Category Archives: Displays

From connectivity to globalization and sustainability, the “Law” created by Gordon Moore’s prediction for the pace of semiconductor technology advances has set the stage for global technology innovation and contribution for 50 years. The exponential advances predicted by Moore’s Law have transformed the world we live in. The ongoing innovation, invention and investment in technology and the effects that arise from it are likely to enable continued advances along this same path in the future, according to a new report from IHS Inc. Titled “Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Moore’s Law,” the report describes how the activity predicted by Moore’s Law not only drives technological change, but has also created huge economic value and driven social advancement.

In April of 1965, Fairchild Semiconductor’s Research and Development Director, Gordon Moore, who later founded Intel, penned an article that led with the observation that transistors would decrease in cost and increase in performance at an exponential rate. More specifically, Moore posited that the quantity of transistors that can be incorporated into a single chip would approximately double every 18 to 24 months. This seminal observation was later dubbed “Moore’s Law.”

“Fifty years ago today, Moore defined the trajectory of the semiconductor industry, with profound consequences that continue to touch every aspect of our day-to-day lives,” said Dale Ford, vice president and chief analyst for IHS Technology. “In fact, Moore’s Law forecast a period of explosive growth in innovation that has transformed life as we know it.”

The IHS Technology report, which is available as a free download, finds that an estimated $3 trillion of additional value has been added to the global gross domestic product (GDP), plus another $9 trillion of indirect value in the last 20 years, due to the pace of innovation predicted by Moore’s Law. The total value is more than the combined GDP of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom.

If the cadence of Moore’s Law had slowed to every three years, rather than two years, technology would have only advanced to 1998 levels: smart phones would be nine years away, the commercial Internet in its infancy (five years old) and social media would not yet have skyrocketed.

“Moore’s Law has proven to be the most effective predictive tool of the last half-century of technological innovation, economic advancement, and by association, social and cultural change,” Ford said. “It has implications for connectivity and the way we interact, as evidenced by the way social relationships now span the globe. It also provides insight into globalization and economic growth, as technology continues to transform entire industries and economies. Finally it reveals the importance of how sustainability affects life on Earth, as we continue to transform our physical world in both positive and negative ways.”

Moores Law full

The Moore’s Law Era: Explosive Economic and Societal Change

The consequences of Moore’s Law has fueled multifactor productivity growth. The activity forecast by the law has contributed a full percentage point to real GDP growth, including both direct and indirect impact, every year between 1995 and 2011, representing 37 percent of global economic impact.

“Not even Gordon Moore himself predicted the blistering pace of change for the modern world,” Ford said. “While it is true most people have never seen a microprocessor, every day we benefit from experiences that are all made possible by the exponential growth in technologies that underpin modern life.”

According to the “Moore’s Law Impact Report,” the repercussions of Moore’s Law have contributed to an improved quality of life, because of the advances made possible in healthcare, sustainability and other industries. The results of advanced digital technology include the following:

  • Forty percent of the world’s households now have high-speed connections, compared to less than 0.1 percent in 1991
  • Up to 150 billion incremental barrels of oil could potentially be extracted from discovered global oil fields
  • Researchers can perform 1.5 million high-speed screening tests per week (up from 180 in 1997), allowing for the development of new material, such as bio-fuels and feedstock’s for plant-based chemicals

Moore’s Law: Reflecting the Pace of Change

Moore’s Law is not a law but an unspoken agreement between the electronics industry and the world economy that inspires engineers, inventors and entrepreneurs to think about what may be possible.

“Whatever has been done, can be outdone,” said Gordon Moore. “The industry has been phenomenally creative in continuing to increase the complexity of chips. It’s hard to believe – at least it’s hard for me to believe – that now we talk in terms of billions of transistors on a chip rather than tens, hundreds or thousands.”

Moore’s observation has transformed computing from a rare, expensive capability into an affordable, pervasive and powerful force – the foundation for Internet, social media, modern data analytics and more. “Moore’s Law has helped inspire invention, giving the world more powerful computers and devices that enable us to connect to each other, to be creative, to be productive, to learn and stay informed, to manage health and finances, and to be entertained,” Ford said.

Millennials: The Stewards of Moore’s Law

From the changing shape and feel of how humans communicate to the delivery of healthcare, changing modes of transportation, cities of the future, harvesting energy resources, classroom learning and more – technology innovations that spring from Moore’s Law likely will remain a foundational force for growth into the next decade.

From data sharing, self-driving cars and drones to smart cities, smart homes and smart agriculture, Moore’s Law will enable people to continuously shrink technology and make it more power efficient, allowing creators, engineers and makers to rethink where – and in what situations – computing is possible and desirable.

Computing may disappear into the objects and spaces that we interact with – even the fabric of our clothes or ingestible tracking devices in our bodies. New devices may be created with powerful, inexpensive technology and combining this with the ability to pool and share more information, new experiences become possible.

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.56 billion in orders worldwide in May 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.99, according to the May EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.   A book-to-bill of 0.99 means that $99 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

SEMI reports that the three-month average of worldwide bookings in May 2015 was $1.56 billion. The bookings figure is 0.8 percent lower than the final April 2015 level of $1.57 billion, and is 11.0 percent higher than the May 2014 order level of $1.41 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in May 2015 was $1.57 billion. The billings figure is 3.7 percent higher than the final April 2015 level of $1.51 billion, and is 11.6 percent higher than the May 2014 billings level of $1.41 billion.

“The May book-to-bill ratio slipped below parity as billings improved and bookings dipped slightly from April’s values,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “Compared to one year ago, both bookings and billings continue to trend at higher levels.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
December 2014 

$1,395.9

$1,381.5

0.99
January 2015 

$1,279.1

$1,325.6

1.04
February 2015 

$1,280.1

$1,313.7

1.03
March 2015 

$1,265.6

$1,392.7

1.10
April 2015 (final)

$1,515.3

$1,573.7

1.04
May 2015 (prelim)

$1,571.2

$1,561.4

0.99

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), June 2015

Researchers from North Carolina State University have created stretchable, transparent conductors that work because of the structures’ “nano-accordion” design. The conductors could be used in a wide variety of applications, such as flexible electronics, stretchable displays or wearable sensors.

“There are no conductive, transparent and stretchable materials in nature, so we had to create one,” says Abhijeet Bagal, a Ph.D. student in mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work.

“Our technique uses geometry to stretch brittle materials, which is inspired by springs that we see in everyday life,” Bagal says. “The only thing different is that we made it much smaller.”

The researchers begin by creating a three-dimensional polymer template on a silicon substrate. The template is shaped like a series of identical, evenly spaced rectangles. The template is coated with a layer of aluminum-doped zinc oxide, which is the conducting material, and an elastic polymer is applied to the zinc oxide. The researchers then flip the whole thing over and remove the silicon and the template.

What’s left behind is a series of symmetrical, zinc oxide ridges on an elastic substrate. Because both zinc oxide and the polymer are clear, the structure is transparent. And it is stretchable because the ridges of zinc oxide allow the structure to expand and contract, like the bellows of an accordion.

“We can also control the thickness of the zinc oxide layer, and have done extensive testing with layers ranging from 30 to 70 nanometers thick,” says Erinn Dandley, a Ph.D. student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of the paper. “This is important because the thickness of the zinc oxide affects the structure’s optical, electrical and mechanical properties.”

The 3-D templates used in the process are precisely engineered, using nanolithography, because the dimensions of each ridge directly affect the structure’s stretchability. The taller each ridge is, the more stretchable the structure. This is because the structure stretches by having the two sides of a ridge bend away from each other at the base – like a person doing a split.

The structure can be stretched repeatedly without breaking. And while there is some loss of conductivity the first time the nano-accordion is stretched, additional stretching does not affect conductivity.

“The most interesting thing for us is that this approach combines engineering with a touch of surface chemistry to precisely control the nano-accordion’s geometry, composition and, ultimately, its overall material properties,” says Chih-Hao Chang, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and corresponding author of the paper. “We’re now working on ways to improve the conductivity of the nano-accordion structures. And at some point we want to find a way to scale up the process.”

The researchers are also experimenting with the technique using other conductive materials to determine their usefulness in creating non-transparent, elastic conductors.

Plasma-Therm recently presented an advanced plasma processing workshop at Xidian University in Xi’an, China that was attended by researchers, students and industry representatives and featured a day-long series of presentations about plasma processing.

Workshop participants represented a range of academic disciplines and industrial concerns, with interests spanning fundamental to applied research. Attendees are actively investigating research and development in devices and structures for which plasma processing technology is often a critical step, including MEMS, waveguides, dielectric deposition, nanostructures, and many others.

Dr. Ma Xiaohua, head of the State Key Discipline Laboratory of Wide Band Gap Semiconductor Technology and the workshop host, said, “I always believed that Plasma-Therm’s tools have good performance, and know that the company has deep experience in etching and deposition processes. I really appreciated Dr. Lishan’s presentations. Our professors and students who have studied plasma processing learned more about the technology from Dr. Lishan’s rich experience, and gained insights that will be useful in their research.

“I thought the workshop would be more of a product promotion in the beginning, but now want to say that it was not, and I highly recommend the workshop to researchers, professors, engineers, and students,” Dr. Xiaohua concluded.

Attendees commented that the workshop lectures and multimedia materials provided a thorough introduction to plasma fundamentals, as well as in-depth information about etch and deposition applications used for compound semiconductor devices such as high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs), MEMS devices, and photonic devices such as solid state lasers.

Dr. David Lishan, Principal Scientist and Director, Technical Marketing at Plasma-Therm, has presented in-depth plasma processing workshops at more than 20 institutions in the United States, Sweden, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and other countries. This was the fourth workshop he has presented at institutions in China in recent months.

Dr. Lishan noted that students and industrial researchers throughout the world are eager for information about fundamental concepts as well as advanced techniques of plasma processing. “It is always interesting to see the enthusiasm for greater understanding of plasma processing across many fields of research.” He said. “Bringing researchers together to share experiences and foster collaboration through the workshop has been very rewarding.”

They are thin, light-weight, flexible and can be produced cost- and energy-efficiently: printed microelectronic components made of synthetics. Flexible displays and touch screens, glowing films, RFID tags and solar cells represent a future market. In the context of an international cooperation project, physicists at the Technische Universität München (TUM) have now observed the creation of razor thin polymer electrodes during the printing process and successfully improved the electrical properties of the printed films.

Solar cells out of a printer? This seemed unthinkable only a few years ago. There were hardly any alternatives to classical silicon technology available. In the mean time touch screens, sensors and solar cells can be made of conducting polymers. Flexible monitors and glowing wall paper made of organic light emitting diodes, so-called OLEDs, are in rapid development. The “organic electronics” are hailed as a promising future market.

However, the technology also has its pitfalls: To manufacture the components on an industrial scale, semiconducting or insulating layers – each a thousand times thinner than a human hair – must be printed onto a carrier film in a predefined order. “This is a highly complex process, whose details need to be fully understood to allow custom-tailored applications,” explains Professor Peter Müller-Buschbaum of the Chair of Functional Materials at TU München.

A further challenge is the contacting between flexible, conducting layers. Hitherto electronic contacts made of crystalline indium tin oxide were frequently used. However, this construction has numerous drawbacks: The oxide is more brittle than the polymer layers over them, which limits the flexibility of the cells. Furthermore, the manufacturing process also consumes much energy. Finally, indium is a rare element that exists only in very limited quantities.

Polymers in X-ray light 

A few months ago, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California for the first time succeeded in observing the cross-linking of polymer molecules in the active layer of an organic solar cell during the printing process. In collaboration with their colleagues in California, Müller-Buschbaum’s team took advantage of this technology to improve the characteristics of the polymer electronic elements.

The researchers used X-ray radiation generated in the Berkley synchrotron for their investigations. The X-rays are directed to the freshly printed synthetic layer and scattered. The arrangement and orientation of the molecules during the curing process of the printed films can be determined from changes in the scattering pattern.

“Thanks to the very intensive X-ray radiation we can achieve a very high time resolution,” says Claudia M. Palumbiny. In Berkeley the physicist from the TUM investigated the “blocking layer” that sorts and selectively transports the charge carriers in the organic electronic components. The TUM research team is now, together with its US colleagues, publishing the results in the trade journal Advanced Materials.

Custom properties

“In our work, we showed for the first time ever that even small changes in the physico-chemical process conditions have a significant influence on the build-up and properties of the layer,” says Claudia M. Palumbiny. “Adding solvents with a high boiling point, for example, improves segregation in synthetics components. This improves the crystallization in conducting molecules. The distance between the molecules shrinks and the conductivity increases.

In this manner stability and conductivity can be improved to such an extent that the material can be deployed not only as a blocking layer, but even as a transparent, electrical contact. This can be used to replace the brittle indium tin oxide layers. “At the end of the day, this means that all layers could be produced using the same process,” explains Palumbiny. “That would be a great advantage for manufacturers.”

To make all of this possible one day, TUM researchers want to continue investigating and optimizing the electrode material further and make their know-how available to industry. “We have now formed the basis for pushing ahead materials development with future investigations so that these can be taken over by industrial enterprises,” explains Prof. Müller-Buschbaum.

The research was supported by the GreenTech Initiative “Interface Science for Photovoltaics” (ISPV) of the EuroTech Universities together with the International Graduate School of Science and Engineering (IGSSE) at TUM and by the Cluster of Excellence “Nanosystems Initiative Munich” (NIM). Further support came from the Elite Network of Bavaria’s International Doctorate Program “NanoBioTechnology” (IDK-NBT) and the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) and from “Polymer-Based Materials for Harvesting Solar Energy” (PHaSE), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Portions of the research were carried out at the Advanced Light Source which receives support by the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy.

4K LCD TV panel shipments continue to rise, driven by forces on both the supply side and the demand side. Shipments of 4K TV panels in April 2015 exceeded 3 million units for the first time, comprising 14 percent of all TV panels shipped globally during the month, according to IHS Inc. (NYSE: IHS), a global source of critical information and insight. Of all TV panels forecast to ship in 2016, one in five is forecast to be a 4K TV panels, sometimes marketed as ultra-high definition (UHD), due to the trend toward higher resolution panels in the high-end TV segment and improved production efficiency of panel makers. 

“Prices for 4K TV panels continued to decline in 2014 and early this year, causing a rise in their adoption,” said Linda Lin, senior analyst, IHS Technology. “Most global TV brands have now launched 4K UHD products and are introducing more 4K models to their television offerings.”

When AU Optronics (AUO) introduced the first 55-inch 4K TV panels in Taiwan in 2012, fewer than 100 units were shipped each month. That same year, Innolux introduced the first 50-inch 4K TV panels; however, due to higher manufacturing costs, shipments still totaled fewer than 10,000 units per month. In 2013, panel makers managed to improve their 4K TV panel yield rates, but shipments still made up less than 2 percent of all TV panels shipped, according to recent data from the IHS Monthly TFT LCD Shipment Database.

After panel makers instituted aggressive promotions in the Chinese TV market, using 4K resolution of 3840 pixels by 2160 pixels as a point of differentiation in the high-end TV market, 4K TV panel market share reached 8 percent. Red-green-blue-white (RGBW) 4K sub-pixel technology is now widely accepted in the Chinese TV market and has even begun to penetrate the global market.

“While panel makers in Taiwan initially developed and stimulated 4K TV panel production, South Korean panel makers are now leading the 4K TV panel market,” Lin said. “In fact, LG Display and Samsung Display have risen to become the largest global manufacturers of 4K displays.”

The IHS Monthly TFT LCD Shipment Database provides the latest panel shipment numbers from global large-area panel makers. The database includes monthly shipments of all major TFT LCD suppliers, detailing revenues and average selling prices, as well as shipments by unit, display area, application, size and aspect ratio for each supplier.

Phase change random access memory (PRAM) is one of the strongest candidates for next-generation nonvolatile memory for flexible and wearable electronics. In order to be used as a core memory for flexible devices, the most important issue is reducing high operating current. The effective solution is to decrease cell size in sub-micron region as in commercialized conventional PRAM. However, the scaling to nano-dimension on flexible substrates is extremely difficult due to soft nature and photolithographic limits on plastics, thus practical flexible PRAM has not been realized yet.

Low-power nonvolatile PRAM for flexible and wearable memories enabled by (a) self-assembled BCP silica nanostructures and (b) self-structured conductive filament nanoheater. CREDIT: KAIST

Low-power nonvolatile PRAM for flexible and wearable memories enabled by (a) self-assembled BCP silica nanostructures and (b) self-structured conductive filament nanoheater.
CREDIT: KAIST

Recently, a team led by Professors Keon Jae Lee and Yeon Sik Jung of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST has developed the first flexible PRAM enabled by self-assembled block copolymer (BCP) silica nanostructures with an ultralow current operation (below one quarter of conventional PRAM without BCP) on plastic substrates. BCP is the mixture of two different polymer materials, which can easily create self-ordered arrays of sub-20nm features through simple spin-coating and plasma treatments. BCP silica nanostructures successfully lowered the contact area by localizing the volume change of phase-change materials and thus resulted in significant power reduction. Furthermore, the ultrathin silicon-based diodes were integrated with phase-change memories (PCM) to suppress the inter-cell interference, which demonstrated random access capability for flexible and wearable electronics. Their work was published in the March issue of ACS Nano: “Flexible One Diode-One Phase Change Memory Array Enabled by Block Copolymer Self-Assembly.”

Another way to achieve ultralow-powered PRAM is to utilize self-structured conductive filaments (CF) instead of the resistor-type conventional heater. The self-structured CF nanoheater originated from unipolar memristor can generate strong heat toward phase-change materials due to high current density through the nanofilament. This ground-breaking methodology shows that sub-10nm filament heater, without using expensive and non-compatible nanolithography, achieved nanoscale switching volume of phase change materials, resulted in the PCM writing current of below 20 uA, the lowest value among top-down PCM devices. This achievement was published in the June online issue of ACS Nano “Self-Structured Conductive Filament Nanoheater for Chalcogenide Phase Transition.” In addition, due to self-structured low-power technology compatible to plastics, the research team has recently succeeded in fabricating a flexible PRAM on wearable substrates.

Professor Lee said, “The demonstration of low power PRAM on plastics is one of the most important issues for next-generation wearable and flexible non-volatile memory. Our innovative and simple methodology represents the strong potential for commercializing flexible PRAM.”

In addition, he wrote a review paper regarding the nanotechnology-based electronic devices in the June online issue of Advanced Materials entitled “Performance Enhancement of Electronic and Energy Devices via Block Copolymer Self-Assembly.”

Led by Young Duck Kim, a postdoctoral research scientist in James Hone’s group at Columbia Engineering, a team of scientists from Columbia, Seoul National University (SNU), and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) reported today that they have demonstrated — for the first time — an on-chip visible light source using graphene, an atomically thin and perfectly crystalline form of carbon, as a filament. They attached small strips of graphene to metal electrodes, suspended the strips above the substrate, and passed a current through the filaments to cause them to heat up. The study, “Bright visible light emission from graphene,” is published in the Advance Online Publication (AOP) on Nature Nanotechnology‘s website on June 15.

“We’ve created what is essentially the world’s thinnest light bulb,” says Hone, Wang Fon-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering and co-author of the study. “This new type of ‘broadband’ light emitter can be integrated into chips and will pave the way towards the realization of atomically thin, flexible, and transparent displays, and graphene-based on-chip optical communications.”

Creating light in small structures on the surface of a chip is crucial for developing fully integrated “photonic” circuits that do with light what is now done with electric currents in semiconductor integrated circuits. Researchers have developed many approaches to do this, but have not yet been able to put the oldest and simplest artificial light source — the incandescent light bulb — onto a chip. This is primarily because light bulb filaments must be extremely hot — thousands of degrees Celsius — in order to glow in the visible range and micro-scale metal wires cannot withstand such temperatures. In addition, heat transfer from the hot filament to its surroundings is extremely efficient at the microscale, making such structures impractical and leading to damage of the surrounding chip.

By measuring the spectrum of the light emitted from the graphene, the team was able to show that the graphene was reaching temperatures of above 2500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to glow brightly.

“The visible light from atomically thin graphene is so intense that it is visible even to the naked eye, without any additional magnification,” explains Young Duck Kim, first and co-lead author on the paper and postdoctoral research scientist who works in Hone’s group at Columbia Engineering.

Interestingly, the spectrum of the emitted light showed peaks at specific wavelengths, which the team discovered was due to interference between the light emitted directly from the graphene and light reflecting off the silicon substrate and passing back through the graphene. Kim notes, “This is only possible because graphene is transparent, unlike any conventional filament, and allows us to tune the emission spectrum by changing the distance to the substrate.”

The ability of graphene to achieve such high temperatures without melting the substrate or the metal electrodes is due to another interesting property: as it heats up, graphene becomes a much poorer conductor of heat. This means that the high temperatures stay confined to a small ‘hot spot’ in the center.

“At the highest temperatures, the electron temperature is much higher than that of acoustic vibrational modes of the graphene lattice, so that less energy is needed to attain temperatures needed for visible light emission,” Myung-Ho Bae, a senior researcher at KRISS and co-lead author, observes. “These unique thermal properties allow us to heat the suspended graphene up to half of temperature of the sun, and improve efficiency 1000 times, as compared to graphene on a solid substrate.”

The team also demonstrated the scalability of their technique by realizing large-scale of arrays of chemical-vapor-deposited (CVD) graphene light emitters.

Yun Daniel Park, professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Seoul National University and co-lead author, notes that they are working with the same material that Thomas Edison used when he invented the incandescent light bulb: “Edison originally used carbon as a filament for his light bulb and here we are going back to the same element, but using it in its pure form — graphene — and at its ultimate size limit — one atom thick.”

The group is currently working to further characterize the performance of these devices — for example, how fast they can be turned on and off to create “bits” for optical communications — and to develop techniques for integrating them into flexible substrates.

Hone adds, “We are just starting to dream about other uses for these structures — for example, as micro-hotplates that can be heated to thousands of degrees in a fraction of a second to study high-temperature chemical reactions or catalysis.”

By Christian G. Dieseldorff, Industry Research & Statistics Group, SEMI

Semiconductor capital expenditures (without fabless and backend) are expected to slow in rate, but continue to grow by 5.8 percent in 2015 (over US$66 billion) and 2.5 percent in 2016 (over $68 billion), according to the May update of the SEMI World Fab Forecast report. A significant part of this capex is fab equipment spending.

Fab equipment spending is forecast to depart from the typical historic trend over the past 15 years of two years of spending growth followed by one year of decline.  Departing from the norm, equipment spending could grow every year for three years in a row: 2014, 2015, and 2016 (see Table 1).

Table 1: Fab Equipment Spending by Wafer Size

Table 1: Fab Equipment Spending by Wafer Size

At the end of May 2015, SEMI published its latest update to the World Fab Forecast report, reporting on more than 200 facilities with equipment spending in 2015, and more than 175 facilities projected to spend in 2016.

The report shows a large increase in spending for DRAM, more than 45 percent in 2015. Also, spending for 3D NAND is expected to increase by more than 60 percent in 2015 and more than 70 percent in 2016. The foundry sector is forecast to show 10 percent higher fab equipment spending in 2015, but may experience a decline in 2016.  Even with this slowdown, the foundry sector is expected to be the second largest in equipment spending, surpassed only by spending in the memory sector.

A weak first quarter of 2015 is dropping spending for the first half of 2015, but a stronger second half of 2015 is expected. Intel and TSMC reduced their capital expenditure plans for 2015, while other companies, especially memory, are expected to increase their spending.

The SEMI data details how this varies by company and fab.  For example, the report predicts increased fab equipment spending in 2015 by TSMC and Samsung. Samsung is the “wild card” on the table, with new fabs in Hwaseong, Line 17 and S3.  The World Fab Forecast report shows how Samsung is likely to ramp these fabs into 2016. In addition, Samsung is currently ramping a large fab in China for 3D NAND (VNAND) production.   Overall, the data show that Samsung is will likely spend a bit more for memory in 2015 and much more in 2016.  After two years of declining spending for System LSI, Samsung is forecast to show an increase in 2015, and especially for 2016.

Figure 1 depicts fab equipment spending by region for 2015.

Figure 1: Fab Equipment Spending in 2015 by Region; SEMI World Fab Forecast Report (May 2015).

Figure 1: Fab Equipment Spending in 2015 by Region; SEMI World Fab Forecast Report (May 2015).

In 2015, fab equipment spending by Taiwan and Korea together are expected to make up over 51 percent of worldwide spending, according to the SEMI report.  In 2011, Taiwan and Korea accounted for just 41 percent, and the highest spending region was the Americas, with 22 percent (now just 16 percent).  China’s fab spending is still dominated by non-Chinese companies such as SK Hynix and Samsung, but the impact of Samsung’s 3D NAND project in Xian is significant. China’s share for fab spending grew from 9 percent in 2011 to a projected 11 percent in 2015; because of Samsung’s fab in Xian, the share will grow to 13 percent in 2016.

Table 2 shows the share of the top two companies drive a region for fab equipment spending:

Table 2: Share of Fab Equipment Spending of Top Two Companies per Region

Table 2: Share of Fab Equipment Spending of Top Two Companies per Region

Over time, fab equipment spending has also shifted by technology node.  See Figure 2, where nodes have been grouped by size:

Figure 2: Fab Equipment Spending by Nodes (Grouped)

Figure 2: Fab Equipment Spending by Nodes (Grouped)

In 2011, most fab equipment spending was for nodes between 25nm to 49nm (accounting for $24 billion) while nodes with 24nm or smaller drove spending less than $7 billion. By 2015, spending flipped, with nodes equal or under 24nm accounting for $27 billion while spending on nodes between 25nm to 49nm dropped to $8 billion.  The SEMI World Fab data also predict more spending on nodes between 38nm to 79nm, due to increases in the 3DNAND sector in 2015 and accelerating in 2016 (not shown in the chart).

When is the next contraction?

As noted above, over the past 15 years the industry has never achieved three consecutive years of positive growth rates for spending.  2016 may be the year which deviates from this historic cycle pattern.  A developing hypothesis is that with more consolidation, fewer players compete for market positions, resulting in a more controlled spending environment with much lower volatility.

Learn more about the SEMI fab databases at: www.semi.org/MarketInfo/FabDatabase.

Today, SEMI announced that SEMICON Europa 2015, the region’s largest microelectronics manufacturing event, will offer new themes to support the semiconductor industry’’s development in Europe. The exposition and conferences will take place in Dresden on October 6-8. SEMICON Europa will feature over 100 hours of technical sessions and presentations addressing the critical issues and challenges facing the microelectronics industries. Registration for visitors and conference participants opens today.

For the first time, SEMICON Europa will offer specific sessions on microelectronics in the automotive and medical technology segments as well as events focusing on microelectronics for the smart factory of the future. “SEMICON Europa will be the forum bringing semiconductor technology in direct contact with the industries that are driving chip usage the most right now,” explains Stephan Raithel, managing director in Berlin at SEMI. “The largest growth rates over the next few years will be in the automotive industry, medical technology, and communication technology – exactly the application areas that we are focusing on at SEMICON Europa this year.”

Materials and equipment for the semiconductor industry will remain the core of SEMICON Europa 2015. However, programs will also include new areas including imaging, low power, and power electronics. In addition, Plastic Electronics 2015, the world’s largest conference with exhibitions in the field of flexible, large-scale and organic electronics, will complement SEMICON Europa. In all, the SEMICON Europa 2015 conference program includes over 40 trade conferences and high-quality discussion forums.

At the Fab Managers Forum, Reinhard Ploss, CEO of Infineon Technologies AG, and Hans Vloeberghs, European Business director of Fujifilm, will be the keynote speakers, focusing on how the European semiconductor industry can improve its competitiveness. The Semiconductor Technology Conference, focusing on productivity enhancements for future advanced technology nodes in semiconductor technology, features keynote speakers Peter Jenkins, VP of Marketing at ASML; Niall MacGearailt, Advanced Manufacturing Research program manager at Intel; and Paul Farrar, GM for the consortium G450C at SUNY Polytechnic Institute’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, which works on creating the conditions necessary for producing chips on 450mm wafers.

New at SEMICON Europa 2015: SEMI and its German partner HighTech Startbahn are expanding the Innovation Village. Innovation Village is the ideal forum for European startups and high-growth businesses in search of investors. Sixty start-up/young businesses will have the opportunity to present their ideas and their business model to potential investors and industry partners. The application deadline is June 15.

Over 400 exhibitors at SEMICON Europa represent the suppliers of Europe’s leading microelectronics companies. From wafers to the finished product and every element in between, SEMICON Europa displays the best of the microelectronics manufacturing. The exhibitor markets include semiconductors, MEMS, consumables, device fabrication, wafer processing, materials, assembly and packaging, process, test, and components.

To learn more (exhibition or registration), please visit: www.semiconeuropa.org/en.