Category Archives: LED Manufacturing

A chemical reactor that operates at extremely high temperatures is being developed by KAUST and could improve the efficiency and economy of a commonly used process in the semiconductor industry, with flow-on benefits for Saudi Arabia’s chemical industry.

The production of semiconductors relies on epitaxy: a process that creates high-quality single-crystal materials by depositing atoms on to a wafer layer by layer, controlling thickness with atomic precision.

The most common method of epitaxy is metalorganic chemical vapor deposition, or MOCVD. Pure vapors of organic molecules containing the desired atoms–for example, boron and nitrogen in the case of boron nitride–are injected into a reaction chamber. The molecules decompose on a heated wafer to leave the semiconductor’s atoms behind on the surface, which bond both to each other and the wafer to form a crystal layer.

Ph.D. student Kuang-Hui Li and a team led by Xiaohang Li at KAUST are developing an MOCVD reactor that can efficiently operate at extremely high temperatures to create high-quality boron nitride and aluminum nitride materials and devices particularly promising for flexible electronics, ultraviolet optoelectronics and power electronics.

The epitaxy of high-quality boron nitride and aluminum nitride have been a huge challenge for the conventional MOCVD process, which usually operates below 1200 degrees Celsius. Epitaxy of these materials responds best to temperatures over 1600 degrees Celsius; however, the most common resistant heaters are not reliable at these temperatures.

Although induction heaters can reach these temperatures, the heating efficiency of the conventional design is low. Because the wasted energy can overheat the gas inlet, it must be placed far away from the wafer, which is problematic for high-quality boron nitride and aluminum nitride due to particle generation and low utilization of organic molecules.

The KAUST team has developed an innovative and low-cost induction heating structure to solve these problems. “Our design can help greatly improve uniformity for up to 12-inch wafers and reduce particle generation, which is crucial for high-quality material and device fabrication,” says Kuang-Hui. “It also allows us to discover new materials.”

The results show significant increase in heating efficiency and reduction in wasted energy. “This equipment research involves many disciplines and is highly complex. However, history has shown that equipment innovation is the key to scientific breakthroughs and industrial revolution,” says Xiaohang Li. “A goal of the research is to set up MOCVD manufacturing activities that can be integrated into the huge chemical industry of Saudi Arabia.”

Pixelligent, the high-index advanced materials manufacturer, today announces $7.6M in new funding to help further drive product commercialization and accelerate global customer adoption.

This round of funding includes strategic investments from two new strategic partners, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co., LTD. (“TOK”) a leading Japanese advanced materials manufacturer, and Kateeva, Inc. a leading provider of inkjet deposition equipment for the rapidly growing OLED and HD Display markets. This latest investment was led by The Abell Foundation, with strong support from other Baltimore-based investors, including participation from TCP Venture Captial’s – Propel I and Propel II venture funds.

“The partnership with TOK will provide Pixelligent access to TOK’s vast and highly respected formulation expertise, helping us to accelerate product development and customer adoptions on a global basis. As our leading display customers are also requesting that our materials are compatible with inkjet manufacturing equipment, the partnership with Kateeva is a critical step in accessing the expertise and knowledge required to meet this requirement,” said Craig Bandes, President & CEO Pixelligent Technologies.

“We have been working with Pixelligent for a significant period of time now and feel confident that they have the best and most compatible high refractive index nanodispersions for improving the efficiency and performance for some very important optical device applications. Combining Pixelligent’s PixClear® materials with TOK’s world-class high-value added formulations will enable us to address many demanding applications in fast growing markets. These new materials will be formulated to enable application by a variety of methods — nanoimprint, photolithography and inkjet, to name a few — and will enable us to deliver the expanded functionality and performance to all of our customers demanding ultra-high refractive index coatings,” said Katsumi Ohmori of TOK.

“Kateeva has been working with Pixelligent for the past 18 months as our OLED Display customers are actively looking for ways to improve the efficiency and performance of their displays. Incorporating Pixelligent’s PixClear® nanoadditives to increase the refractive index of numerous layers inside the OLED display stack has the potential to deliver significant increases in light extraction and improve the overall performance of our customers’ display products,” said Alain Harrus, Kateeva’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

“Both of these companies are industry leaders in markets that are critically important to Pixelligent. Having companies of this caliber invest in, and partner with Pixelligent is a great validation of value we have created and the value we are delivering,” said Bandes.

This latest financing builds on the momentum of the past twelve months, where the company dramatically increased its product development efforts in the rapidly growing OLED Display, HD Display, and AR/VR markets, was named the 2017 Manufacturer of the Year by Frost & Sullivan, and increased its manufacturing yields by over 100%. Collectively the OLED Display, HD Display, AR/VR, and Solid State Lighting target markets represent an estimated $11 billion of advanced materials sales in 2018 growing to nearly $18 billion by 2023.

Toyoda Gosei Co., Ltd. has achieved state-of-the-art high current operation1 in a vertical GaN power semiconductor developed using gallium nitride (GaN), a main material in blue LEDs.

Power semiconductors are widely used in power converters2 such as power sources and adaptors for electronic devices. However, simultaneous achievement of both high breakdown voltage3 and low loss4 (low conduction loss and switching loss) at high levels has been difficult with conventional silicon due to its material properties.

In its power semiconductors, Toyoda Gosei uses GaN, which has material properties of high breakdown voltage and low loss, and employs a vertical device structure in which electrical current flows vertically from or to a substrate. These changes have enabled a GaN power transistor chip with operating current of over 50A, highest ever reported for vertical GaN transistors2, and high-frequency (several megahertz) operation. Some prospective applications are shown below.

Promising areas of use (examples)

Power converters
More compact & lighter weight, higher efficiency

 Power control units (PCUs) for automobiles, etc.
DC-DC converters

High frequency power sources
Higher output

 Wireless power supply

Toyoda Gosei will continue development of these power semiconductors for improved reliability, aiming to achieve practical applications in cooperation with semiconductor and electronics manufacturers.

The newly developed vertical GaN power transistors (MOSFET)5 and Schottky barrier diodes6 will be presented on panel displays at the Techno-Frontier 2018 Advanced Electronic & Mechatronic Devices and Components Exhibition, held at Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan from April 18 to April 20. The world’s first full vertical-GaN DC-DC converter equipped with these devices will also be demonstrated at the company’s booth (6F-11, Hall 6).

1 According to internal Toyoda Gosei survey (as of April 2018).
2 Power conversion refers to conversion between direct and alternating current, direct current transformation, alternating current frequency conversion, etc.
3 The property of withstanding the high breakdown voltage during power conversion and not allowing current flow during off operation (non-conductance).
4 Heat loss generated by electrical resistance during electric conduction or when switching on/off.
5 Semiconductor used in power on/off.
MOSFET: Metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistor.
6 Semiconductor used in converting (rectification) from alternating current to direct current. Toyoda Gosei uses a trench MOS structure, in which trenches are formed at fixed intervals in the chip surface of the diode, achieving low leakage current operation at high temperatures.

Cree, Inc. (NASDAQ: CREE) announces that it signed a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-bearing patent license agreement with Nexperia BV, a Dutch company. The agreement provides Nexperia access to Cree’s extensive gallium nitride (GaN) power device patent portfolio, which includes over 300 issued U.S. and foreign patents that describe inventive aspects of high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) and GaN Schottky diode devices. The portfolio addresses novel device structures, materials and processing improvements, and packaging technology. The patent license involves no transfer of technology.

“Cree was founded to develop novel compound semiconductor materials like GaN and SiC and to create devices that capitalize on their unique properties,” said John Palmour, Cree co-founder and CTO of Wolfspeed, a Cree company. “Cree’s decades of innovation are now yielding devices that enable market introductions of new power management and wireless systems. To help facilitate the growth of these new markets, Cree is licensing its GaN power device patents for GaN power-management systems.”

Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: VECO) today announced its GENxcel R&D Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) System earned the 2018 Compound Semiconductor (CS) Industry Innovation Award. Hosted by Compound Semiconductor magazine, the CS Industry Awards celebrate the success of companies across five unique categories. Specifically, the Innovation Award honors the most significant breakthrough in compound semiconductor manufacturing over the last 12 months.

“We are honored to have the GENxcel MBE System recognized by Compound Semiconductor and our industry peers. The recognition is especially meaningful because winners are voted on by our respected colleagues, customers and collaborators,” said Gerry Blumenstock, vice president and general manager of MBE and ALD products at Veeco. “We continue to be committed to creating the most advanced and highest quality tools to support leading-edge compound semiconductor R&D and production.”

The GENxcel R&D MBE system builds on the success of the GENxplor® MBE system designed for compound semiconductor R&D and pilot production markets. The system produces high-quality epitaxial layers on substrates up to 100mm in diameter. The innovative architectural concept of GENxcel reduces the system footprint by 40 percent compared to similar 100mm wafer systems, improves the ease of maintenance, and allows users to easily integrate additional deposition and analysis chambers—specifically Veeco’s new atomic layer deposition (ALD) product line.

The CS Industry Awards is a peer-voted awards program honoring people, processes and products within the compound semiconductor industry. Winners were honored at a ceremony on April 10 in conjunction with the CS International Conference in Brussels, Belgium. For a complete list of 2018 winners, visit www.csawards.net/winners.

Previous Veeco products that have won the CS Industry Innovation Award include the TurboDisc® EPIK700™ Gallium Nitride (GaN) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) System in 2015, the GENxplor MBE system in 2014, and the TurboDisc® MaxBright® Multi-Reactor MOCVD System in 2012. To learn more about Veeco’s GENxcel R&D MBE system, please visithttp://www.veeco.com/products/genxcel-randd-mbe-system.

Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) today announced that ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq: ON) has ordered its Propel® High-volume Manufacturing (HVM) Gallium Nitride (GaN) Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) system. Based on its successful beta evaluation of the Propel HVM tool, ON Semiconductor ordered the production-level Propel system for GaN power electronics manufacturing. As the industry’s first single-wafer cluster platform, the Propel GaN MOCVD system is specifically designed for high-voltage power-management devices used in data centers; automotive, information and communication technology; defense; aerospace and power distribution systems, among other applications.

“Our prior learning with Veeco’s K465i™ GaN MOCVD system drove us to investigate the Propel HVM platform for our production ramp,” said Marnix Tack, PhD, senior director of corporate R&D and Open Innovation at ON Semiconductor. “The beta test results demonstrated superior device performance with high uniformity and within-wafer and wafer-to-wafer repeatability, while meeting our cost-of-ownership targets for six- and eight-inch wafers. As such, the Propel HVM system proved to be the most suitable platform for our power electronics manufacturing needs.”

The Propel HVM platform is based on Veeco’s innovative single-wafer system with proprietary IsoFlange™ and SymmHeat™ technologies that provide homogeneous laminar flow and uniform temperature profile across the entire wafer. The system enables production of power electronics, laser diodes, RF devices and advanced LEDs with higher performance and production yields while ensuring very low cost-of-ownership.

“The Propel HVM platform is rapidly gaining traction in the industry as innovative companies like ON Semiconductor recognize the benefits of GaN-on-silicon, which will partially replace current silicon technology for power electronics,” commented Peo Hansson, PhD, senior vice president and general manager of Veeco MOCVD operations. “With its highly controlled doping, run-to-run stability, superior wafer uniformity, high productivity and uptime, Propel HVM extends the benefits of our TurboDisc® platform to a unique single-wafer architecture. These capabilities benefit customers that seek a superior solution for manufacturing while providing a path for scaling to eight-inch wafers and expansion to RF and other advanced applications.”

GaN is a wide band gap semiconductor material with specific advantages over conventional technologies such as gallium arsenide (GaAs) and silicon carbide (SiC). GaN has enormous potential in the short term due to its benefits in terms of thermal behavior, efficiency, weight and size. According to market research firm Yole Développement, the GaN power device business was worth $14 million in 2016, and projects that it will reach $460 million by 2022, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 79 percent. GaN-based devices will be used increasingly in RF amplifiers, LEDs and high voltage applications among others, primarily due to their abilities to operate at high frequency, power density and temperature with improved efficiency and linearity.

Veeco is discussing the power of its innovative MOCVD and wet etch systems in the “5G: Where Are We and What’s Next?” track at the CS International Conference this week in Brussels, Belgium. Somit Joshi, senior director of MOCVD marketing is presenting a session titled, “Enabling GaN RF and Power Electronics through Innovative MOCVD and Wet Etch Process Technologies,” on Wednesday, April 11, and the Veeco team will also be accepting the CS Industry 2018 Award for Innovation for its GENxcel™ R&D MBE System at the awards ceremony held during the conference.

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].

Technology companies Osram and Continental have successfully completed negotiations on their joint venture, which is expected to begin operations in the second half of calendar year 2018. The joint venture, in which each of the partners has a 50 percent stake, aims to combine Continental’s and Osram’s respective expertise in lighting, light control and electronics. Leading the joint venture are CEO Dirk Linzmeier from Osram and CFO Harald Renner from Continental.

“Digitalization is creating new possibilities in automotive lighting applications and, in turn, tremendous opportunities that we want to leverage with Continental,” said Hans-Joachim Schwabe, CEO of Osram’s Specialty Lighting division. “By joining forces, we will be in an even better position to drive innovations by working closely with the automotive industry, seamlessly integrating lighting, sensor technology and electronics in a single application. This will allow us to advance new intelligent light functions, such as the combination of lighting and sensor technology in a module or light-based communication between the driver, other road users and the vehicle’s surroundings.”

Andreas Wolf, head of Continental’s Body & Security business unit, added, “The joint venture puts us in a unique position to drive technological change in the automotive lighting market and to develop intelligent lighting solutions by combining our expertise in software and electronics with Osram’s automotive lighting expertise. The innovations Osram and Continental bring to this joint venture will allow us to offer our customers an unrivaled and unprecedented portfolio in the lighting market.”

The joint venture will be based within the region of Munich, but will operate globally to ensure rapid development cycles with customers in their local areas. The U.S. operations of Osram Continental will be based in Hendersonville, Tennessee. The product portfolio will feature semiconductor-based lighting modules such as LED modules for front and rear headlights, laser modules and light control units.

 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.

illus_microled_ip_apple-luxvue_yole_jan2018

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

Veeco Instruments Inc. (NASDAQ: VECO) today announced it has completed installation of its 100th automated Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) system. The installation of Veeco’s GEN10™ MBE System last month at Silanna Semiconductor PTY Ltd. in Australia marks this significant company milestone. The company also operates a Veeco Dual GEN200® MBE System for production of advanced nitride compound semiconductor devices including ultraviolet light emitting diodes (UV-LEDs).

“Veeco has earned a reputation for consistently developing innovative and reliable MBE technology from research scale to production,” said Petar Atanackovic, Ph.D., chief scientist of Silanna Semiconductor PTY Ltd. “The flexibility and deposition capability of the GEN10 system will enable us to develop new materials at the atomic level allowing us to exploit new quantum properties. Veeco’s technology portfolio and leadership in MBE systems provides us with a clear path to easily scale to volume production in the future.”

Silanna is using the GEN10 system for advanced oxide research and development (R&D) for optoelectronic devices. The GEN10 is built upon almost 20 years of cumulative automation knowledge and derived from the company’s proven production MBE systems. Adopted by numerous leading corporations, institutions and universities for all major MBE applications, many customers choose the GEN10 because of its flexibility, which allows them to configure the system based on their application. This gives customers optimal performance with any material set, including those related to III-V group elements, oxides and nitrides.

“Silanna has achieved remarkable results on its previous MBE systems and Veeco is honored to celebrate this momentous accomplishment in our company history in partnership with Dr. Atanackovic and the Silanna team,” said Gerry Blumenstock, vice president and general manager, Veeco MBE Products. “As our customers explore novel materials and new applications, they can rely on Veeco to deliver innovative MBE systems, sources and components for use in complex R&D, as well as high-volume production environments.”

MBE is a highly precise thin-film deposition method for creating crystals by building up orderly layers of molecules on top of a substrate. MBE is used in industrial production processes as well as nanotechnology research in high-growth advanced computing, optics and photonics applications, to name a few. With over 600 systems shipped worldwide, Veeco provides the industry’s broadest portfolio of proven, reliable MBE systems, sources and components to serve a wide variety of markets and applications.