Category Archives: LED Manufacturing

Update, August 15, 2011 – Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ:VSEA) achieved a significant milestone in the proposed merger between Varian and Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMAT). At a special stockholders meeting on August 11, Varian stockholders voted to approve the merger.

The merger was approved by holders of approximately 52.8 million shares of Varian’s outstanding common stock, and approximately 237,000 shares voted against the merger. This represents over 99% of the shares present in person or represented by proxy at the special meeting voting in favor of the merger.

Varian continues to expect that the merger will be completed during the second half of 2011. The closing of the merger is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain other closing conditions, including, without limitation, the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice under the Hart Scott Rodino Act.

May 4, 2011 – In an early-morning surprise, Applied Materials said it will acquire Varian Semi in a $4.9B deal that adds a new angle to AMAT’s wafer-fab equipment portfolio, and another inroad into related fields including solar PV, displays, and LEDs.

Under terms of the deal, AMAT will pay $63/share in cash for VSEA, a 55% premium over yesterday’s closing price (38% premium to the past 30-day average). VSEA will operate as a business unit of AMAT’s silicon systems group (SSG), and continue to be based in Gloucester, MA. Both company’s boards have unanimously approved the deal, which will be funded with a combination of existing cash balances and debt.

The deal adds ion implantation to AMAT’s wafer-fabrication equipment (WFE) portfolio, as a complement to the company’s other offerings in transistor, interconnect, wafer-level packaging and patterning. The technology also could extend AMAT’s reach further into related markets including solar PV, display, and LEDs.

"Varian is a great fit for our strategy to profitably grow share in our core semiconductor business with best-in-class technology and talent," said Mike Splinter, chairman/CEO of Applied, in a statement. "Applied’s broad capability in semiconductor equipment and Varian’s ion implant expertise will allow us to work more closely with our customers on integrated process solutions at the transistor level," added Randhir Thakur, EVP/GM of Applied SSG.

"In addition to our combined strengths in the semiconductor space, Applied’s proven capability to extend its technology to adjacent markets like solar and display can help unlock the tremendous potential of ion implantation in these markets," added Varian CEO Gary Dickerson.

August 12, 2011 — Tom Hausken, Strategies Unlimited, shares his light emitting diode (LED) forecast, including drivers like new LED backlights and general LED lighting, in a video interview from SEMICON West 2011. He sees 13-15% LED industry growth in the future, after nearly double growth from 2009 to 2010.


High-brightness LEDs (HB-LEDs) started out in commercial applications with automotive uses, then mobile phone backlights. Now, LED TV backlights are driving a growth surge. Once this market is saturated, price erosion should naturally occur, Hausken says. LED lighting is also pushing a cycle of LED growth.

Manufacturing issues? Metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is critical, but it is slow and expensive, Hausken notes. To ramp up LED production, makers need many MOCVD machines. However, Strategies Unlimited thinks that only a percentage of the MOCVD systems shipping now are going to be used in production, as operation expertise lags behind machine purchases and shipments.

While there will be a shake-out in the market, as competition takes place for top suppliers, low-end supplier dominance, etc., Hausken is not concerned about a bubble in LED markets. He also sees global LED manufacturing options, not simply China-based production alone.

More from SEMICON West 2011

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August 10, 2011 — SEMI released its China LED Fab Industry Report, summarizing China’s rapidly growing light-emitting diode (LED) industry: capital and equipment spending, fab capacity, sales rankings of Chinese LED manufacturers, etc. Subsidies for China fab projects are included, along with new LED fab projects, names of China’s sapphire wafer suppliers, and company profiles of China’s top LED manufacturers.   

China has develped government support infrastructure for LED manufacturing and consumption. China is the world’s leading consumer of solid state lighting and the leading producer of LCD TVs (the main driver for HB-LED consumption).

LED production investments have rapidly escalated in China. Last year, SEMI recorded explosive growth on equipment spending from LED fabs globally, jumping from $606 million in 2009 to $1.78 billion in 2010. Gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial wafer production capacity in China will grow over 300% in just 2 years (2010-2012), hitting 1,282,000 wafers per month (2" equivalents). Regional equipment spending shows an aggressive investment trend from China. Propped up by subsidy programs from local governments in China, new LED fab projects have blossomed in the past two years in China.  China now accounts for almost 50% of overall equipment spending.

Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) tool installations are growing from a cumulative total 323 tools in 2010 to over 1000 tools by the end 2012. 10 new sapphire substrate projects are beginning in China to catch up with the production rise and non-Chinese supplier bases.

LEDs could go from a $10 billion (2010) industry to over $100 billion worldwide by 2020.
 
The China LED Fab Industry Report covers LED wafer and sapphire substrate manufacturing projects, government incentive programs, MOCVD tool forecasts, and emerging China-based manufacturing. The report is prepared by SEMI China-based market analysts and is based on the SEMI Opto/LED Fab Watch and Forecast service that monitors LED capital spending at over 160 fabs worldwide, and other sources. Purchase the report at http://www.semi.org/node/38486

SEMI is a global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries. For more information, visit www.semi.org.

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August 5, 2011 – Rice University’s James Tour’s Lab has created thin films from graphene that eliminate expensive, brittle indium tin oxide (ITO) films for touchscreen displays, solar panels, and LED lights. The see-through graphene-hybrid film is flexible, allowing integration into body-wearable electronics or building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), among other commercial applications.

Rice University’s hybrid graphene/aluminum mesh material. (Credit: Yu Zhu, Rice University)

The Tour Lab’s thin film combines a single-layer sheet of highly conductive graphene with a fine grid of metal nanowire. The combination outperformed ITO and competing materials at the Lab, offering better transparency and lower electrical resistance. The hybrid works better than pure graphene, which interacts too much with its substrate, Tour said. The fine metal mesh maintains conductivity without blocking transparency, added postdoctoral researcher Yu Zhu. The gaps in the nanowires make them unsuitable stand-alone components in conductive electrodes. The researchers settled on a grid of 5um aluminum nanowires.

Standard roll-to-roll (R2R) and ink-jet printing could produce the metal grids on a commercial scale. Roll-to-roll graphene production is also becoming more readily available from nanomaterials manufacturing companies. Tour believes the ITO replacement can be scaled up immediately.

An electron microscope image of a hybrid electrode developed at Rice University shows solid connections after 500 bends. (Credit: Tour Lab, Rice University.)

In tests, the hybrid film’s conductivity decreased 20%-30% with the initial 50 bends, but after that the material stabilizes. "There were no significant variations up to 500 bending cycles," Zhu said. More rigorous bending test should be performed by commercial users, he added.

The film also proved environmentally stable. When the research paper was submitted in late 2010, test films had been exposed to the environment in the lab for six months without deterioration. After a year, they remain so.

Yu Zhu holds a sample of a transparent electrode that merges graphene and a fine aluminum grid. Clockwise from top right: James Tour, Zhu, Zheng Yan, and Zhengzong Sun. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow, Rice University.)

The Office of Naval Research Graphene MURI program, the Air Force Research Laboratory through the University Technology Corporation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Lockheed Martin Corp./LANCER IV program supported the research.

The research was reported in the online edition of ACS Nano. James Tour is Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. Yu Zhu is lead author on the paper. Rice graduate students Zhengzong Sun and Zheng Yan and former postdoctoral researcher Zhong Jin are co-authors of the paper.

August 4, 2011 — Light emitting diodes (LEDs), silicon germanium (SiGe) semiconductors, and wafer-level packaging (WLP) bumps each present their own challenges to metrology systems, says Alon Kapel, Jordan Valley Semiconductor. He speaks with Debra Vogler at SEMICON West 2011.


LEDs are growing very fast, and the metal-organic MOCVD tool is the heart of the process, says Kapel. For about every 10 MOCVD tools, users need 1 metrology tool. Every MOCVD batch takes 12 hours, so measurement needs to be very fast, allowing the next substrate to begin processing.

Other areas where metrology is helping advance semiconductor technology include the move to triple-layer SiGe on the front-end, and wafer-level packaging on the back-end. Metrology tools must keep up with the pace of production and still offer the highest level of accuracy possible. (Last year Jordan Valley debuted the JVX7200 HRXRD/XRR for in-line SiGe process monitoring.) In wafer-level packaging, silver/tin bumps must be measured on-wafer and on-line.

Jordan Valley is collaborating on 450mm projects and participates in consortia, but Kapel noted that 450mm is a burden on vendors and the question still being asked is, "where

July 29, 2011 – Marketwire — Sapphire Materials Company (SMC), a subsidiary of Silicon Chemical Corporation (SCC), completed Phase I of its sapphire manufacturing business. The manufacturing green-light follows less than a year of research and design, retrofitting, and renovation at the former Saint Gobain/Union Carbide sapphire crystal growing facility in Washougal, WA.

Manufacturing equipment was sourced from suppliers and some methodologies were developed in-house by SMC.

All process utility and infrastructure requirements are in place for installation of crystal growing equipment to meet SMC plans to ramp capacity to over 100,000 KG by the 4th quarter of 2012. Phase II should be complete in September 2011. Initial shipments of sapphire product will begin this November.

The sapphire produced in Washougal will primarily serve LED manufacturing markets. The aim is lowest-cost production with high reliability and consistent product quality.

Sapphire Materials Company (SMC) is a subsidiary of Silicon Chemical Corporation (SCC), which provides silicon process technology, equipment, and professional services for the electronic and solar industries. Visit SMC at www.sapphirematerials.com

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July 27, 2011 — Solvay provided EUR10 million (USD15 million) to printed electronics company Plextronics, in a financing round to accelerate Plextronics’ technology development and product delivery. Solvay is Plextronics’ largest minority shareholder.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, Plextronics focuses on organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and organic solar photovoltaics (OPV) technology, specifically the conductive inks and process technologies that enable those and other similar applications. It was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2002, based on the research of Dr. Richard McCullough. The company is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certified.

Printed electronics enable new form factors and cost structures for electronic devices.

Plextronics has achieved milestones in the last two years as an advanced ink provider for solution-processed OLED and OPV manufacturers, noted Andy Hannah, President and Chief Executive Officer of Plextronics, who called attention to the company’s OLED development for flat panel displays and lighting applications.

Léopold Demiddeleer, Head of Future Businesses & Corporate Platforms, a section of Solvay’s newly created Innovation Center, noted that OLED adoption is a sign that printed electronics are headed for mass markets.

PLEXTRONICS Inc. an international technology company that specializes in printed lighting, display, solar and other organic electronics. For more information about Plextronics, visit www.plextronics.com.

SOLVAY is an international industrial Group active in chemistry. Solvay is listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange in Brussels (NYSE Euronext: SOLB.BE – Bloomberg: SOLB.BB – Reuters: SOLBt.BR). Learn more at www.solvay.com.

Also read: Organic Electronics Workshop: OLEDs, OTFTs, OPV, and futile resistance by Michael A. Fury

July 22, 2011 — Scientists from the A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing and the National University of Singapore developed a method to collapse spherical carbon nanostructures into perfect quantum dots. The technique could be applied to manufacture quantum-dot-based next-generation electronics and optoelectronics.

The carbon atoms in graphite are arranged into stacked sheets that are weakly bound to one another. Single-layer graphene can be peeled from bulk graphite, but offers radically different properties. Graphene-based quantum dots, a few nanometers in diameter, must be uniformly manufactured to maintain consistent properties. The researchers took a hollow spherical carbon buckyball (carbon 60) and fragmented it to produce uniformly sized quantum dots of graphene.

The researchers deposited the buckyballs onto a ruthenium surface to catalyze the fragmentation. Heated to 725 kelvin, the carbon atoms rearranged from a sphere into a flower shape. At 825 kelvin, these dots merged into a single quantum dot 1.2nm-wide.

The image demonstrates how buckyballs can be converted into graphene quantum dots by heating them on a ruthenium substrate.

The carbon fragments diffused across the metal substrate, forming uniform nano-graphene structures, according to the research team, which noted that the experiment required low coverage of buckyballs on the ruthenium layer.

The graphene dots’ shape may be influenced by the annealing temperature and density of the carbon clusters, which would allow makers to tune the dots’ properties.

"The next step in the research will be to devise ways to extract these interesting nanostructures from the ruthenium and transfer them to a semiconducting substrate for further experiments," say the researchers.

Lu, J., Yeo, P. S. E., Gan, C. K., Wu, P. & Loh, K.P. Transforming C60 molecules into graphene quantum dots. Nature Nanotechnology 6, 247–252 (2011). Access it at http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v6/n4/full/nnano.2011.30.html

The A*STAR-affiliated researchers contributing to this research are from the Institute of High Performance Computing.

July 21, 2011 — Strategies in Light 2012 will take place February 7-9 in Santa Clara, CA. The Strategies in Light Advisory Board seeks abstracts for the conference, which is themed "The Booming LED Market."

The 2012 Strategies in Light Advisory Board will choose papers that appeal to the conference audience, offer strong technical content without an overt commercial sell, and have an immediate LED industry relevance.

Strategies in Light Conference attendees include LED buyers, lighting designers, corporate R&D, light system designers, product engineers, technical management, sales, marketing and financial analysts.

The call for papers is open through Monday, August 1. Abstracts should be 100-300 words, and the work should not be appearing at other LED-related conferences. Abstracts should be submitted (English language only please) via the online abstract submittal form: http://forms.events.pennnet.com/fl/forms/sil/online_abstract_main.cfm

Please note: In submitting an abstract you are indicating your availability and willingness to attend and present a paper at Strategies in Light 2012, if selected, and to comply with all deadlines. Please ensure that the speaker and author details you are providing when submitting your abstract are correct as these will be used for pre-event marketing purposes.

Suggested paper topics to consider:

Supply chain: Supply and demand, capacity constraints, availability of materials and equipment, advanced chip design and lower-cost manufacturing, epitaxial growth and processing, thermal management, advanced packaging, LED cost/performance/lifetime improvements.

LED Manufacturing: Process automation, yield management, metrology, larger substrates, refitting existing semiconductor fabs for LED manufacturing.

Technology: Color quality metrics, optical safety, test & measurement, OLEDs/other lighting technologies, control electronics (drivers, dimming, etc.), replaceable modules and light engines.

LED applications: Market growth, LED penetration and integration barriers, case studies of specific installations showing cost/performance analysis and user reaction.

Lighting: End-user (lighting designers, specifiers, architects) requirements, LED lighting design, light and color perception.

LED market: Regional- and country-specific activities to promote LED lighting, quality control and labelling programs, customer perspective on subsidies and general LED adoption, government/investor funding, standards.

For assistance on participating at the conference, please contact Karen Gallagher, Conference manager, at 1-603-891-9304 or [email protected]. Learn more at www.strategiesinlight.com.

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