Category Archives: Materials and Equipment

May 17, 2008 – MEMC Electronic Materials Inc. says it has authorized a share repurchase program for up to $500 million of its shares. Specific timing and amounts were not disclosed; the company said they would vary depending on market conditions and other factors. The plan can be modified, extended, or terminated at any time, the company added, in a statement.

Financial analysts and investors greeted the news generally with optimism, though MEMC shares were basically flat the day after the news. CIBC says investors have been “anxiously awaiting a productive use” for MEMC’s growing cash balance, and this program would increase EPS by $0.15 (about 3.5%) if completed in 2008. CIBC also notes that MEMC has generated nearly enough free cash flow over the past two quarters to fund the buyback.

Meanwhile, UBS notes that this buyback program — the company’s first-ever such plan — is probably more to reiterate managements’ confidence in the business than anything else. The deal also allows MEMC to buy shares directly from the Texas Pacific Group, which still owns 4.7 million warrants with a strike price of $3.

May 17, 2007 – Vtex Corp., a unit of Hitachi Zosen that makes specialty valves for semiconductor equipment, will spend 100 million yen (~US $831,000) to tool up a five-year-old maintenance location in Seoul, South Korea, in order to take aim on new business in the US, notes the Nikkei Business Daily.

The facility, with cleanrooms, warehouse, cleaning equipment, and testing facilities, currently churns out 30 small vacuum valves each month for use in semiconductor equipment, but Vtex plans to ramp that to 80 units/month this summer and market the valves to US customers.

Eventually the company wants to produce 150 units/month at the Seoul site, 20% of which will go to Samsung and local firms, and the rest reserved for export. Vtex also wants to double its percentage of sales from overseas customers to 20% of total sales, which are currently around 5 billion yen ($41.5 million), the paper notes.

(May 16, 2007) CONCORD, NH &#151 It looks like cotton candy as its being synthesized, but has the strength of carbon steel. It is as electrically conductive as copper at 50MHz &#151 more so in the GHz frequency range &#151 and is also thermally conductive. It has numerous application possibilities across military, aerospace, and semiconductor markets. Is it any wonder that Nanocomp Technologies, the company that manufactures this carbon nanotube (CNT) textile, received the New Hampshire High Tech Council’s “Product of the Year” in 2006?

The fiber-based picosecond UV laser, developed with proprietary diode laser technology, fiber coupling, and frequency conversions, produces 12-W output power at a 355-nm wavelength. It enables scribing and other processing steps on dielectric, glass, and semiconductor materials.

The DA-6534 one-part, high-performance thermal adhesive uses silver filler with a silicone-based chemistry to offer flexibility, reliability, and thermal conductivity. It targets thermal management packaging for flip chip BGAs and other advanced components.

May 15, 2007 — The number of consumer products using nanotechnology has more than doubled, from 212 to 475, in 14 months, says the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN). March 2006 is when the group launched what it calls the world’s first online inventory of manufacturer-identified nanotech goods.

Clothing and cosmetics top the inventory at 77 and 75 products, respectively. The full list of nanotechnology-based products also includes bedding, jewelry, sporting goods, nutritional and personal care items. According to PEN,

+ The food and beverages category, including containers and dietary supplements, doubled to 61 products since last year.

+ Nanoscale silver is the most cited nanomaterial used. It is found in 95 products or 20 percent of the inventory. Carbon, including carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, is the second highest nanoscale material cited.

+ Merchandise from 20 countries is now represented. The United States leads internationally with 52 percent or 247 consumer products that contain nanotechnology. East Asia now boasts 123 products, a 58 percent increase over last year.

+ New products in the inventory include the Corsa Nanotech Ice Axe, which uses a steel alloy that claims to be 20 percent lighter and up to 60 percent stronger than conventional steel. There’s also MaatShop Crystal Clear Nano Silver, a clear liquid dietary supplement that promises protection against colds, flu, and other diseases including anthrax.

The group says that in 2005 nanotechnology was incorporated into more than $30 billion in manufactured goods. By 2014, Lux Research estimates $2.6 trillion in manufactured goods will incorporate nanotechnology—or about 15 percent of total global output.

May 14, 2007 — Nanocomp Technologies, Inc. says it has successfully produced a new textile material from long carbon nanotubes. The company says that the material, available in nonwoven sheet and yarn formats, could be the key to realizing significant performance benefits in defense and aerospace applications ranging from body armor to structural composites, as well as commercial energy storage and electronics thermal management.

“We believe we are on the cusp of delivering the promise of carbon nanotube materials,” said Peter Antoinette, Nanocomp president and CEO. “Like our predecessors in performance products who developed Gore-Tex® and Tyvek®, we have a product platform with vast real-world functionality and, together with the system integrators that will ultimately incorporate it into end-use products, we aim to determine just how broad the benefits can extend.”

Antoinette said commercial manufacturing processes to date have mostly produced only short carbon nanotubes — usually tens of microns long — that resemble a powder in final form. These nanotubes can be difficult to incorporate into manufactured goods, Nanocomp says, and products incorporating them have not yet demonstrated the attractive structural and conductive properties of nanotubes.

But the company reports that it has overcome these limitations by producing extremely long (hundreds of microns to millimeters) and highly pure nanotubes. These long nanotubes are a key to producing the ultimate functional materials, nanotube yarns and nonwoven sheets, for in end-use applications.

Nanocomp is also developing prototype equipment to automate production of the nanotube yarns and nonwoven materials leading to commercial scale.

In the near term, Nanocomp expects its materials to be 1) used in conjunction with carbon fibers and aramids to reduce weight and improve performance of body armor; 2) incorporated into land, air and marine vehicle structures to improve fuel economy; 3) used for next-generation wiring systems and antennas; and, 4) due to their ability to take an electrical charge much faster and many more times than batteries, used to create ultra capacitors to store large amounts of energy from intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar energy, as well as to smooth out demand spikes in the power network.

Single LED packages through complex power LED assemblies are evaluated at the lab, with customers encouraged to observe the in-house tests. A large one-meter integrating sphere determines color temperature (CCT) and brightness (TLF). A thermal imaging camera provides data for optimizing thermal management designs, used to extend the lifespan and light output of power LED assemblies. Other equipment includes a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with a Princeton gamma tech X-ray analyzer for failure analysis, and luminous flux and wavelength tester, a spectroradiometer system, and a goniometer. OPTEK provides comparison data for redesigns or LEDs designed to replace conventional lighting sources.

May 8, 2007 – Belgian carbon nanotube producer Nanocyl has signed an agreement with specialty raw-materials distribution and sales company Velox for the distribution of Nanocyl’s carbon nanotubes-based products in Europe. The partnership covers Nanocyl’s industrial grade multi-wall carbon nanotubes powder and thermoplastic concentrates.

Nanocyl hopes the agreement produces a significant increase of the presence and penetration of its nanotubes on the European market within the segments of plastics, rubber, paints and coatings.

Nanocyl products are available in the form of powders, pellets, liquid dispersions and films. The company’s brand-name pre-dispersed carbon nanotube-based solutions are PlastiCyl, EpoCyl, AquaCyl and ThermoCyl.

May 8, 2007 — SEMI, the global semiconductor industry association, has been keeping a spreadsheet of who’s doing what in nanotechnology that will impact the electronics and energy industries specifically. And now, the association is making this internal tool available to members.

“We don’t pretend this is the complete list of all companies worldwide involved in nanoelectronics and nanoenergy, but in our efforts to meet the needs of our growing nanotech membership, we have put considerable time and effort into tracking who these folks are and what they do,” the organization says.

“We’ve concentrated on tracking new players and new technologies, primarily start-ups and smaller companies, or those from outside the electronics sector, that are using nanoscale materials’ unique properties in new ways, in products that use electrons. This means we haven’t included the big names in mainstream semiconductors and semiconductor equipment and materials, even though they are driving major developments in evolutionary nanoscale processing.”