Category Archives: Flexible Displays

With demand growing for active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) TV panels, shipments of overall AMOLED panels by area is forecast to more than quadruple to 22.4 million square meters by 2024 from 5.0 million square meters in 2017, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions.

Shipments of AMOLED TV panels had doubled to 1.6 million square meters in 2017 from about 800,000 square meters in 2016, resulting in total AMOLED panel shipments to grow more than 30 percent to 5.0 million square meters in 2017 from 3.8 million square meters in 2016. Share of TV panels in the total AMOLED panel shipments increased to 32 percent from 21 percent in 2016.

“Demand growth in AMOLED TV panels has accelerated since 2016 due to the increasing demand for wide color gamut TV,” said Jerry Kang, senior principal analyst of display research at IHS Markit. “Most TV brands have been promoting AMOLED TV as their super premium product, which has differentiated optical performance from LCD TV.”

While 10 global TV brands shipped OLED TVs in 2017, 15 are planning to launch them in 2018. TV brands are trying to expand share of OLED TVs in their portfolio to rebound their total TV revenues.

“In terms of unit shipments, the TV market has seen declines for three consecutive years since 2015,” Kang said. “Now, major TV brands are prioritizing their focus on revenues rather than just the growth in unit shipments, with the added value that AMOLED TV offering higher-resolution and wide color-gamut display.”

According to the AMOLED & Flexible Display Intelligence Service by IHS Markit, shipments of AMOLED TV panels will reach 12.5 million units by 2024. “Many panel makers are trying to develop various technology to manufacture OLED TV panels — not only with white OLED but also with ink-jet process or quantum-dot materials,” Kang said.

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The AMOLED & Flexible Display Intelligence Service covers the latest market trend and forecast of AMOLED display industries (including shadow mask and  polyimide substrate), technology and capacity analysis, and panel suppliers’ business strategies by region.

Demand for panels – both thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) and active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) – using oxide backplane technology doubled in 2017, in terms of area, compared to a year ago, according to a latest report from business information provider IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO). The market is forecast to grow 30 percent in 2018 to 5.3 billion square meters from 2017.

Oxide backplane technology offers the benefit of higher resolution while consuming lower power, which are better suited to IT consumer products that require high mobility. With Apple’s increasing adoption of oxide TFT LCD panels for its tablet and notebook products in 2017, the demand surged 98 percent in 2017 year on year. Area demand for OLED TV panels using the oxide backplane technology also increased by 106 percent during the same period, according to the latest Display long term demand forecast tracker by IHS Markit.

“Demand for oxide panels will continue to grow in 2018 as demand particularly for OLED TV, with 55 inch or larger screens, increases,” said Linda Lin, principal analyst of display research at IHS Markit. “Increasing demand from IT products and rising penetration of OLED panels to major applications will help growing demand for LCD and OLED panels using oxide backplane technology in 2018, respectively.”

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Panels using oxide backplane technology are mainly supplied by Sharp and LG Display. While Sharp is focusing on the oxide backplane for TFT LCD for IT applications, LG Display is more targeting the oxide backplane for OLED panels for TVs. Both are planning to expand their oxide capacity in 2018.

Sharp’s Gen 6 fab in Kameyama, Japan, is solely dedicated to producing low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) panels. To grab more orders for the Apple iPad, the company is going to change 40 percent of its LTPS capacity to oxide at the end of 2018.

Its Gen 8 fab in Kameyama is also planning to gradually increase the oxide capacity beginning the first quarter of 2018, from 50 percent of its all capacity in the last quarter of 2017 to 75 percent by the end of 2018. On the other hand, oxide panel price would be a key point to increase Oxide panel’s market share and decide that Sharp can enlarge Oxide capacity continuously or not in the future.

LG Display also plans to increase oxide panel capacity to prepare for the OLED TV panel business in future. Its Gen 8.5 OLED fab in Guangzhou, China, plans to start mass production of oxide backplane using OLED panels in the second half of 2019, with a capacity of 60,000 units per month. In Paju of South Korea, the company is also working to build Gen 10.5 fabs for both a-Si and oxide backplane panels.

Flexible televisions, tablets and phones as well as ‘truly wearable’ smart tech are a step closer thanks to a nanoscale transistor created by researchers at The University of Manchester and Shandong University in China.

The international team has developed an ultrafast, nanoscale transistor – known as a thin film transistor, or TFT, – made out of an oxide semiconductor. The TFT is the first oxide-semiconductor based transistor that is capable of operating at a benchmark speed of 1 GHz. This could make the next generation electronic gadgets even faster, brighter and more flexible than ever before.

A TFT is a type of transistor usually used in a liquid crystal display (LCD). These can be found in most modern gadgets with LCD screens such as smart phones, tablets and high-definition televisions.

How do they work? LCD features a TFT behind each individual pixel and they act as individual switches that allow the pixels to change state rapidly, making them turn on and off much more quickly.

But most current TFTs are silicon-based which are opaque, rigid and expensive in comparison to the oxide semiconductor family of transistors which the team from the UK and China are developing. Whilst oxide TFTs will improve picture on LCD displays, it is their flexibility that is even more impressive.

Aimin Song, Professor of Nanoelectronics in the School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, explains: “TVs can already be made extremely thin and bright. Our work may help make TV more mechanically flexible and even cheaper to produce.

“But, perhaps even more importantly, our GHz transistors may enable medium or even high performance flexible electronic circuits, such as truly wearable electronics. Wearable electronics requires flexibility and in many cases transparency, too. This would be the perfect application for our research.

“Plus, there is a trend in developing smart homes, smart hospitals and smart cities – in all of which oxide semiconductor TFTs will play a key role.”

Oxide-based technology has seen rapid development when compared to its silicon counterpart which is increasingly close to some fundamental limitations. Prof Song says there has been fast progress in oxide-semiconductors in recent years and extensive efforts have been made in order to improve the speed of oxide-semiconductor-based TFTs.

So much so some oxide-based technology has already started replacing amorphous silicon in some gadgets. Prof Song thinks these latest developments have brought commercialisation much closer.

He added: “To commercialise oxide-based electronics there is still a range of research and development that has to be carried out on materials, lithography, device design, testing, and last but not the least, large-area manufacturing. It took many decades for silicon technology to get this far, and oxides are progressing at a much faster pace.

“Making a high performance device, like our GHz IGZO transistor, is challenging because not only do materials need to be optimised, a range of issues regarding device design, fabrication and tests also have to be investigated. In 2015, we were able to demonstrate the fastest flexible diodes using oxide semiconductors, reaching 6.3 GHz, and it is still the world record to date. So we’re confident in oxide-semiconductor based technologies. ”

 

Although flexible active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) panel shipments for smartphones are expected to continue growing in 2018, the pace will be much slower than expected, according to a latest report from business information provider IHS Markit(Nasdaq: INFO).

With the adoption by Apple’s iPhone X, shipments of film-based, flexible AMOLED panels for smartphones more than tripled in 2017 to 125 million units from 40 million units in 2016, and it was expected to see continued strong growth in 2018. However, sales of the iPhone X have not met market expectations, mainly because of the $1,000-plus price tag, which is partially attributed by a more pricey display panel.

“The weak demand for the iPhone X has made smartphone brands revisit their AMOLED panel purchasing plans,” said Hiroshi Hayase, senior director at IHS Markit. Now, flexible AMOLED panel shipments for smartphones are expected to reach 167 million units in 2018, up 34 percent from 2017, much slower than the expected almost double growth.

Apple seems to reexamine the percentage of its iPhone models using AMOLED panels and those using low-temperature-poly-silicon (LTPS) thin-film transistor liquid crystal display (TFT LCD) panels for 2018. Major Chinese smartphone brands, such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi, also appear to continue applying LTPS TFT LCD panels instead of switching to AMOLED for their 2018 models, while Samsung Electronics plans to keep using flexible AMOLED panels for the Galaxy S9 this year.

As a result, demand for AMOLED smartphone panels by switching from TFT LCD panels is expected to slow down. According to the latest Smartphone Display Intelligent Service report by IHS Markit, shipments of total AMOLED panel shipments for smartphones are forecast to grow 14 percent to 453 million units in 2018, from 397 million units in 2017. Glass-based, rigid AMOLED panel shipments are expected to grow at a single digit pace to 285 million units in 2018.

On the other hand, as demand for high-resolution smartphone displays is increasing in the mid-to-high-end smartphone market, demand for LTPS TFT LCD panels is forecast to keep growing in 2018 to 785 million units, up 19 percent from 656 million units in 2017. Shipments of LTPS TFT LCD panels are expected to grow stronger than AMOLED panels in the mid-high-end smartphone panel market in 2018.

Shipments of amorphous silicon (a-Si) TFT LCD panels used for low-end smartphones and feature phones are forecast to reach 807 million units in 2018, down 16 percent form 965 million units in 2017, offsetting the growth in AMOLED and LTPS TFT LCD panel demand.

Total shipments of mobile phone displays, including both TFT LCD and AMOLED panels, are forecast to increase by 1 percent to 2.02 billion units in 2018 compared to the previous year.

“As AMOLED panels allow more options in terms of form factors, demand for AMOLED for smartphones will continue to grow. However, it will start to outpace LTPS TFT LCD only after 2020,” Hayase said. “In order to compete with LTPS TFT LCD, production cost of both rigid and flexible AMOLED panels still need to be slashed, to close the price gap with LTPS TFT LCD.”

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].

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.

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.

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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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 2018.

Enabling the AI Era with Materials Engineering

Screen Shot 2018-03-05 at 12.24.49 PMPrabu Raja, Senior Vice President, Semiconductor Products Group, Applied Materials

A broad set of emerging market trends such as IoT, Big Data, Industry 4.0, VR/AR/MR, and autonomous vehicles is accelerating the transformative era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI, when employed in the cloud and in the edge, will usher in the age of “Smart Everything” from automobiles, to planes, factories, buildings, and our homes, bringing fundamental changes to the way we live

Semiconductors and semiconductor processing technol- ogies will play a key enabling role in the AI revolution. The increasing need for greater computing perfor- mance to handle Deep Learning/Machine Learning workloads requires new processor architectures beyond traditional CPUs, such as GPUs, FPGAs and TPUs, along with new packaging solutions that employ high-density DRAM for higher memory bandwidth and reduced latency. Edge AI computing will require processors that balance the performance and power equation given their dependency on battery life. The exploding demand for data storage is driving adoption of 3D NAND SSDs in cloud servers with the roadmap for continued storage density increase every year.

In 2018, we will see the volume ramp of 10nm/7nm devices in Logic/Foundry to address the higher performance needs. Interconnect and patterning areas present a myriad of challenges best addressed by new materials and materials engineering technologies. In Inter- connect, cobalt is being used as a copper replacement metal in the lower level wiring layers to address the ever growing resistance problem. The introduction of Cobalt constitutes the biggest material change in the back-end-of-line in the past 15 years. In addition to its role as the conductor metal, cobalt serves two other critical functions – as a metal capping film for electro- migration control and as a seed layer for enhancing gapfill inside the narrow vias and trenches.

In patterning, spacer-based double patterning and quad patterning approaches are enabling the continued shrink of device features. These schemes require advanced precision deposition and etch technologies for reduced variability and greater pattern fidelity. Besides conventional Etch, new selective materials removal technologies are being increasingly adopted for their unique capabilities to deliver damage- and residue-free extreme selective processing. New e-beam inspection and metrology capabilities are also needed to analyze the fine pitch patterned structures. Looking ahead to the 5nm and 3nm nodes, placement or layer-to-layer vertical alignment of features will become a major industry challenge that can be primarily solved through materials engineering and self-aligned structures. EUV lithography is on the horizon for industry adoption in 2019 and beyond, and we expect 20 percent of layers to make the migration to EUV while the remaining 80 percent will use spacer multi- patterning approaches. EUV patterning also requires new materials in hardmasks/underlayer films and new etch solutions for line-edge-roughness problems.

Packaging is a key enabler for AI performance and is poised for strong growth in the coming years. Stacking DRAM chips together in a 3D TSV scheme helps bring High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to market; these chips are further packaged with the GPU in a 2.5D interposer design to bring compute and memory together for a big increase in performance.

In 2018, we expect DRAM chipmakers to continue their device scaling to the 1Xnm node for volume production. We also see adoption of higher perfor- mance logic technologies on the horizon for the periphery transistors to enable advanced perfor- mance at lower power.

3D NAND manufacturers continue to pursue multiple approaches for vertical scaling, including more pairs, multi-tiers or new schemes such as CMOS under array for increased storage density. The industry migration from 64 pairs to 96 pairs is expected in 2018. Etch (high aspect ratio), dielectric films (for gate stacks and hardmasks) along with integrated etch and CVD solutions (for high aspect ratio processing) will be critical enabling technologies.

In summary, we see incredible inflections in new processor architectures, next-generation devices, and packaging schemes to enable the AI era. New materials and materials engineering solutions are at the very heart of it and will play a critical role across all device segments.

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