micro-bumping and underfill, which can limit interconnect density, performance, form factor and cost-effectiveness. Ziptronix DBI technology can address these limitations and accelerate the adoption of game-changing 2.5D and 3D-IC architectures.

“Although great progress has been made, the industry continues to face challenges associated with the manufacturability, scalability and cost of current 2.5D and 3D-IC solutions. Ziptronix’s DBI technology is an enabling platform that can readily address many of these challenges,” said Juergen Wolf, Head of Fraunhofer IZM-ASSID. “We at Fraunhofer are very excited to work with Ziptronix to demonstrate the benefits of DBI technology to our customers on our 300mm wafer production line.”

“DBI is the industry’s highest density, highest performance, lowest profile and lowest cost-of-ownership 3D integration platform,” said Paul Enquist, Vice President of 3D R&D at Ziptronix. “It will revolutionize the world’s most challenging 3D-IC structures and devices, and we look forward to working closely with Fraunhofer to demonstrate this enabling capability to customers around the world.”

“The acquisition of Ziptronix, and the subsequent integration of its team and technology into Tessera, has allowed us to significantly expand the 2.5D and 3D value that we bring to our customers, and the response has been incredibly positive,” said Craig Mitchell, President of Invensas. “This development agreement with Fraunhofer is an important step in the continuing development of the DBI technology as we grow our 2.5D and 3D product offerings.”

Fremont, Calif., October 29, 2015 – Soraa, a leader in the development of advanced lighting products and gallium nitride on gallium nitride (GaN on GaN™) LED technology, announced today that it will open a new semiconductor fabrication plant in Syracuse, New York. In partnership with the State of New York, the company will construct a new state-of-the-art GaN on GaN LED fabrication facility that will employ hundreds of workers. Working in coordination with SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (SUNY Poly CNSE), the new facility is on pace for shell completion by the end of this year with production beginning in the second half of 2016. Soraa currently operates an LED fabrication plant in Fremont, California, one of only a few in the United States.

“Central New York’s economic growth is due in large part to high-tech companies like Soraa that recognize the region’s wealth of assets and resources,” Governor Cuomo said. “Today’s announcement not only means economic stability for the region, but it also strengthens Central New York as leader in the development of the clean technology that will help light and power the future.”

“Syracuse is an optimal location for the new fabrication facility for a number of reasons including the innovative high-tech vision and strategy of Governor Cuomo; the ability to attract some of the best and brightest scientists and engineers in the world; and the capacity to tightly control the product quality and intellectual property around our lighting products through our partnership with SUNY Poly CNSE,” commented Jeff Parker, CEO of Soraa. “Since we launched our first product in 2012, global market reception for our high quality of light LED products has been phenomenal and sales have soared. The new facility will significantly increase our manufacturing capacity to meet this growing demand.”

It was announced in late 2013 that Soraa would expand its manufacturing operations to the Riverbend Commerce Park in Buffalo, NY. The plans outlined sharing the space with solar module manufacturer, Silevo. However, following the acquisition of Silevo by SolarCity, the facilities at Riverbend could no longer accommodate both Soraa’s fabrication facility and the necessary square footage for SolarCity’s expanded operations. As a result, it was back to the drawing board.

“Following the change with the Riverbend space, we remained focused on finding an optimal solution that worked for the State, Soraa and the talented workers that call upstate New York home,” added Parker. “We’re back on track with a great location and are targeting to employ at least 300 people to support a revenue stream of over $1 billion once fully functional.”

“By taking Albany’s nanotechnology-based public-private economic development model across New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo has established an unmatched engine for long-term growth, and this latest announcement is a perfect example of how his jobs-focused strategy continues to pay dividends,” said Dr. Alain E. Kaloyeros, President and CEO of SUNY Poly. “SUNY Poly is thrilled to partner with Soraa to locate this advanced manufacturing facility and its resultant jobs, as well as the hands-on educational offerings that this will present for New York’s students, adjacent to the Film Hub in Syracuse, where the company’s cutting edge lighting technology can be adapted for production purposes. Each component of this collaboration is further proof that the Governor’s unique vision for crafting commercialization and manufacturing-based opportunities is a powerful recipe for a resurgent New York.”

In 2007, a team of pioneering professors from the worlds of engineering and semiconductors—Dr. Shuji Nakamura, Nobel Laureate and inventor of the blue laser and LED; Dr. Steven DenBaars, founder of Nitres; and Dr. James Speck of U.C. Santa Barbara’s College of Engineering—came together and made a bet on an LED technology platform completely different than current industry practice, a technology most industry experts at the time considered to be impossible to execute.

Soraa bet that GaN on GaN LEDs would produce more light per area of LED, be of higher quality, and be more cost-effective than technology based on other foreign substrates like sapphire or silicon carbide. This strategy ran against every trend in the LED industry. That bet paid off: today, the company’s LEDs emit more light per LED material than any other LED; handle more electric current per area than any other LED; and the company’s products produce best-in-class color quality with full spectrum light similar to sun-light, while also delivering the brightest beams.

One thing seems clear about the semiconductor market: consolidation is showing no signs of slowing down.

On the heels of two additional acquisitions in the space around semiconductors — LAM Research acquiring KLA-Tencor and Western Digital buying SanDisk — rumors have abounded this week that there is more to come.

First, Bloomberg reported that Texas Instruments, the world’s largest maker of analog chips, is in talks to buy Maxim Integrated. TI is said to have competition for Maxim from a competitor in the analog chip space, Analog Devices.

According to the Bloomberg report, Maxim may be holding out for a hefty premium, if it does, in fact, sell.

“When asked on an Oct. 22 conference call about a possible takeover by a larger company such as Texas Instruments, Maxim Chief Financial Officer Bruce Kiddoo said the company is big enough and profitable enough to survive on its own,” Bloomberg reported. “Maxim also has the resources to do its own acquisitions, he said.”

For Texas Instruments’ part, CFO Kevin March weighed in on potential acquisitions on October 21. Bloomberg quotes him as saying: “If we were to look at an acquisition, it would probably be a company that’s going to be broad in catalog, have a diverse customer base, have a large percentage of its revenue coming from industrial and automotive, probably have a very talented R&D team. So we really do focus on the numbers that that acquisition might lead us to.”

Following the Bloomberg story, the Chicago Tribune issued a report saying STMicroelectronics is considering a bid for Fairchild Semiconductor. STMicro is Europe’s biggest chipmaker, and would be looking to “increase growth and shore up its digital products business” with the purchase, according to the report.

For its part, Fairchild, which is one of the oldest chipmakers in the US, has hired Goldman Sachs to help it find a buyer. In recent months the company has conducted talks with ON Semicondor and Infineon Technologies about being purchased, according to the Tribune.

It is still uncertain whether anything will come of either report, but it seems clear that the merger madness in the semiconductor industry is far from over.

To help readers follow this constantly changing situation, Solid State Technology is keeping a running scorecard of all the significant transactions in the semiconductor market here: Historic era of consolidation for chipmakers.

 

Berkeley, CA, October 29, 2015 — Pixelligent, a leader in high-index materials, announced today the development of a new OLED light extraction technology that dramatically increases light output in their customer’s OLED Lighting devices. Pixelligent founder and chief technology officer, Dr. Gregory Cooper, presented the new technology at the 17th Annual OLEDs World Summit.

These new nanocomposite materials, which combine scattering particles along with PixClear® zirconia, are delivering significant improvements in light extraction and efficiency for numerous OLED lighting applications. “This class of materials represents the next generation of Pixelligent’s technology development strategy. In fact, we have seen light output double in devices that our partners and customers have tested with our PixClear® OLED products,” said Pixelligent Founder & CTO, Gregory Cooper.

Dr. Cooper’s presentation at the conference included the numerous breakthroughs Pixelligent has achieved in OLED lighting applications, derived from its proprietary light extraction nanocomposite materials. These new OLED materials will enable Pixelligent’s customers to deliver new OLED Lighting devices with unprecedented light extraction and cost efficiencies.

 

According to a report from IC Insights, the worldwide market for optoelectronics, sensors and actuators, and discrete semiconductors (O-S-D) has turned into a mixed bag of double-digit growth for several major product categories (lamp devices, infrared circuits, and CMOS image sensors) combined with single-digit declines in sales for nearly a dozen other categories (including most sensors, diodes, rectifiers, and power transistors). Combined revenues for O-S-D products are expected to grow 3% in 2015 to a new record-high $66.4 billion from the current peak of $64.4 billion set in 2014, when sales increased by 9%  (Figure 1). With integrated circuit sales on track to decline by 1% this year, the marketshare of O-S-D products is projected to reach nearly 19% of total semiconductor revenues in 2015, which are now expected to drop by less than a half percent to $354.1 billion.

Figure 1

Figure 1

IC Insights expects growth in the sensor/actuator market segment to slightly strengthen in 2016 with revenues projected to rise 4% to $10.5 billion after increasing just 2% in 2015 to $10.1 billion due to significant price erosion in many sensor product categories.  The commodity-filled discretes segment is expected to recover and grow 3% in 2016 to $22.2 billion after being knocked down 6% in 2015 to $21.5 billion because of a slowdown in equipment manufacturing and weakness in the global economy during the second half of this year.

Optoelectronics is expected to continue to be the strongest growing segment in the O-S-D marketplace during the second half of this decade, primarily because of increasing demand for CMOS image sensors in a wide range of embedded applications (such as automotive, medical, video-surveillance networks, and image recognition systems) along with the spread of solid-state lighting products built with high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and the need for more laser transmitters in high-speed optical communication networks.

The other two O-S-D segments — sensors/actuators and discretes — have struggled to maintain consistent growth after rebounding in 2014 from slumps in 2012 and 2013. Discretes semiconductor sales continue to be whipsawed by volatility in product purchases, which have quickly switched on or off depending upon changes in the economic outlook or end-use market demand. Power transistors, which account for more than half of discrete sales, have also seen tremendous swings in demand since 2010.

Additional information regarding market growth trends for optoelectronics, sensors/actuators, and discretes is provided in the October Update to The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry. Expanded coverage and detailed analysis of trends and growth rates in the optoelectronics, sensors/actuators, and discretes market segments is offered in IC Insights’ O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes.

Tokyo, October 28, 2015 — Toshiba Corp. said Wednesday that it will retreat from the complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS, image sensor business, by selling the production line at its Oita plant to Sony Corp.

Toshiba plans to sell the CMOS sensor production facility by the March 31 end of fiscal 2015 at an estimated price of 20 billion yen. Some 1,100 employees from the image sensor business will be rehired by the Sony group.

Toshiba also announced its withdrawal during fiscal 2015 from the white light-emitting diode business as part of reforms of its discrete semiconductor chip operations.

Intensifying competition led Toshiba to suffer market share declines and losses in the image sensor and white LED businesses. The company believes that loss-making operations were a cause of its accounting scandal and aims to accelerate its business reconstruction efforts by reforming semiconductor operations.

The company will set up a new firm in April to integrate the Oita plant in southwestern Japan with Iwate Toshiba Electronics Co., a group firm based in Kitakami in northeastern Japan. The integration is aimed at boosting production efficiency for such large-scale integration chips as analog integrated circuits for in-vehicle devices.

Toshiba will not close the Oita plant and will keep operating five plants in Japan for its production of LSI and discrete chips.

For the reform of semiconductor chip operations, Toshiba will face a surplus workforce of some 1,200 employees who are not moving to Sony. It will seek early retirements and consider transfers to the Yokkaichi plant, a core facility making flash memory chips, and other factories.

The company aims to restore profitability in LSI and discrete chip operations in fiscal 2016 by cutting their fixed costs by about 26 billion yen from fiscal 2014.

An international team of researchers from Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Australian National University in Canberra created an ultrafast all-optical switch on silicon nanostructures. This device may become a platform for future computers and permit to transfer data at an ultrahigh speed. The article with the description of the device was published in Nano Letters journal and highlighted in Nature Materials.

This work belongs to the field of photonics — an optics discipline which appeared in the 1960-s, simultaneously with the invention of lasers. Photonics has the same goals as electronics does, but uses photons — the quanta of light — instead of electrons. The biggest advantage of using photons is the absence of interactions between them. As a consequence, photons address the data transmission problem better than electrons. This property can primarily be used for in computing where IPS (instructions per second) is the main attribute to be maximized. The typical scale of eletronic transistors — the basis of contemporary electronic devices — is less than 100 nanometers, wheres the typical scale of photonic transistors stays on the scale of several micrometers. Nanostructures that are able to compete with the electronic structures — for example, plasmonic nanoparticles — are characterized by low efficiency and significant losses. Therefore, coming up with a compact photonic switch was a very challenging task.

Three years ago several groups of researchers simultaneously discovered an important effect: they found out that silicon nanoparticles are exhibit strong resonances in the visible spectrum — the so-called magnetic dipole resonances. This type of resonance is characterized by strong localization of light waves on subwavelength scales, inside the nanoparticles. This effect turned out to be interesting to researches, but, according to Maxim Shcherbakov, the first author of the article published in Nano Letters, nobody thought that this discovery could create a basis for development of a compact and very rapid photonic switch.

Nanoparticles were fabricated in the Australian National University by e-beam lithography followed by plasma-phase etching. It was done by Alexander Shorokhov, who served an internship in the University as a part of Presidential scholarship for studying abroad. The samples were brought to Moscow, and all the experimental work was carried out at the Faculty of Physics of Lomonosov Moscow State University, in the Laboratory of Nanophotonics and Metamaterials.

“In our experimental research me and my colleague Polina Vabishchevich from the Faculty used a set of nonlinear optics methods that address femtosecond light-matter,” explains Maxim Shcherbakov. “We used our femtosecond laser complex acquired as part of the MSU development program”.

The "device": a disc 250 nm in diameter capable of switching optical pulses at femtosecond rates. (Maxim Scherbakov et al)

The “device”: a disc 250 nm in diameter capable of switching optical pulses at femtosecond rates. (Maxim Scherbakov et al)

Eventually, researchers developed a “device”: a disc 250 nm in diameter that is capable of switching optical pulses at femtosecond rates (a femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second). Switching speeds that fast will allow us to create data transmission and processing devices that will work at tens and hundreds terabits per second. This can make possible downloading thousands of HD-movies in less than a second.

The operation of the all-optical switch created by MSU researchers is based on the interaction between two femtosecond pulses. The interaction becomes possible due to the magnetic resonance of the silicon nanostructures. If the pulses arrive at the nanostructure simultaneously, one of them interacts with the other and dampers it due to the effect of two-photon absorption. If there is a 100-fs delay between the two pulses, the interaction does not occur, and the second pulse goes through the nanostructure without changing.

“We were able to develop a structure with the undesirable free-carrier effects are suppressed,” says Maxim Shcherbakov. “Free carriers (electrons and electron holes) place serious restrictions on the speed of signal conversion in the traditional integrated photonics. Our work represents an important step towards novel and efficient active photonic devices– transistors, logic units, and others. Features of the technology implemented in our work will allow its use in silicon photonics. In the nearest future, we are going to test such nanoparticles in integrated circuits”.

According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research “LED Driver and Chipset Market – Global Industry Analysis, Trend, Size, Share and Forecast, 2015 – 2021“, the global LED Driver and Chipset market was valued at US$2.80 billion in 2014 and is expected to reach US$11.99 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of 23.2% from 2015 to 2021.

The global LED Driver and Chipset market is primarily driven by increasing demand among the consumers for efficient power solution both in terms of display and lighting. LEDs outperform the traditional Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamps (CCFLs) and Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) in term of size, energy efficiency, reliability and mechanical ruggedness both for displays and lighting applications. LEDs generate 100% of the National Television System Committee (NTSC) colors plus some extra colors in comparison with LCDs which generates only 70-80% of the NTSC colors. In addition, the operating cost of LEDs is low as compared to other lighting and display devices as LEDs produce more lumen per watt. Thus, more consumers are inclining towards the usage of LEDs which in turn is driving the growth of LED drivers and chipset market. Moreover, increasing awareness among the consumers regarding carbon footprints is also expected to fuel the demand of eco friendly LED devices which in turn is expected to boost the demand of LED Drivers and Chipsets offered by different LED product’s manufacturers. LEDs result in less carbon dioxide and Sulphur oxide emission (451 pound/ year) and help to keep the environment pollution free. Moreover, LEDs produces 90% less heat than incandescent and. CCFL bulbs.

The LED Driver and Chipset market is segmented on the basis of application and geography. The application segment is further bifurcated into display and lighting. By display, LED Driver and Chipset market is classified into: mobile phones, digital camera, television and navigation devices, medical devices, computer/laptop peripherals and others. Gaming devices, digital photo frames and MP3 players are included in the others segment. By lighting, the market can be segmented into outdoor areas and traffic signals, automotives, indoor lighting and commercial lighting among others. Geographically, the LED Driver and Chipset market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Rest of the World (ROW).

Among the different applications, lighting segment was the fastest growing market in 2014. The market is predicted to grow at a CAGR of 24.1% from 2015 to 2021 and accounted for 20.1% of the overall revenue share of LED Driver and Chipset market. By geography, Asia Pacific held the largest market share and is expected to be the fastest growing market expanding at a CAGR of 23.4%. Asia Pacific is mainly driven by China and Japan. The government in this region has taken several steps to phase out the usage of conventional lighting and display technology to reduce carbon footprints. This in turn is expected to increases the sale of LED appliances and is predicted to drive the growth of LED Driver and Chipset market during the forecast period. Advanced Analogic Technologies Inc, Diodes Inc, Exar Corp and Ixys Corp among others are some of the major players operating in LED Driver and Chipset market.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — InvenSense, Inc., a leading provider of MEMS sensor platforms, today announced it has released for OEM review UltraPrint™, its ultrasonic fingerprint imaging solution, manufactured on the proprietary InvenSense CMOS-MEMS Platform (ICMP), offering ramp to production in calendar year 2017. As the world’s largest fabless MEMS SOC innovator and source for the eutectically bonded ICMP, InvenSense ships, on average, over twelve million motion or audio sensor SOCs each week to leading global mobile and IoT OEMs.

By adding aluminum nitride-based piezoelectric capacity to its platform, InvenSense is enabling, for the first time, mass manufacture of unique piezoelectric Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (pMUT) and transducer arrays, with each transducer element individually controllable through direct wafer-level interconnect to the CMOS ASIC.

This dramatic advancement in acoustic imaging technology will allow manufacturers to seamlessly integrate, on a platform proven capable of accommodating exceptionally high volumes, detailed fingerprint images from the epidermal to dermal layers, and to do so directly through glass or metal, even in the presence of oil, lotions, perspiration or other moisture, and other common contaminants that can easily undermine legacy capacitive solutions. These critical factors enhance live finger authentication and guard against spoofing, thereby increasing security.

Fari Assaderaghi, InvenSense’s Vice President Advanced Technology, commented: “Our proprietary UltraPrint technology is expected to enable, for the first time, deployment of ultrasonic fingerprint solutions under glass, as well as a myriad of other surfaces. This flexibility in sensor placement without cutting a hole in display glass, aluminum, steel or plastic case material is highly valued by mobile and other OEMs. Our innovative team is excited to work with equally motivated partners to quickly bring this new technology to market.”

Mo Maghsoudnia, InvenSense’s Vice President Worldwide Manufacturing, added: “As a leading innovator in MEMS and sensor technology globally, and the world’s only fabless MEMS SOC vendor selling hundreds of millions of motion and audio sensors each year, we have a proven track record of rapidly ramping up innovative new MEMS solutions into mass production. We’re excited to extend the InvenSense CMOS-MEMS Platform to pMUT devices and enable a breakthrough authentication solution for leading mobile and IoT products.”

Schaumburg, Illinois (October 2015) –  ETEL S.A., a leading international producer of direct drive-based motion technology, announces the opening of a new research and development division earlier this year. Owned by Dr. Johannes Heidenhain GmbH and based in Switzerland, ETEL plans to extend its position as a leader in the semiconductor industry worldwide.

“We are researching positioning systems with nanometer precision, especially for wafer production, where we are already ahead of the pack,” explains Alexander Hirter, CFO of ETEL. The new facility is outfitted with the latest technology to allow for pioneering research: “Our cutting-edge technical laboratory utilizes ground with no vibration and a constant room temperature.”

Situated in Biel, Switzerland, the new ETEL R&D center was established after substantial investment and with promise to further the development of direct drive motors, position and motion controllers and motion systems with nanometer precision. “Wafer production especially needs nano-precise positioning systems.  Even today, there is no flat screen, no iPhone without a bit of ETEL in it.  And we will increase that portion in the future,” explains Denis Piaget, Managing Director at ETEL.

While the center of ETEL’s activities, including production, will remain at the headquarters in Môtiers, Switzerland, the new site will play an important additional role in ETEL’s development.