Category Archives: Displays

By Jamie Girard, Sr. Director, Public Policy, SEMI

Although many months past due, Congress on March 23 finalized the federal spending for the remainder of fiscal year (FY) 2018, only hours before a what would have been the third government shutdown of the year. Congressional spending has been allocated in fits and starts since the end of FY 2017 last September, with patchwork deals keeping things running amid pervasive uncertainty. While this clearly isn’t an ideal way to fund the federal government, the end result will make many in the business of research and development pleased with the addition of more resources for science and innovation.

There was grave concern over the future of federal spending with the release of the president’s FY 2018 budget, which would have cut the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget by 11 percent and National Institutes of Standards & Technology (NIST) spending by 30 percent. Relief came with early drafts from Congress that whittled those cuts down to between 2-9 percent. But the real boost was a February bipartisan Congressional agreement that lifted self-imposed spending caps and introduced a generous dose of non-defense discretionary spending, increasing NSF spending 3.9 percent over the previous year and the NIST budget an astounding 25.9 percent over FY 2017 levels.

SEMI applauds this much-needed support for basic research and development (R&D) at these agencies after their budgets were cut or flat-funded for multiple cycles. It is well understood that federal R&D funding is critical to U.S. competitiveness and future economic prosperity. With the stakes that high, full funding of R&D programs at the NSF and NIST should be a bipartisan national priority backed by a strong and united community of stakeholders and advocates in the business, professional, research, and education communities.

With the work for FY 2018 completed, Congress will now turn to FY 2019 spending – already behind schedule due to the belated completion of the previous year’s budget. With 2018 an election year, Congress will likely begin work on the FY 2019 budget in short order, but probably won’t complete its work prior to the November elections.  SEMI will continue to work with lawmakers to support the R&D budgets at the agencies and their important basic science research. If you’d like to know how you can be more involved with SEMI’s public policy work, please contact Jamie Girard, Sr. Director, Public Policy at [email protected].

 If we did not know before, now we are all aware: microLEDs for display applications is a very hot topic and Apple is strongly commited to the development of its own technology. Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show 2018 (1) and now Bloomberg, the high tech planet is revolving around microLED technologies. Indeed, last week, the financial news media giant published an article highlighting microLED which generated substantial interest and debate from Wall Street . According to Mark Gurman from Bloomberg (2), despite some ups and downs since it acquired the microLED start up Luxvue in 2014, Apple is still committed to the technology and hoping to begin mass production within the next few years.

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The recent report, “MicroLED Displays: Intellectual Property Landscape” released by Yole Développement (Yole) and its partner, Knowmade beginning of 2018, confirms substantial microLED IP development has been underway at Apple. In this patent landscape analysis, Apple ranks first in term of the size, strength and depth of its portfolio with more than 60 patent families.

“Apple has been working on IP development to master all key elements of a new microLED display technology”, asserts Dr. Eric Virey, Technology & Market Analyst from Yole. And he adds “If successful, the expectation is that they will rapidly move on to establish a supply chain, possibly handling some aspects of design and manufacturing internally”

Apple’s portfolio covers many thrust areas and shows a strong commitment to tackle all the major technology bottlenecks that have so far prevented the technology from reaching the market.
The bulk of the development effort, however, is focused on transfer, assembly and interconnects, with more than 40 patents. The emphasis is on the company’s MEMS-based microchip transfer technology that was at the core of Luxvue effort.

Other key patents cover multiple aspects of microLED technologies such as improving the efficiency of microLED chips, another challenge that has been vexing companies trying to leverage the large efficiency gains that microLED display could offers. Color conversion, light management, pixel and display architectures, testing, and integration of sensors are other key aspects which Apple is addressing in its portfolio.

“A detailed analysis of Apple’s portfolio is a good indication of its technology advancement”, explains Dr. Nicolas Baron, CEO & Founder of Knowmade, partner of Yole.“Because of its strong and broad patent portfolio, Apple is showing a clear positioning in this domain and announces its strategy to become a leader in this up and coming industry”.

However, it’s not enough to guaranty exclusivity and full freedom of exploitation.. While the bulk of the microLED display research effort started around 2010, digging deeper into the global microLED IP landscape reveals some important patents filed by companies like Sony, Sharp and various research organizations all the way back to the early 2000’s.

Enabling microLED displays requires bringing together three major levels of expertise: LED, transistor backplanes (glass or Si-CMOS based) and chip transfer. The supply chain is complex and lengthy compared to that of traditional displays. Each process is critical and managing every aspect effectively will be challenging. No one company appears today positioned to execute across these multiple technologies and be able to vertically integrate all of the components. Today the IP landscape reflects those challenges through the variety of players involved. Only a few companies including Apple, have a broad microLED IP portfolio, but enough have patents on key technology bricks to predict that complex licensing and legal battles will arise if and when microLED displays enter volume manufacturing.

MicroLED technology could be the holy grail of display companies. Therefore, it could represent an opportunity to strongly differentiate from the crowded LCD and soon-to-be-crowded OLED display industries. Recent investments by Facebook, Sharp/Foxconn, Google, Intel and Samsung confirm the growing interest and point toward a challenging but exciting future for microLEDs.

“It remains to be seen who will be first to market”, asks Dr. Eric Virey from Yole. “With more than 120 companies involved and the efforts accelerating at all major companies, there is no doubt that the buzz will keep increasing and the industry landscape evolve at an accelerating pace.”

Yole Group of Companies including Yole and Knowmade keeps its fingers on the pulse of this promising technology. The full article is available on i-micronews.com.
And the Group will keep delivering up to date analysis. Dr Virey and Pars Mukish from Yole is also part of the key microLEDs conferences all year long. Next presentations will take place during the following conferences:

CS International Conference (April 10-11, Brussels, Belgium)
• “Revolutionising displays with MicroLEDs” on April 11 at 9:20AM
Pars Mukish, Business Unit Manager, Solid State Lighting & Displays

Display Week (May 21-25 – Los Angeles, CA, USA):
•  “Economic Health of the Display Supply Chain/Where Is the Growth and Profits/Best Investment Outlook”on May 21 at 8:10AM
•  “Status and Prospects of microLED Displays” on May 24 at 9:00AM
Dr. Eric Virey, Senior Technology & Market Analyst, MicroLED

The market for organic materials used to manufacture organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panels jumped during the second half of 2017, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions. The market, as measured by revenue, was estimated to be $355 million in the second half of 2017, up 20 percent from the first half of the year.

According to the OLED Materials Market Tracker by IHS Markit, in 2016 and the first half of 2017, the OLED materials market seemed saturated, posting revenues at almost the same level. However, the sudden spike in growth was observed in the second half of 2017.

“The growth of OLED materials demand has been offset by price reduction, resulting in the market saturation until mid-2017.” said Jimmy Kim, Ph.D. and senior principal analyst at IHS Markit. “However, the launch of the iPhone X as well as the expansion of OLED panel manufacturing capacity boosted the demand in the second half.”

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The iPhone X, Apple’s first OLED panel-using smartphone, was launched in the third quarter of 2017 and it brought a huge additional demand for OLED materials. At the same time, LG Display has set up a new E4-2 fab for OLED TV panels.

“Apple is expected to apply OLED panels to more of its products and OLED TV is also one of the most emerging products in the TV market,” Kim said. “Considering demand growth and current investment plans regarding OLED manufacturing capacities, the OLED materials market is expected to continue to grow until 2020, reaching $824 million by the second half of 2020.

The OLED Material Market Tracker by IHS Markit includes market analysis and forecasts for organic light-emitting materials, consumption of the materials by AMOLED panel makers, and the status of organic light-emitting materials suppliers.

UC Berkeley engineers have built a bright-light emitting device that is millimeters wide and fully transparent when turned off. The light emitting material in this device is a monolayer semiconductor, which is just three atoms thick.

The device opens the door to invisible displays on walls and windows – displays that would be bright when turned on but see-through when turned off — or in futuristic applications such as light-emitting tattoos, according to the researchers.

Gif of the device in action. Probes inject positive and negative charges in the light emitting device, which is transparent under the campanile outline, producing bright light. Credit: Javey lab.

Gif of the device in action. Probes inject positive and negative charges in the light emitting device, which is transparent under the campanile outline, producing bright light. Credit: Javey lab.

“The materials are so thin and flexible that the device can be made transparent and can conform to curved surfaces,” said Der-Hsien Lien, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and a co-first author along with Matin Amani and Sujay Desai, both doctoral students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley.

Their study was published March 26 in the journal Nature Communications. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy.

The device was developed in the laboratory of Ali Javey, professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Berkeley. In 2015, Javey’s lab published research in the journal Science showing that monolayer semiconductors are capable of emitting bright light, but stopped short of building a light-emitting device. The new work in Nature Communicationsovercame fundamental barriers in utilizing LED technology on monolayer semiconductors, allowing for such devices to be scaled from sizes smaller than the width of a human hair up to several millimeters. That means that researchers can keep the thickness small, but make the lateral dimensions (width and length) large, so that the light intensity can be high.

Commercial LEDs consist of a semiconductor material that is electrically injected with positive and negative charges, which produce light when they meet. Typically, two contact points are used in a semiconductor-based light emitting device; one for injecting negatively charged particles and one injecting positively charged particles. Making contacts that can efficiently inject these charges is a fundamental challenge for LEDs, and it is particularly challenging for monolayer semiconductors since there is so little material to work with.

The Berkeley research team engineered a way to circumvent this challenge by designing a new device that only requires one contact on the semiconductor. By laying the semiconductor monolayer on an insulator and placing electrodes on the monolayer and underneath the insulator, the researchers could apply an AC signal across the insulator. During the moment when the AC signal switches its polarity from positive to negative (and vice versa), both positive and negative charges are present at the same time in the semiconductor, creating light.

The researchers showed that this mechanism works in four different monolayer materials, all of which emit different colors of light.

This device is a proof-of-concept, and much research still remains, primarily to improve efficiency. Measuring this device’s efficiency is not straightforward, but the researchers think it’s about 1 percent efficient. Commercial LEDs have efficiencies of around 25 to 30 percent.

The concept may be applicable to other devices and other kinds of materials, the device could one day have applications in a number of fields where having invisible displays are warranted. That could be an atomically thin display that’s imprinted on a wall or even on human skin.

“A lot of work remains to be done and a number of challenges need to be overcome to further advance the technology for practical applications,” Javey said. “However, this is one step forward by presenting a device architecture for easy injection of both charges into monolayer semiconductors.”

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. today announced more value added 8-inch (200mm) technology solutions for its foundry customers. On top of its existing eFlash, Power, display driver IC (DDI) and CMOS image sensor (CIS) offerings, RF/IoT and fingerprint technology solutions are now available through Samsung’s 8-inch foundry services.

Currently, customers are working closely with Samsung to utilize the company’s cutting-edge 8-inch technology offerings in various applications. All 8-inch offerings, ranging from 180nm to 65nm, are processed at Line 6, a highly automated facility in Giheung, Korea.

“Customers’ interests are very high given the industry’s needs for alternative 8-inch solutions,” said Ryan Lee, Vice President of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “By expanding our technology offerings into the RF/IoT and fingerprint segments, we will enable our customers to take advantage of Samsung’s state-of-the-art 8-inch solutions in a broader range of applications.”

Samsung’s 8-inch process technology offerings now include the following solutions:

  • eFlash : 130nm, 65nm
  • Power: 130nm, 90nm (BCD+eFlash)
  • Display Driver IC : 180nm, 130nm, 90nm, 70nm
  • CMOS Image Sensor: 90nm
  • RF/IoT : 90nm (Ultra low leakage device)
  • Fingerprint Sensor: 180nm

The 8-inch foundry market has been one of the focal points since Samsung Foundry became a separate business last May. In this regard, Samsung has firmly established customer centric 8-inch service capabilities with great multi project wafer (MPW) programs as well as intellectual property (IP), and launched the Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem (SAFE™) program this year.

By Jay Chittooran, SEMI Public Policy

Following through on his 2016 campaign promise, President Trump is implementing trade policies that buck conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C. and among U.S. businesses. Stiff tariffs and the dismantling of longstanding trade agreements – cornerstones of these new actions – will ripple through the semiconductor industry with particularly damaging effect. China, a chief target of criticism from President Trump, has again found itself in the crosshairs of the administration, with trade tensions rising to a fever pitch.

The Trump Administration has long criticized China for what it considers unfair trade practices, often zeroing in on intellectual property. In August 2017, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR), charged with developing and recommending U.S trade policy to the president, launched a Section 301 investigation into whether China’s practice of forced technology transfer has discriminated against U.S. firms. As the probe continues, it is becoming increasingly clear that the United States will impose tariffs on China based on its current findings. Reports suggest that the tariffs could come soon, hitting a range of products from consumer electronics to toys. Other measures could include tightening restrictions on the trade of dual-use goods – those with both commercial and military applications – curbing Chinese investment in the United States, and imposing strict limits on the number of visas issued to Chinese citizens.

With China a major and intensifying force in the semiconductor supply chain, raising tariffs hangs like the Sword of Damocles over the U.S. and global economies. A tariff-ignited trade war with China could stifle innovation, undermine the long-term health of the semiconductor industry, and lead to unintended consequences such as higher consumer prices, lower productivity, job losses and, on a global scale, a brake on economic growth.

Other recently announced U.S. trade actions could also cloud the future for semiconductor companies. The Trump administration, based on two separate Section 232 investigations claiming that overproduction of both steel and aluminum are a threat to U.S. national security, recently levied a series of tariffs and quotas on every country except Canada and Mexico. While these tariffs have yet to take effect, the mere prospect has angered U.S. trading partners – most notably Korea, the European Union and China. Several countries have threatened retaliatory action and others have taken their case to the World Trade Organization.

Trade is oxygen to the semiconductor industry, which grew by nearly 30 percent last year and is expected to be valued at an estimated $1 trillion by 2030. Make no mistake: SEMI fully supports efforts to buttress intellectual property protections. However, the Trump administration’s unfolding trade policy could antagonize U.S. trade partners.

For its part, SEMI is weighing in with USTR on these issues, underscoring the critical importance of trade to the semiconductor industry as we educate policymakers on trade barriers to industry growth and encourage unobstructed cross-border commerce to advance semiconductors and the emerging technologies they enable. On behalf of our members, we continue our work to increase global market access and lessen the regulatory burden on global trade. If you are interested in more information on trade, or how to be involved in SEMI’s public policy program, please contact Jay Chittooran, Public Policy Manager, at [email protected].

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

SEMICON West, the flagship U.S. event for connecting the electronics manufacturing supply chain, has opened registration for the July 10-12, 2018, exposition at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. Building on a year of record-breaking industry growth, SEMICON West 2018 will highlight the engines of future industry expansion including smart transportation, smart manufacturing, smart medtech, smart data, big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT). Click here to register.

Themed BEYOND SMART, SEMICON West 2018 sets it sights on the growing impact of cognitive learning technologies and other industry disruptors with programs and new Smart Pavilions including Smart Manufacturing and Smart Transportation to showcase interactive technologies for immersive, virtual experiences. Each Pavilion will feature a Meet the Experts Theater with an intimate setting for attendees to engage informally with industry thought leaders.

Smart Workforce Pavilion: Connecting Next-Generation Talent with the Microelectronics Industry

The SEMI Smart Workforce Pavilion at SEMICON West 2018 leverages the largest microelectronic manufacturing event in North America to draw the next generation of innovators. Reliant on a highly skilled workforce, the industry today is saddled with thousands of job openings and fierce competition for workers, bringing renewed focus to strengthening its talent pipeline. Educational and engaging, the Pavilion connects the microelectronics industry with college students and entry-level professionals interested in career opportunities.

In the Workforce Pavilion “Meet the Experts” Theater, industry engineers will share insights and inspiration about their personal working experiences and career advisors will offer best practices. Recruiters from top companies will be available for on-the-spot interviews, while career coaches offer mentoring, tips on cover letter and resume writing, job-search guidance, and more. Visitors will learn more about the industry’s vital role in technological innovation in today’s connected world.

This year, SEMI will also host High Tech U (HTU) in conjunction with the SEMICON West Smart Workforce Pavilion. The highly-interactive program supported by Advantest, Edwards, KLA-Tencor and TEL exposes high school students to STEM education pathways and stimulates excitement about careers in the industry.

Free registration with three-day access and shuttle service to SEMICON West are available to all college students. Students are encouraged to register for the mentor program, attend keynotes and tour the exposition hall to see everything the industry has to offer.  To learn more, visit Smart Workforce Pavilion and College Track to preview how students can enter to win a $500 hiring bonus!

Three Ways to Experience the Expo

Attendees can tailor their SEMICON West experience to meet their specific interests. The All-In pass covers every program and event, while the Thought-Leadership and Expo-Only packages offer scaled pricing and program options. Attendees can also purchase select events and programs à la carte, including exclusive IEEE-sponsored sessions, the SEMI Market Symposium, and the STEM Rocks After-hours Party, a fundraising event to support the SEMI Foundation.

After two years of unprecedented capacity expansion, South Korean flat panel display (FPD) manufacturers will essentially halt new active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panel factory construction for mobile applications in 2018. At the same time, their Chinese rivals are continuing to build new factories as fast as they can, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

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Since the third quarter of 2017, South Korean FPD makers have been reevaluating the pace of their AMOLED expansion strategies. By the end of January 2018, with demand falling short of expectations and suffering from low factory utilization rates, they delayed all major capacity expansion plans, including several cases of deferring the ramp of equipment already installed.

As the market matures, concern is cumulating that smartphone sales may not continue to increase at rates as high as previously hoped for. With display and smartphone performance specifications already excellent, the replacement cycle is lengthening. Furthermore, adoption of high-end flexible AMOLED panels in a wider range of models is being restricted by high prices that are still about two times those of equivalently specified liquid crystal displays (LCDs).

“After doubling AMOLED capacity for mobile applications in the past two years, a slowdown in facility investment in South Korea is not surprising,” said Charles Annis, senior director at IHS Markit. “Even so, the freezing of all new investments and multiple mass production schedules suggests recognition that continued capacity additions will outpace the market’s ability to absorb them.”

Despite market concerns and changing investment plans in South Korea, Chinese FPD makers are still pushing ahead with their own aggressive new AMOLED factory plans, at least for now. According to the AMOLED and LCD Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker by IHS Markit, ramped Chinese AMOLED capacity will rise from just 228,000 square meters per year in 2016 to 8.3 million square meters in 2020, at a compound annual growth rate of 145 percent.

Chinese makers are not immune to challenges in the smartphone and flexible AMOLED market, and in most cases, they have not yet proven their ability to manufacture premium flexible AMOLED panels at high volume. Regardless, with strong financial backing from local governments, most projects are still moving forward as planned, and will likely continue until credit begins to tighten.

South Korean panel makers are carefully watching how fast the market for AMOLED displays is increasing and are prudently adjusting capacity plans. Chinese makers have less flexibility and less motivation to change strategies due to contracts with local governments in multiple locations across the country.

“The rationalization of how fast the mobile AMOLED display market can grow does raise questions,” Annis said. “What will drive a renewal of investment in South Korea and how will Chinese FPD makers fill their new fabs?”

“Reduced panel prices will enable AMOLEDs to compete more on performance and form factor advantages over LCDs, while new applications, particularly foldable displays, will increase average panel size. Both of these trends have the potential to significantly drive future demand; however, in the shorter term, they remain elusive targets due to high costs and remaining technical barriers,” Annis said.

Immersion Corporation (NASDAQ:IMMR), a developer and licensor of touch feedback technology, today announced that it has filed a second complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. alleging that certain Samsung touchscreen phones, including the Galaxy S8, infringe Immersion’s U.S. Patent No. 8,619,051, “Haptic Feedback System with Stored Effects” (the ’051 patent) The complaint seeks to stop further infringement by Samsung and to recover damages. The ‘051 patent is one of the patents that Immersion asserted against Apple, Inc. which litigation has since terminated in a settlement and license agreement.

In the third quarter of 2017, Immersion filed a complaint against Samsung Electronics America, Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas alleging that certain Samsung touchscreen phones, including the Galaxy S8, infringe certain Immersion patents covering haptic feedback systems and methods in electronic devices. The Court has scheduled a claim construction hearing for August 15, 2018 and a trial date of February 19, 2019.

In addition, Immersion also announced today that it has filed a complaint in the Fuzhou Intermediate Court in Fuzhou, China against Samsung (China) Investment Co., Ltd., Huizhou Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd and Fujian Province Min Xin Household Electrical Appliances Technology Service Co., Ltd. alleging that certain Samsung touchscreen phones, including the Galaxy S8, infringe three Immersion Chinese patents covering haptic feedback systems and methods in electronic devices.

The Chinese patents being asserted are:

Chinese Patent No. ZL02821854.X “Input device and mobile telephone comprising the input device;”

Chinese Patent No. ZL201210005785.2 “Method and apparatus for providing tactile sensations;” and

Chinese Patent No. ZL201310253562.2 “Methods and apparatus for providing tactile sensations.”

These patents are related to the patents that were asserted against Apple, Inc. which litigation has since terminated in a settlement and license agreement.

 

Thanks to a sudden increase in demand , shipment revenue of flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) displays more than tripled in 2017, accounting for 54.6 percent of total AMOLED panel shipment revenue, according to business information provider IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

The flexible AMOLED panel market expanded by about 250 percent in 2017 to $12 billion from $3.5 billion in 2016, while rigid AMOLED panel shipment revenue contracted by 14 percent during the same period. Samsung Display started supplying its flexible AMOLED displays for the iPhone X in the third quarter of 2017, which greatly contributed to the overall shipment revenue increase. LG Display, BOE and Kunshan Govisionox Optoelectronics also started producing flexible AMOLED panels for smartphones and smartwatches in 2017, helping the market growth.

“High-end smartphone brands have increasingly applied flexible AMOLED panels to their products for unique and special design,” said Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst at IHS Markit. “The number of flexible AMOLED panel suppliers is also increasing, but the supplying capacity is still concentrated in Samsung Display.”

The flat type flexible AMOLED panels accounted for about a half of total flexible AMOLED shipment units in 2017, shifting from the curved type that used to be the major flexible AMOLED display form factor until 2016.

“As Apple applied the flat type to the iPhone X, the form factor of smartphone displays has diversified,” Kang said.

According to the latest AMOLED & Flexible Display Intelligence Service by IHS Markit, the demand for flexible AMOLED panels is not expected to grow as fast as supply capacity in 2018. “In a way to overcome potential oversupply, many panel makers are trying to develop another innovative form factor, such as foldable or rollable, within a few years,” Kang said.

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