Category Archives: Displays

For the first time ever, SEMICON Southeast Asia (SEMICON SEA), the region’s premier gathering of the industry connecting people, products, technologies and solutions across the electronics manufacturing supply chain, will be held in Kuala Lumpur. Taking place 8 to 10 May 2018, the conference will debut in the newly constructed Malaysia International Trade and Exhibition Centre (MITEC). With more than 85 percent of the exhibition space already sold, SEMICON SEA 2018 will represent companies from Southeast Asia, China, Taiwan, Europe and the U.S.  More than 300 companies will exhibit and as many as 8,000 visitors from 15 countries are expected to participate in SEMICON SEA. Organised by SEMI, SEMICON SEA 2018 theme will be “Think Smart Make Smart.”

The Southeast Asia region is a world-class electronics manufacturing hub with end-to-end R&D capabilities, and SEMICON SEA 2018 is the comprehensive platform for the electronics industry in the region. The event will feature three themed pavilions, five country pavilions, keynote presentations, and forums that will address critical trending topics within the semiconductor eco-system. The show will connect decision makers from the industry, demonstrate the most advanced products, and provide the most up-to-date market and technology trends.

Ng Kai Fai, president of SEMI Southeast Asia says, “The growth of SEMICON Southeast Asia is attributed to the rapid expansion and robust growth of the Electrical & Electronics (E&E) sector across Southeast Asia, with companies emerging as world leaders in mobile, automotive, medical and Internet of Things (IoT) supply chains. As one of the high-growth markets in the region, Malaysia contributes 44 percent of the total manufacturing output and 26 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product of the region and is forecasted to generate approximately US$ 382 billion in exports in 2018.”

Over the past three years, SEMICON SEA has become the annual gathering of the full regional supply chain. SEMICON SEA 2018 will feature a supplier search programme to encourage cross-border business matching as well as a technology start-up platform which will bring together Southeast Asia technology entrepreneurial resources. In conjunction with SEMICON SEA 2018, this event will also include the SEMICON University Programme which aims to encourage and promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) interest amongst young talent and will also include a job fair.

Enabling the A.I. era


November 8, 2017

BY PETE SINGER, Editor-in-Chief

There’s a strongly held belief now that the way in which semiconductors will be designed and manufactured in the future will be largely determined by a variety of rapidly growing applications, including artificial intelligence/deep learning, virtual and augmented reality, 5G, automotive, the IoT and many other uses, such as bioelectronics and drones.

The key question for most semiconductor manufacturers is how can they benefit from these trends? One of the goals of a recent panel assembled by Applied Materials for an investor day in New York was to answer that question.

The panel, focused on “enabling the A.I. era,” was moderated by Sundeep Bajikar (former Sellside Analyst, ASIC Design Engineer). The panelists were: Christos Georgiopoulos (former Intel VP, professor), Matt Johnson (SVP in Automotive at NXP), Jay Kerley (CIO of Applied Materials), Mukesh Khare (VP of IBM Research) and Praful Krishna (CEO of Coseer). The panel discussion included three debates: the first one was “Data: Use or Discard”; the second was “Cloud versus Edge”; and the third was “Logic versus Memory.”

“There’s a consensus view that there will be an explosion of data generation across multiple new categories of devices,” said Bajikar, noting that the most important one is the self-driving car. NXP’s Johnson responded that “when it comes to data generation, automotive is seeing amazing growth.” He noted the megatrends in this space: the autonomy, connectivity, the driver experience, and electrification of the vehicle. “These are changing automotive in huge ways. But if you look underneath that, AI is tied to all of these,” he said.

He said that estimates of data generation by the hour are somewhere from 25 gigabytes per hour on the low end, up to 250 gigabytes or more per hour on the high end. or even more in some estimates.

“It’s going to be, by the second, the largest data generator that we’ve seen ever, and it’s really going to have a huge impact on all of us.”

Intel’s Georgiopoulos agrees that there’s an enormous amount of infrastructure that’s getting built right now. “That infrastructure is consisting of both the ability to generate the data, but also the ability to process the data both on the edge as well as on the cloud,” he said. The good news is that sorting that data may be getting a little easier. “One of the more important things over the last four or five years has been the quality of the data that’s getting generated, which diminishes the need for extreme algorithmic development,” he said. “The better data we get, the more reasonable the AI neural networks can be and the simpler the AI networks can be for us to extract information that we need and turn the data information into dollars.” Check out our website at www.solid-state.com for a full report on the panel.

Pixelligent Technologies, the inventor of PixClear high-index nanocomposites for the OLED display, HD display, and solid state lighting markets, announced today it has named Alain Harrus, Ph.D. and Gene Banucci, Ph.D. to the Pixelligent Board of Directors.

“Alain and Gene are joining the Pixelligent team at a critical time in our development as we are emerging from years of product development and application engineering, to widespread adoption of our nanocomposites across all of our target markets. The combined vast experience which Alain Harrus brings on the OLED and semiconductor equipment front, and that Gene Banucci brings from having built one of the most successful advanced materials companies, is an incredibly valuable addition to the Pixelligent team and we are honored to have them,” commented Craig Bandes, CEO of Pixelligent Technologies.

Alain Harrus is currently the CEO of Kateeva, a manufacturer of a deposition equipment platform utilizing ink jet printing, with its initial focus on mass production of OLED displays. Kateeva’s innovations are helping to accelerate the adoption of OLED and other advanced display technologies. Prior to Kateeva, Alain was a Partner at Crosslink Capital, a San Francisco-based venture capital company where he led the firm’s semiconductor and energy technology investment activities. Before Crosslink he was the CTO at Novellus Systems—now part of Lam Research. “I’m excited to be joining the Pixelligent Board as the Company is entering its inflection point and emerging as a leading provider of high-efficiency materials to the OLED and HD display markets,” said Alain Harrus. Pixelligent and Kateeva have been partnering to optimize advanced display process solutions for the OLED for the past 12 months.

Gene Banucci is the former founding CEO of ATMI.  Gene served as CEO of ATMI from 1986-2004 and remained on the Board until the company was sold for $1.1B in 2014. Under his leadership the company completed an IPO and he grew the company to $245 million in revenues when he retired.  Since retiring as CEO, he has served on over 10 Boards across numerous industries.  “I have known and worked with executives at Pixelligent and have been following the Company’s progress for the last few years.  I am impressed with the balanced approach that Pixelligent has executed on both the market-leading materials they have developed as well as their proprietary mass production manufacturing platform.  I look forward to working with the team to help firmly establish Pixelligent as a leading advanced materials supplier to the OLED and Solid State Lighting markets,” said Gene Banucci.

“These are exciting times for Pixelligent and we expect 2018 to be a record year in terms of revenues and commercial wins across all of our core OLED display, OLED lighting, HD Display, and LED lighting markets,” said Bandes.

Oxide thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) panels are increasingly adopted in mobile PCs due to their feature of high resolution while consuming low power. Global shipments of large oxide TFT LCD panels of 9 inches or larger are expected to grow from 20 million units in 2016 to 55.6 million units in 2017, according to new analysis from IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO). Of those, 51 million units are estimated to be applied to mobile PCs, which include notebook PCs and tablet PCs, up 200 percent from 17 million units in 2016.

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“Demand for high-resolution panels has increased as media content for mobile PCs became available in higher resolutions,” said David Hsieh, senior director at IHS Markit. “Apple’ and Microsoft’s use of oxide TFT LCD panels for products – iPad, iPad Pro, and Surface, respectively – helped increase the oxide mobile PC panel market and encouraged other PC brands to follow suit.”

Low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) and oxide TFT LCD solutions are major candidates for displaying high-resolution images, and they are expected to account for more than 19 percent of the entire mobile PC display market in 2017, according to the Large Area Display Market Tracker by IHS Markit.

While LTPS can deliver higher resolution images and consume less power than oxide TFT LCD or a-Si TFT LCD, it has its own limits: its production cost is high and the yield rate is low. In addition, it is less efficient to produce large panels. Albeit not as high resolution as LTPS, oxide TFT LCD panels still display high-resolution images better than the a-Si solution, and they are suitable to produce large panels at lower production cost than LTPS.

LG Display and Sharp have expanded their oxide mobile PC panel shipments aggressively by 180 percent and 370 percent, respectively. CEC Panda in China is estimated to increase its shipments from about 600,000 units in 2016 to 4.2 million in 2017. As some oxide panel suppliers are reducing their focus on the mobile PC display business, display makers in China and Taiwan, such as BOE and Innolux, are expected to produce more oxide panels in future, IHS Markit said.

 

A major decrease in manufacturing cost gap between organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display and liquid crystal display (LCD) panel is expected to support the expansion of OLED TVs, according to new analysis from IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

The OLED Display Cost Model analysis estimates that the total manufacturing cost of a 55-inch OLED ultra-high definition (UHD) TV panel — at the larger end for OLED TVs — stood at $582 per unit in the second quarter of 2017, a 55 percent drop from when it was first introduced in the first quarter of 2015. The cost is expected to decline further to $242 by the first quarter of 2021, IHS Markit said.

The manufacturing cost of a 55-inch OLED UHD TV panel has narrowed to 2.5 times that of an LCD TV panel with the same specifications, compared to 4.3 times back in the first quarter of 2015.

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“Historically, a new technology takes off when the cost gap between a dominant technology and a new technology gets narrower,” said Jimmy Kim, principal analyst for display materials at IHS Markit. “The narrower gap in the manufacturing cost between the OLED and LCD panel will help the expansion of OLED TVs.”

However, it is not just the material that determines the cost gap. In fact, when the 55-inch UHD OLED TV panel costs were 2.5 times more than LCD TV panel, the gap in the material costs was just 1.7 times. Factors other than direct material costs, such as production yield, utilization rate, depreciation expenses and substrate size, do actually matter, IHS Markit said.

The total manufacturing cost difference will be reduced to 1.8 times from the current 2.5 times, when the yield is increased to a level similar to that of LCD panels. “However, due to the depreciation cost of OLED, there are limitations in cost reduction from just improving yield,” Kim said. “When the depreciation is completed, a 31 percent reduction in cost can be expected from now.”

Display shipments for notebook PCs are forecast to increase by 5 percent in 2017 to 177 million units compared to the previous year, while notebook PC unit shipments are expected to remain flat during the same period. Being worried about slower shipments next year due to higher inventory, panel makers are focusing on expanding high-end displays, such as in-plane switching (IPS) technology and low-power consuming displays.

According to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, IPS displays with wide-view angle and high color accuracy are expected to make up 37 percent of total notebook PC panel shipments in 2017, up from 27 percent in 2016. The share will continue to grow in 2018 to 42 percent.

“Production of IPS panels could bring economic benefits to panel makers, such as higher price and larger capacity consumption,” said Jason Hsu, senior principal analyst at IHS Markit.

The price of a typical IPS panel is about 30 percent higher than a conventional twisted nematic (TN) panel of the same size, while a premium IPS panel can cost double or higher. Moreover, producing one IPS panel will consume capacity more than 20 percent compared to producing a TN panel since it requires more photo masks, resulting in a longer take-time in the production line.

Lenovo, the largest IPS panel buyer, is estimated to purchase more than 12 million units of IPS panels in 2017. Dell has been focusing on the mid- and hi-end segments, applying more IPS panels to its products than its competitors. HP is also expanding IPS panel adoption, contributing to the IPS panel shipment growth in 2018.

Another feature display makers are focusing on is displays that consume lower power. As slim notebook PCs become the design trend, low-power consumption display is a critical need as the battery capacity is limited due to very compact chassis. With the advanced substrate technology such as oxide and low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS), the power consumption of LCD panel can be managed at a lower level.

According to IHS Markit, adoption of oxide and LTPS panels in the notebook PC market is expected to grow from 3 percent in 2016 to 10 percent in 2017 and to 13 percent in 2018. In the past, these advanced panel technologies were mostly used for premium panels like ultra-high definition (UHD)/wide quad HD (WQHD) resolution displays, but the application will expand to full HD resolution displays, driving the market demand.

In 2018, panel suppliers may have more pressure to maintain panel prices as panel oversupply is expected to continue. “But if the display evolution continues, raising the average selling price, panel makers will not necessarily struggle,” Hsu said.

The average selling price of a notebook PC panel is expected to increase to $46.68 in 2017 and to $47.96 in 2018, from $42.15 in 2016. “Although shipments in unit might decline next year, there are still opportunities for panel makers to increase revenues.”

 

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Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) announced today the completion of a strategic initiative with ALLOS Semiconductors (ALLOS) to demonstrate 200mm GaN-on-Si wafers for Blue/Green micro-LED production. Veeco teamed up with ALLOS to transfer their proprietary epitaxy technology onto the Propel Single-Wafer MOCVD System to enable micro-LED production on existing silicon production lines.

“With the Propel reactor, we have an MOCVD technology that is capable of high yielding GaN Epitaxy that meets all the requirements for processing micro-LED devices in 200 millimeter silicon production lines,” said Burkhard Slischka, CEO of ALLOS Semiconductors. “Within one month we established our technology on Propel and have achieved crack-free, meltback-free wafers with less than 30 micrometers bow, high crystal quality, superior thickness uniformity and wavelength uniformity of less than one nanometer.  Together with Veeco, ALLOS is looking forward to making this technology more widely available to the micro-LED ecosystem.”

Micro-LED display technology consists of <30×30 square micron red, green, blue (RGB) inorganic LEDs that are transferred to the display backplane to form sub-pixels. Direct emission from these high efficiency LEDs offers lower power consumption compared with OLED and LCD while providing superior brightness and contrast for mobile displays, TV and wearables. The manufacturing of micro-LEDs requires high quality, uniform epitaxial wafers to meet the display yield and cost targets.

“In contrast to competing MOCVD platforms, Propel offers leading-edge uniformity and simultaneously achieves excellent film quality as a result of the wide process window afforded by Veeco’s TurboDisc® technology,” said Peo Hansson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and General Manager of Veeco MOCVD Operations. “Combining Veeco’s leading MOCVD expertise with ALLOS’ GaN-on-Silicon epi-wafer technology enables our customers to develop micro-LEDs cost effectively for new applications in new markets.”

In the late 18th century, Ernst Chladni, a scientist and musician, discovered that the vibrations of a rigid plate could be visualized by covering it with a thin layer of sand and drawing a bow across its edge. With the bow movement, the sand bounces and shifts, collecting along the nodal lines of the vibration. Chladni’s discovery of these patterns earned him the nickname, “father of acoustics.” His discovery is still used in the design and construction of acoustic instruments, such as guitars and violins.

Recently, investigators have discovered a similar effect with much smaller vibrating objects excited by light waves. When laser light is used to drive the motion of a thin, rigid membrane, it plays the role of the bow in Chladni’s original experiment and the membrane vibrates in resonance with the light. The resulting patterns can be visualized through an array of quantum dots (QDs), where these tiny structures emit light at a frequency that responds to movement. The advance is reported this week in a cover article of Applied Physics Letters, by AIP Publishing.

Background: Image of a Chladni plate's mode of vibration visualized by grains of sand collected at the nodes. Left-top: Cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy image of an indium arsenide quantum dot. Left-bottom: Variation of quantum dot emission line frequencies as a function of time due to vibrations of the photonic crystal membrane. Right: Scanning electron micrograph of a photonic crystal membrane, displaced according to one of the vibrational modes, with red and blue representing positive and negative displacement, respectively. Credit: Sam Carter and co-authors

Background: Image of a Chladni plate’s mode of vibration visualized by grains of sand collected at the nodes. Left-top: Cross-sectional scanning tunneling microscopy image of an indium arsenide quantum dot. Left-bottom: Variation of quantum dot emission line frequencies as a function of time due to vibrations of the photonic crystal membrane. Right: Scanning electron micrograph of a photonic crystal membrane, displaced according to one of the vibrational modes, with red and blue representing positive and negative displacement, respectively. Credit: Sam Carter and co-authors

In addition to being a modern take on an old phenomenon, the new discovery could lead to the development of sensing devices as well as methods for controlling the emission characteristics of QDs. Since the light frequency emitted by the QDs is correlated with the movement of the underlying membrane, new devices for sensing motion, such as accelerometers, can be envisioned. A reverse application is also possible since the motion of the underlying membrane can be used to control the frequency of light emitted by the QDs.

The tiny devices in the work reported here consist of a 180-nanometer thick slice of semiconductor, suspended like a trampoline above a solid substrate. An array of QDs, analogous to the sand in the acoustic example, are embedded in the slice, whose thickness is less than one-tenth of one percent that of a human hair.

A second probe laser is used to visualize the resulting resonances. The QDs absorb the probe light and emit a second light pulse in response, which is picked up by a detector and routed to a display. The resulting patterns are remarkably like those visualized in Chladni’s original acoustic experiment, even though the new device is driven entirely by light.

One possible application of this discovery, according to Sam Carter of the Naval Research Lab who is one of the paper’s authors, is to sense subtle forces produced by nearby dense objects. “Concealed nuclear materials could be detectable,” he said, “since dense materials like lead are used to shield the devices.”

The highly dense shielding needed for nuclear materials causes small gravitational anomalies and tiny movements that might be detectable by a device based on the principle discovered here. The investigators plan to continue their work by looking at electronic spin. It is hoped that techniques to measure the effect on spin will increase the sensitivity of the devices.

TowerJazz, the global specialty foundry, announced today a partnership with Changchun Changguang Yuanchen Microelectronics Technology Inc. (YCM), a BSI process manufacturer for backside illumination (BSI) manufacturing in Changchun, China to provide the BSI process segment for CMOS image sensor (CIS) wafers manufactured by TowerJazz. This partnership will allow TowerJazz to serve its worldwide customers with advanced BSI technology in mass production, at competitive prices, starting in the middle of 2018.

The new BSI technology will be utilized for high-end photography, automotive, and AR/VR, among other growing CIS markets. This is the first time BSI will be offered by a foundry to the high-end photography market, including large formats requiring stitching.

BSI and stacked wafers are the state of the art CIS technology for higher pixel sensitivity, allowing a boost in the number of photons captured by the pixels for better picture quality in low light conditions, as well as providing higher dynamic range and higher frame rates (faster sensors).

TowerJazz and its leading customers view BSI technology as playing an important future role in the growing high-end CIS market, including DSLR high end photography, cinematography cameras, and automotive, among others. TowerJazz’s BSI offering is unique in the sense that it is focused on high-end large format, including stitched sensors. It also provides the roadmap for wafer stacking, including pixel level wafer stacking.

“TowerJazz is recognized worldwide as the leader of CMOS image sensor manufacturing platforms for high-end applications,” said Dabing Li, YCM Chief Executive Officer. “The collaboration with TowerJazz will certainly allow us to bring unique and high value technology to the market quickly and in high volume, especially to the growing Chinese market where TowerJazz already plays a significant role.”

“I am thrilled with the capabilities we developed with YCM, supporting our continued leadership in many different high-end growing markets. In addition, the excellent collaboration with YCM enables us further penetration into this very fast growing high-end CMOS camera market in China,” said Dr. Avi Strum, Senior Vice President and General Manager, CMOS Image Sensor Business Unit.  “I have very high confidence in the technical capabilities of this partnership.”

NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ:NXPI) today debuted two significant technology breakthroughs at the largest fintech innovation event, Money 20/20, October 22-25, 2017, in Las Vegas. The company will showcase its new contactless fingerprint-on-card solution while also demonstrating a new world benchmark for payment card transactions speeds.

Fingerprint sensors on payment cards

The fingerprint-on-card solution gives payment network operators and banks a secure, convenient and fast payment card option to consumers. Coupling dual interface cards with an integrated fingerprint sensor enables faster transactions without the need for end-users to enter a PIN number.

“The result provides a secure and dramatically more convenient way for consumers to make payments. The convenience provided by mobile payment in today’s NFC-based mobile wallets can now be replicated with cards. It is also ideal for use in other form factors and applications such as electronic passports,” said Rafael Sotomayor, senior vice president and general manager of secure transactions and identification business. “The breakthrough reinforces NXP’s commitment to the payment and secure identification space by helping our customers deliver next-generation applications and solutions to the market.”

To ensure a lower barrier of entry for card makers, the company’s secure fingerprint authentication solution on cards does not require a battery and easily fits into standard card maker equipment as part of the broader payment ecosystem. Cards with fingerprint authentication are fully compliant with existing EMVCo point-of-sales (POS) systems.

New Benchmark for Blazing Transaction Speeds

Demonstrating seamless, fast, and smart card transaction experiences, the NXP high-performance platform makes it possible to achieve M/Chip transactions speeds of <200 ms, surpassing the industry requirement of 300 ms.

“This increased level of performance offers flexibility to add new features or higher crypto countermeasures and still meet current industry transaction requirement,” said Sotomayor. “The requirement for faster payment transaction will continue, and NXP is committed to providing the performance to meet these needs and make contactless transactions faster and flawless.”

NXP Demonstrations at Money 20/20 Las Vegas 2017

NXP will demonstrate these technology breakthroughs at its exclusive reception on October 24, 2017, in The Venetian.