Category Archives: Displays

Commodity prices, supplier viability, and geopolitical concerns top the list of risks sourcing professionals face in 2017, according to survey from IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

Findings from the Trends in Global Sourcing Survey, the fifth annual survey of global procurement and purchasing executives which assesses the risk environment and sourcing trends, indicate that support for China as a low-cost sourcing destination is waning.

“The share of respondents who agree that China is a low-cost sourcing destination dipped below 50 percent for the first time in 2016,” said Paul Robinson, economist at IHS Markit. “This was down markedly from 70 percent in the 2012 survey.”

“Taken together with continued support for the country as a sourcing destination, the survey signals the arrival of China as a hub, or even the hub, of global supply chains rather than a mere cheap outsourcing destination,” Robinson continued.

China, India, and other nations in Asia continue to be the biggest winners in insourcing, with each showing strong increases. The developed world, particularly the European Union and the United States, show the weakest results, with less than a quarter of respondents planning to increase sourcing in either region. A rare bright spot outside of Asia was the continued growth in Mexico, where 26 percent of respondents are looking to increase sourcing, up from 20 percent a year ago.

chinas role

The survey respondents see the financial costs of supply chain disruptions increasing, with 19 percent of respondents saying that it was significantly increasing. This represents a reversal of the 2015 results when just one percent of respondents had that view. Less than two percent of respondents in the 2016 survey viewed the risk as decreasing at all.

Each year, Solid State Technology turns to industry leaders to hear viewpoints on the technological and economic outlook for the upcoming year. Read through these expert opinions on what to expect in 2017.

Driving the industry forward with materials engineering

Raja_Prabu_fullPrabu Raja, vice president and general manager, Patterning and Packaging Group, Applied Materials, Inc.

Over the past few years, the industry has made remarkable progress in bringing 3D chip architectures to volume production. In 2017, we will continue to see exciting technology innovations for scaling 3D NAND devices to 64 layers, ramping the 10nm process node into volume manufacturing and increasing the adoption of highly integrated chip packages.

With the transition to the 3D and sub-10nm era, the semiconductor world is changing from lithography-based scaling to materials-enabled scaling. This shift requires multiple new materials and capabilities in selective processing.

The magnitude and pace of these changes are truly disruptive. For example, with 3D NAND materials innovations for hard mask deposition and hard mask etch are essential. The challenge is to build high aspect ratio vertical structures with uniform profiles from the top to the bottom as more layers are added. Selective removal processes can remove targeted materials in vertical and horizontal structures without damage or residue throughout the stack.

For logic/foundry, the introduction of the 10nm process node in volume manufacturing brings significant growth in the number of patterning steps. This trend will increase even more for 7nm and below designs. Patterning these advanced nodes requires innovative etch capabilities to deliver feature-scale uniformity with low line edge roughness. Selective processes and alternative manufacturing schemes will also be needed as the industry seeks solutions for layer-to-layer vertical alignment. We expect this to result in a two-fold increase in the number of materials to be deposited and removed.

Finally, the industry will continue to adopt new and improved packaging schemes for enabling increased device performance, lower power consumption and to deliver desired form factors. In 2016, we saw the volume adoption of Fan-Out packaging in mobile devices and this trend is expected to grow further in 2017. The high performance computing segment will pursue 2.5D interposer and/or 3D TSV packaging schemes for higher memory bandwidth, lower latency and better power efficiency.

Applied Materials is focused on delivering game-changing selective process technologies and materials innovations to help solve the industry’s toughest challenges.

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Demand for TV panels in terms of area is forecast to reach 143 million square meters in 2017, up 8 percent from 2016, contributing to a 6 percent growth in the overall display market, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

“Owing to the increase in average TV screen sizes demanded by consumers, TV panel makers will enjoy a high growth in display area demand despite sluggish growth in terms of quantity,” said Alex Kang, senior analyst of display research for IHS Markit. The average TV panel size exceeded 40 inches in 2016 for the first time ever, and it will increase further by 1.3 inches to reach 42.6 inches in 2017. “As consumers show a preference for larger display models and as set makers promote products with higher profitability, the average size of TV panels should continue to increase.”

According to the IHS Markit Display Long-Term Demand Forecast Tracker, TV panels accounted for about 70 percent of the entire display demand in terms of area in 2016, while IT panels, which include those for desktop monitors, notebooks and tablet PCs, made up 18 percent. In contrast, IT panel demand is expected to remain flat in 2017, while mobile phone display demand is expected to grow 10 percent to 14 million square meters during the same period.

“Although the increase in the average smartphone screen size is propelling area demand for mobile phone displays, its impact to the entire display market should be minimal as mobile phones make up only 7 percent of the entire display market,” Kang said.

2017 area panel demand

According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the global large area displays market is expected to reach USD 78.41 billion by 2021, growing at a CAGR of close to 2%.

This research report titled ‘Global Large Area Displays Market 2017-2021’ provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. The report takes into consideration the unit shipments of liquid crystal display (LCD) and organic light-emitting diode (OLED)/active matrix OLED (AMOLED) displays greater than 9 inches in size and the revenues generated from their sales during the forecast period.

OLED displays are thinner, lighter, more flexible, and emit brighter colors than other existing display technologies such as LCDs. Unlike LCDs, these do not require a backlight and have a fast response time of 0.01 milliseconds. OLED displays are flexible. Curved OLED TVs and other devices that utilize this feature offer a better viewing angle to users. OLED displays consume less power because of the phosphorescent organic material, which has better conversion rate than LCDs.

Technavio’s hardware and semiconductor analysts categorize the global large area displays market into the following segments by application:

  • Televisions
  • Notebooks
  • Monitors
  • Tablets
  • Others (public displays and digital signage)

The top three application segments of the global large area displays market are:

Global large area television displays market

In 2016, the television segment dominated the market, accounting for a share of 39.2% in terms of unit shipments, primarily because of strong growth of 4K TVs of 40 inches and larger. In 2015, many manufacturers introduced 4K TVs of size 50 inches and above.

According to Chetan Mohan, a lead displays research analyst from Technavio, “Broadcast companies such as Netflix have already started broadcasting 4K UHD content because of the popularity of this format. In 2014, Netflix began streaming popular TV series House of Cards and Breaking Bad in UHD format, which is likely to boost the demand for 4K televisions.”

Global large area notebook displays market

The new operating system and the calculating platform drive the market for new notebooks. Windows 10, which was launched in the third quarter of 2015, generated renewed interest among notebook users. This resulted in more than 10% growth in unit shipment compared with second quarter of 2015.

“Vendors including Dell, Lenovo, and HP recorded a quarterly rise in the third quarter of 2015. Apple, which launched 12-inch MacBook Air in the second quarter of 2015, witnessed growing demand in the third quarter,” says Chetan.

Global large area monitor displays market

Monitors were the third largest segment in 2016, accounting for 19.45% of the market share. The majority of desktop monitors use LCD technology. LCDs consume low power, less space, and are lighter compared with CRT displays. LCD monitors are mainly used by enterprises for office use and by consumers for video and audio entertainment use. However, advances in technology and the rising demand for HD and UHD content as compared with SD content are likely to drive the demand for OLED/AMOLED displays for PC monitors, especially gaming PCs.

Unlike consumers, enterprises that purchase monitors for office use do not put enough emphasis on technological aspects such as high resolution and wide-viewing angle. Technavio analysts expect that Microsoft’s Windows 10 desktop will revive the PC market during the forecast period.

The top vendors highlighted by Technavio’s research analysts in this report are:

  • LG Display
  • Samsung Display
  • Innolux
  • AU Optronics
  • BOE Technology

Semiconductors, which are the very basic components of electronic devices, have improved our lives in many ways. They can be found in lighting, displays, solar modules and microprocessors that are installed in almost all modern day devices, from mobile phones, washing machines, and cars, to the emerging Internet of Things. To innovate devices with better functionality and energy efficiency, researchers are constantly looking for better ways to make them, in particular from earth-abundant materials using eco-friendly processes. Plastic or organic electronics, which is made from organic carbon-based semiconductors, is one such group of technologies that can potentially provide flexible, light-weight, large-area and additively-manufactured devices, which are attractive for some types of applications.

To make high-performance devices however, good ohmic contacts with low electrical resistances are required to allow the maximum current to flow both ways between the electrode and the semiconductor layers. Recently, a team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has successfully developed conducting polymer films that can provide unprecedented ohmic contacts to give superior performance in plastic electronics, including organic light-emitting diodes, solar cells and transistors. The research findings have been recently published in the journal Nature.

Dr. Png Rui-Qi (left), Mervin Ang (middle) and Cindy Tang (right) working on conducting polymers that can provide unprecedented ohmic contacts for better performance in a wide range of organic semiconductor devices. Credit: Seah Zong Long

Dr. Png Rui-Qi (left), Mervin Ang (middle) and Cindy Tang (right) working on conducting polymers that can provide unprecedented ohmic contacts for better performance in a wide range of organic semiconductor devices. Credit: Seah Zong Long

The key these researchers discovered is to be able to design polymer films with the desired extreme work functions needed to generally make ohmic contacts. Work function is the minimum amount of energy needed to liberate an electron from the film surface into vacuum. The researchers showed that work functions as high as 5.8 electron-volts and as low as 3.0 electron-volts can now be attained for films that can be processed from solutions at low cost.

“To design such materials, we developed the concept of doped conducting polymers with bonded ionic groups, in which the doped mobile charges – electrons and holes – cannot dissipate away because their counter-balancing ions are chemically bonded,” explained Dr Png Rui-Qi, a senior research fellow from the Department of Physics at the NUS Faculty of Science, who led the device research team. “As a result, these conducting polymers can remain stable despite their extreme work functions and provide the desired ohmic contacts.”

This breakthrough is the result of a collaboration with the materials chemistry team led by Associate Professor Chua Lay-Lay from the Department of Chemistry at the NUS Faculty of Science, the physics team led by Associate Professor Peter Ho from the Department of Physics from the same faculty, and scientists from Cambridge Display Technology Ltd, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd.

“The lack of a general approach to make ohmic contacts has been a key bottleneck in flexible electronics. Our work overcomes this challenge to open a path to better performance in a wide range of organic semiconductor devices,” explained Dr Png Rui-Qi. “We are particularly thrilled about this Singapore-led innovation,” she added.

Commenting on the significance of the work, Assoc Prof Chua said, “The close partnership of the chemists and physicists has made this innovation possible. We are now working with our industrial partner to further develop this technology.”

MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation (“MagnaChip”) (NYSE: MX), a Korea-based designer and manufacturer of analog and mixed-signal semiconductor products, today announced it was given the prestigious “2016 Best Supplier Award” by LG Display.

The “Best Supplier Award” is the highest possible level of recognition presented to a supplier by LG Display for delivering outstanding product quality.  MagnaChip’s achievement is notable because approximately 180 suppliers competed for the award.  This is the second consecutive year in which MagnaChip received a supplier award from LG Display.  Last year, MagnaChip was honored with LG Display’s “2015 Excellence Supplier Award”.

Korea-based LG Display each year honors key component suppliers that have demonstrated competence for both “zero-defective” products and “zero-accident” performance.  Of LG Display’s myriad suppliers, 15 are selected to receive the “Excellence Supplier Award” and the top five suppliers of the year are presented with the “Best Supplier Award”.  The “2016 Best Supplier Award” is presented at LG Display’s Annual Quality Festival, where LG Display employees and suppliers are recognized for quality-related achievements.

MagnaChip was selected to receive LG Display’s “2016 Best Supplier Award” in recognition of its achievement of delivering “zero-defective” products and “zero-accident” performance, in particular due to its cooperation with and significant contribution to LG Display’s ongoing efforts to improve manufacturing process stabilization and product competitiveness by building a high-level system of quality assurance.

“MagnaChip has been one of LG Display’s strongest and best partners, doing its best to control quality and maintain partnership this year,” said Mr. Deuk Jung Lee, Senior Vice President and Head of the Quality Assurance Center at LG Display.  “We deeply appreciate MagnaChip for its concerted and cooperative efforts to improve LG Display’s manufacturing process stabilization and product competitiveness.”

“I am very pleased and excited that we were able to follow up our selection as the 2015 winner of LG Display’s ‘Excellence Supplier Award’ with the ‘Best Supplier Award’ in 2016, which is highest award given by LG Display to its suppliers,” said YJ Kim, CEO of MagnaChip Semiconductor.  Mr. Kim added, “Winning these awards from LG Display clearly shows our ongoing commitment to high quality standards and high levels of customer service, and also demonstrates the value of our technology leadership.  We will continue to strive to deliver the highest quality components to LG Display and to the consumers who use LG Display products.”

From the ground-breaking research breakthroughs to the shifting supplier landscape, these are the stories the Solid State Technology audience read the most during 2016.

#1: Moore’s Law did indeed stop at 28nm

In this follow up, Zvi Or-Bach, president and CEO, MonolithIC 3D, Inc., writes: “As we have predicted two and a half years back, the industry is bifurcating, and just a few products pursue scaling to 7nm while the majority of designs stay on 28nm or older nodes.”

#2: Yield and cost challenges at 16nm and beyond

In February, KLA-Tencor’s Robert Cappel and Cathy Perry-Sullivan wrote of a new 5D solution which utilizes multiple types of metrology systems to identify and control fab-wide sources of pattern variation, with an intelligent analysis system to handle the data being generated.

#3: EUVL: Taking it down to 5nm

The semiconductor industry is nothing if not persistent — it’s been working away at developing extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for many years, SEMI’s Deb Vogler reported in May.

#4: IBM scientists achieve storage memory breakthrough

For the first time, scientists at IBM Research have demonstrated reliably storing 3 bits of data per cell using a relatively new memory technology known as phase-change memory (PCM).

#5: ams breaks ground on NY wafer fab

In April, ams AG took a step forward in its long-term strategy of increasing manufacturing capacity for its high-performance sensors and sensor solution integrated circuits (ICs), holding a groundbreaking event at the site of its new wafer fabrication plant in Utica, New York.

#6: Foundries takeover 200mm fab capacity by 2018

In January, Christian Dieseldorff of SEMI wrote that a recent Global Fab Outlook report reveals a change in the landscape for 200mm fab capacity.

#7: Equipment spending up: 19 new fabs and lines to start construction

While semiconductor fab equipment spending was off to a slow start in 2016, it was expected to gain momentum through the end of the year. For 2016, 1.5 percent growth over 2015 is expected while 13 percent growth is forecast in 2017.

#8: How finFETs ended the service contract of silicide process

Arabinda Daa, TechInsights, provided a look into how the silicide process has evolved over the years, trying to cope with the progress in scaling technology and why it could no longer be of service to finFET devices.

#9: Five suppliers to hold 41% of global semiconductor marketshare in 2016

In December, IC Insights reported that two years of busy M&A activity had boosted marketshare among top suppliers.

#10: Countdown to Node 5: Moving beyond FinFETs

A forum of industry experts at SEMICON West 2016 discussed the challenges associated with getting from node 10 — which seems set for HVM — to nodes 7 and 5.

BONUS: Most Watched Webcast of 2016: View On Demand Now

IoT Device Trends and Challenges

Presenters: Rajeev Rajan, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Uday Tennety, GE Digital

The age of the Internet of Things is upon us, with the expectation that tens of billions of devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. This explosion of devices will make our lives simpler, yet create an array of new challenges and opportunities in the semiconductor industry. At the sensor level, very small, inexpensive, low power devices will be gathering data and communicating with one another and the “cloud.” On the other hand, this will mean huge amounts of small, often unstructured data (such as video) will rippling through the network and the infrastructure. The need to convert that data into “information” will require a massive investment in data centers and leading edge semiconductor technology.

Also, manufacturers seek increased visibility and better insights into the performance of their equipment and assets to minimize failures and reduce downtime. They wish to both cut their costs as well as grow their profits for the organization while ensuring safety for employees, the general public and the environment.

The Industrial Internet is transforming the way people and machines interact by using data and analytics in new ways to drive efficiency gains, accelerate productivity and achieve overall operational excellence. The advent of networked machines with embedded sensors and advanced analytics tools has greatly influenced the industrial ecosystem.

Today, the Industrial Internet allows you to combine data from the equipment sensors, operational data , and analytics to deliver valuable new insights that were never before possible. The results of these powerful analytic insights can be revolutionary for your business by transforming your technological infrastructure, helping reduce unplanned downtime, improve performance and maximize profitability and efficiency.

Chinese panel manufacturers shipped more than one million AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) smartphone displays for the first time in the third quarter of 2016. While the Chinese makers only make up less than 2 percent of the AMOLED smartphone panel market in terms of shipments, hitting the one million unit mark in a quarter shows significant improvements in their manufacturing technology, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

According to the IHS Markit Smartphone Display Market Tracker, total shipments of AMOLED displays for smartphones set a new record of 101 million units in third quarter 2016. While Samsung Display continues to retain its dominant position with 99.7 million units, three Chinese panel makers — EverDisplay Optronics (EDO), Tianma Micro-electronics and Govisionox Optoelectronics — shipped 1.4 million units for the quarter, representing a sharp increase from the approximate 590,000 units in the previous quarter.

“Strong demand from Chinese smartphone brands, especially OPPO and Vivo, helped boosting overall AMOLED panel demand significantly,” said Terry Yu, principal analyst of small and medium displays for IHS Markit. “Many Chinese smartphone makers, such as Meizu, Gionee, Lenovo, Huawei and even Xiaomi, are planning to adopt AMOLED panels in their devices. This gives Chinese display suppliers a great opportunity to gain more orders, improve their mass production yield rate and enhance their product reliability.”

According to IHS Markit, AMOLED display penetration among Chinese smartphone brands is expected to increase from 8 percent in 2015 to 13.6 percent in 2016. However, due to the tight supply of AMOLED panels from Samsung Display, many domestic smartphone brands are turning to local Chinese panel makers. For example, after Xiaomi and Huawei failed to secure their orders of AMOLED panels from Samsung, they struck partnerships with EDO, the leading AMOLED panel suppliers in China, with the promise of mass production and product reliability. EDO, which started operating its Shanghai-based Gen 4.5 AMOLED fab in 2014, shipped one million units of AMOLED panels in the third quarter of 2016, up from 0.2 million units in the first quarter. Similarly, Tianma and Govisionox have also developed business relationships with ZTE as its secondary supplier of AMOLED smartphone displays.

“Chinese panel makers are still too small to threaten Samsung’s dominant position, but they still play an important role as a second or third source for major smartphone brands in China,” Yu said. “Furthermore, as Samsung Display shifts its focus to the flexible OLED, Chinese panel makers are expected to expand their shares in the rigid OLED panel market.”

Chinese_AMOLED_panel_shipments

Faster production of advanced, flexible electronics is among the potential benefits of a discovery by researchers at Oregon State University’s College of Engineering.

Taking a deeper look at photonic sintering of silver nanoparticle films — the use of intense pulsed light, or IPL, to rapidly fuse functional conductive nanoparticles — scientists uncovered a relationship between film temperature and densification. Densification in IPL increases the density of a nanoparticle thin-film or pattern, with greater density leading to functional improvements such as greater electrical conductivity.

The engineers found a temperature turning point in IPL despite no change in pulsing energy, and discovered that this turning point appears because densification during IPL reduces the nanoparticles’ ability to absorb further energy from the light.

This previously unknown interaction between optical absorption and densification creates a new understanding of why densification levels off after the temperature turning point in IPL, and further enables large-area, high-speed IPL to realize its full potential as a scalable and efficient manufacturing process.

Rajiv Malhotra, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at OSU, and graduate student Shalu Bansal conducted the research. The results were recently published in Nanotechnology.

“For some applications we want to have maximum density possible,” Malhotra said. “For some we don’t. Thus, it becomes important to control the densification of the material. Since densification in IPL depends significantly on the temperature, it is important to understand and control temperature evolution during the process. This research can lead to much better process control and equipment design in IPL.”

Intense pulsed light sintering allows for faster densification — in a matter of seconds – over larger areas compared to conventional sintering processes such as oven-based and laser-based. IPL can potentially be used to sinter nanoparticles for applications in printed electronics, solar cells, gas sensing and photocatalysis.

Earlier research showed that nanoparticle densification begins above a critical optical fluence per pulse but that it does not change significantly beyond a certain number of pulses.

This OSU study explains why, for a constant fluence, there is a critical number of pulses beyond which the densification levels off.

“The leveling off in density occurs even though there’s been no change in the optical energy and even though densification is not complete,” Malhotra said. “It occurs because of the temperature history of the nanoparticle film, i.e. the temperature turning point. The combination of fluence and pulses needs to be carefully considered to make sure you get the film density you want.”

A smaller number of high-fluence pulses quickly produces high density. For greater density control, a larger number of low-fluence pulses is required.

“We were sintering in around 20 seconds with a maximum temperature of around 250 degrees Celsius in this work,” Malhotra. “More recent work we have done can sinter within less than two seconds and at much lower temperatures, down to around 120 degrees Celsius. Lower temperature is critical to flexible electronics manufacturing. To lower costs, we want to print these flexible electronics on substrates like paper and plastic, which would burn or melt at higher temperatures. By using IPL, we should be able to create production processes that are both faster and cheaper, without a loss in product quality.”

Products that could evolve from the research, Malhotra said, are radiofrequency identification tags, a wide range of flexible electronics, wearable biomedical sensors, and sensing devices for environmental applications.

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have designed a nano crystal around 500 times smaller than a human hair that turns darkness into visible light and can be used to create light-weight night-vision glasses.

Professor Dragomir Neshev from ANU said the new night-vision glasses could replace the cumbersome and bulky night-vision binoculars currently in use.

“The nano crystals are so small they could be fitted as an ultra-thin film to normal eye glasses to enable night vision,” said Professor Neshev from the Nonlinear Physics Centre within the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

“This tiny device could have other exciting uses including in anti-counterfeit devices in bank notes, imaging cells for medical applications and holograms.”

Co-researcher Dr Mohsen Rahmani said the ANU team’s achievement was a big milestone in the field of nanophotonics, which involves the study of behaviour of light and interaction of objects with light at the nano-scale.

“These semiconductor nano-crystals can transfer the highest intensity of light and engineer complex light beams that could be used with a laser to project a holographic image in modern displays,” said Dr Rahmani, a recipient of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award based at the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.

PhD student Maria del Rocio Camacho-Morales said the team built the device on glass so that light can pass through, which was critical for optical displays.

“This is the first time anyone has been able to achieve this feat, because growing a nano semi-conductor on a transparent material is very difficult,” said Ms Camacho-Morales from the Nonlinear Physics Centre at ANU.