Category Archives: Materials and Equipment

February 3, 2011 — Using a concept called DNA origami, Arizona State University researchers are trying to produce the next generations of electronics products. They’re pursuing advances in nanotechnology to make the devices smaller and "smarter." ASU’s Hongbin Yu and Hao Yan are teaming up to develop the basis of a new manufacturing method that would keep costs down.

Yu is an assistant professor in the School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Yan is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Yu and Yan are exploring "how to use top-down lithography combined with modified bottom-up self-assembling nanostructures to guide the placement of nanostructures on silicon wafer surface."

Top-down lithography is a process by which electrical circuit elements on a silicon wafer are constructed by cutting and etching, and is currently used to make semiconductor chips. Bottom-up self-assembly is a process in which molecules and/or nanoscale materials are self-assembled into desired structures using chemical bonds or various similar interactions.

Yu and Yan have discovered a way to use DNA to effectively combine top-down lithography with chemical bonding involving bottom-up self-assembly.

This involves a "DNA origami" design technique similar to the traditional Japanese art or technique of folding paper into decorative or representational forms. It allows DNA strands to be folded into something resembling a pegboard on which different molecules can be attached.

Enabling various molecules to attach to the DNA produces smaller nanostructure configurations, opening the way to construction of smaller electronic device components.

In the past it has proven difficult to combine top-down lithography with bottom-up self-assembly because the DNA nanostructures required to make it happen would bind indiscriminately to the silicon substrate.

"There have been few successful demonstrations of how to put these bottom-up assembled nanostructures on the surface of the substrate where you want them to be," Yu explains, "because you cannot just run these devices, you need to know where to connect what."

To solve the problem, Yu’s research team prefabricated a gold "nano-island" at specific locations on a silicon substrate, then applied the DNA origami that has specific chemical ends that will bond only to the gold island and not the silicon wafer. This allows the DNA nanotubes to attach only to the islands.

The work demonstrates that it’s possible that a DNA double helix can be used to build one-dimensional and two-dimensional structures to enable the manufacture of smaller electronic memory devices at a cost that would be far less than current manufacturing methods.

Details of the work were reported in Nano Letters, published by the American Chemical Society. View the abstract here. The news has also been featured on Chemistry World, science and technology news website of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a European organization for advancing chemical sciences.

More progress is needed, Yu says.

"With this demonstration we were able to build patterns on surface that consist of only one-dimensional DNA nanotubes, but our research shows it is possible to produce two-dimensional and even more sophisticated structures that are essential building blocks for nanoscale electronic circuits," Yu says. "So this is just the beginning of many fascinating possibilities to be realized."

Courtesy of Joe Kullman and Amy Lukau, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University, www.asu.edu

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February 2, 2011 — Arthur pulled a sword from a stone, proving to a kingdom that right beats might. Researchers at Rice University are making the same point in the nanoscale realm. In this case, the sword is a multiwalled carbon nanotube and the stone is a bead of epoxy.

Knowing precisely how much strength is needed to pull the carbon nanotube (CNT) from the bead is essential to materials scientists advancing the art of making stronger, lighter composites for everything from sporting goods to spacecraft.

A team led by Jun Lou, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice, and first author Yogeeswaran Ganesan, who recently earned his doctorate in Lou’s lab, published a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces describing work to measure the interface toughness of carbon nanotube-reinforced epoxy composites.

Lou, Ganesan and their colleagues have a second new paper in ACS Nano on using the same technique to measure the effect of nitrogen doping on the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes.

"Carbon nanotubes are so small that in order to use them on the human scale, you have to do something to make them bigger," Lou said.

One such way is to mix them into composites, an imperfect science that involves much trial and error since the possible strength of the interface between every type of nanotube and every type of base material is not well understood. Lou and his team intend to eliminate the guesswork with a way to measure important properties of a composite before the first batch is mixed.

Single-fiber pullout tests have been used since the early days of composite manufacturing to measure not only the strength of a bond but when, why and how it will break. That’s hard on the nanoscale. Others have used atomic force microscopes (AFM) as part of the pulling mechanism, but the method has its limitations, Lou said.

The Rice team has built a better device: a spring-loaded, push-pull micromechanical assembly on a silicon chip that allows researchers to string a multiwalled nanotube to a blanket of epoxy on one side while the other is held firmly in place with a platinum anchor. Pressing down on the spring applies equal force to both sides, allowing researchers to see just how much is needed to pull the tube from the epoxy.

The team reported in the first paper that forces binding multiwalled nanotubes to a general-purpose epoxy called Epon 828 were actually weaker than they expected. "We have started to understand that adding nanotubes to bulk material doesn’t always give you better properties," Lou said. "You have to be very careful about how you add them in and what kind interface they form."

Because batches of nanotubes tend to stick together, some manufacturers functionalize their surfaces to disperse them before mixing into a material. "But that can disrupt the outer wall, and that’s a bad thing," Lou said. "If you do something to make nanotubes easily dispersible but decrease their intrinsic strength, you’re shooting yourself in the foot."

On the other hand, he said, "If manufacturers need a tough material that absorbs energy without breaking, a weaker interface may not be a bad thing. During this pullout process, there’s a lot of friction at the interface of the nanotube and the matrix, and friction is effectively a way to dissipate energy."

Sometimes the end product is better if the nanotube stretches before it breaks. In the ACS Nano paper, the team compared the tensile strength of pristine versus nitrogen-doped multiwalled carbon nanotubes. They found the pristine tubes tend to snap in a brittle fashion, while nitrogen-doped tubes exhibit signs of plasticity — "necking" before they break.

That may be desirable for certain materials, Lou said. "You don’t build a bridge out of ceramic. You build it out of steel because of its plasticity. If we can develop a nanotube composite with room-temperature plasticity, it’s going to be fantastic," he said. "It will find many, many uses."

Lou said Rice’s versatile technique for carrying out nanomechanical experiments is poised to find many long-sought answers. "Developing an ability to engineering nanocomposites with mechanical properties tailored for specific applications is the proverbial holy grail of all structural nanocomposite research," Ganesan said. "The technique essentially takes us one step closer to achieving this goal."

Co-authors of the Applied Materials and Interfaces paper include graduate students Cheng Peng, Phillip Loya and Padraig Moloney; Yang Lu, a recent Ph.D graduate from Lou’s lab; Enrique Barrera, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science; Boris Yakobson, a professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry, and James Tour, T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science, all of Rice; and Roberto Ballarini, James L. Record Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Authors of the ACS Nano paper included Lou, Ganesan, Peng, Lu, former postdoc researcher Lijie Ci, visiting professor Anchal Srivastava, and Pulickel Ajayan, a Rice professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry.

The National Science Foundation, the Welch Foundation and the Air Force Research Laboratory supported the research behind both papers. Learn more at www.rice.edu

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February 2, 2011 — Arthur pulled a sword from a stone, proving to a kingdom that right beats might. Researchers at Rice University are making the same point in the nanoscale realm. In this case, the sword is a multiwalled carbon nanotube and the stone is a bead of epoxy.

Knowing precisely how much strength is needed to pull the carbon nanotube (CNT) from the bead is essential to materials scientists advancing the art of making stronger, lighter composites for everything from sporting goods to spacecraft.

A team led by Jun Lou, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Rice, and first author Yogeeswaran Ganesan, who recently earned his doctorate in Lou’s lab, published a paper in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces describing work to measure the interface toughness of carbon nanotube-reinforced epoxy composites.

Lou, Ganesan and their colleagues have a second new paper in ACS Nano on using the same technique to measure the effect of nitrogen doping on the mechanical properties of carbon nanotubes.

"Carbon nanotubes are so small that in order to use them on the human scale, you have to do something to make them bigger," Lou said.

One such way is to mix them into composites, an imperfect science that involves much trial and error since the possible strength of the interface between every type of nanotube and every type of base material is not well understood. Lou and his team intend to eliminate the guesswork with a way to measure important properties of a composite before the first batch is mixed.

Single-fiber pullout tests have been used since the early days of composite manufacturing to measure not only the strength of a bond but when, why and how it will break. That’s hard on the nanoscale. Others have used atomic force microscopes (AFM) as part of the pulling mechanism, but the method has its limitations, Lou said.

The Rice team has built a better device: a spring-loaded, push-pull micromechanical assembly on a silicon chip that allows researchers to string a multiwalled nanotube to a blanket of epoxy on one side while the other is held firmly in place with a platinum anchor. Pressing down on the spring applies equal force to both sides, allowing researchers to see just how much is needed to pull the tube from the epoxy.

The team reported in the first paper that forces binding multiwalled nanotubes to a general-purpose epoxy called Epon 828 were actually weaker than they expected. "We have started to understand that adding nanotubes to bulk material doesn’t always give you better properties," Lou said. "You have to be very careful about how you add them in and what kind interface they form."

Because batches of nanotubes tend to stick together, some manufacturers functionalize their surfaces to disperse them before mixing into a material. "But that can disrupt the outer wall, and that’s a bad thing," Lou said. "If you do something to make nanotubes easily dispersible but decrease their intrinsic strength, you’re shooting yourself in the foot."

On the other hand, he said, "If manufacturers need a tough material that absorbs energy without breaking, a weaker interface may not be a bad thing. During this pullout process, there’s a lot of friction at the interface of the nanotube and the matrix, and friction is effectively a way to dissipate energy."

Sometimes the end product is better if the nanotube stretches before it breaks. In the ACS Nano paper, the team compared the tensile strength of pristine versus nitrogen-doped multiwalled carbon nanotubes. They found the pristine tubes tend to snap in a brittle fashion, while nitrogen-doped tubes exhibit signs of plasticity — "necking" before they break.

That may be desirable for certain materials, Lou said. "You don’t build a bridge out of ceramic. You build it out of steel because of its plasticity. If we can develop a nanotube composite with room-temperature plasticity, it’s going to be fantastic," he said. "It will find many, many uses."

Lou said Rice’s versatile technique for carrying out nanomechanical experiments is poised to find many long-sought answers. "Developing an ability to engineering nanocomposites with mechanical properties tailored for specific applications is the proverbial holy grail of all structural nanocomposite research," Ganesan said. "The technique essentially takes us one step closer to achieving this goal."

Co-authors of the Applied Materials and Interfaces paper include graduate students Cheng Peng, Phillip Loya and Padraig Moloney; Yang Lu, a recent Ph.D graduate from Lou’s lab; Enrique Barrera, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science; Boris Yakobson, a professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry, and James Tour, T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science, all of Rice; and Roberto Ballarini, James L. Record Professor and Head of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

Authors of the ACS Nano paper included Lou, Ganesan, Peng, Lu, former postdoc researcher Lijie Ci, visiting professor Anchal Srivastava, and Pulickel Ajayan, a Rice professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry.

The National Science Foundation, the Welch Foundation and the Air Force Research Laboratory supported the research behind both papers. Learn more at www.rice.edu

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By Debra Vogler, senior technical editor

February 2, 2011 — Simon Deleonibus, IEEE Fellow, CEA Research Director, and Chief Scientist at Leti sat down at IEEE’s International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2010 12/6-12/8/10, San Francisco, CA) with Debra Vogler, senior technical editor, to give his view of industry research trends and looks ahead to next year’s event.

Listen to Deleonibus’ interview: Download (iPod/iPhone users)  or Play Now

Deleonibus observes that all the major semiconductor industry players are embracing 3D integration in different "flavors." This will allow the industry to relax the constraint of IC scaling — necessary in part because lithography is not yet ready for aggressive scaling.

New applications are also coming out using heterogeneous integration, especially the mixing of memory and logic, and possibly passive devices and others that are not CMOS-based (e.g., sensors, actuators). Leti is very active in thin film technology and fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI), and Deleonibus observes that these technologies are also being evaluated by an increasing number of companies. He believes new applications will emerge because of the flexibility and advantages of wafer bonding. 

Looking ahead, Deleonibus says that through-silicon via (TSV) technology has to mature. While there are many advantages to using TSVs, issues such as isolation and strain-induced effects from TSVs will require innovation to resolve. He mentions that stress-free innovations, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or other stress-free solutions using atomic layer deposition (ALD) or different flavors of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes, may be of interest.

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February 1, 2011 — Creative Materials Inc. announced a new series of pressure-sensitive tapes that are anisotropically conductive, available either as pressure-sensitive double-sided tape or as adhesive-transfer film in thicknesses from 0.002 to 0.010". These products suit use in the fabrication of solar cells and modules; to replace solder and/or conductive adhesive connections; or as bus bar materials for a wide variety of printed electronics applications, including touch panels, liquid crystal displays, electro-chromatic displays, and electro-luminescent displays.

A key advantage of the use of a pressure-sensitive tape is the ease of application, according to the company. These products do not require a long heat history/cure-cycle to build bond strength or conductivity. Pressure is key to building both the bond strength and electrical properties.

Based upon acrylic adhesives, these products offer long-term durability in a wide variety of environmental

Attend a free Webcast on-demand about pressure-sensitive tapes, including bus bar tapes, for solar manufacturing. Presented by Fabrico, Adhesives Research, and Photovoltaics World.

conditions, including extremes of temperature and humidity and direct exposure to sunlight.

Pressure-sensitive tape product number 300-01 is a double-sided tape that is 0.009" thick. This product is conductive on one side. An added feature of this tape is a metal foil support film, which acts to transmit electricity down the length of the tape. The acrylic pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) system offers excellent initial tack and bond strength and is heat resistant to over 100C. 300-01 is one in a series that will be introduced over the course of 2011 and will encompass a breadth of applications where excellent conductivity, ease of application, and high bond strength are required.

Creative Materials, Inc., is a leading manufacturer of electrically conductive inks, coatings, and adhesives. Learn more at www.creativematerials.com

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By Debra Vogler, senior technical editor

January 31, 2011 — Arthur Chait, president and CEO of EoPlex, describes the company’s high-volume print forming technology — a lead carrier product called xLC– and how it enables a cost-effective replacement for conventional quad flat pack no-lead (QFN) leadframes.

Listen to Chait’s interview: Download (for iPhone/iPod users) or Play Now

In a podcast interview with Debra Vogler, senior technical editor, Chait explains how a 3D structure is built up "microbrick" by microbrick using 3D pixels, called voxels (volumetric pixel), that are addressable (i.e., able to be changed) (Fig. 1). Key to the technology is being able to control the feature shape and metastructure interface (Fig. 2), which Chait discusses in detail in the podcast.

Click to Enlarge

Figure 1. EoPlex model (used as an example) showing different materials (colors) and different metastructures (patterns).

By using high-volume print forming, the resulting lead carrier lowers costs (compared to QFN leadframes) by minimizing the amount of metal needed for the structure and eliminating the need for processes such as plating and etching. The company is currently working with potential customers to evaluate and qualify the xLC product; qualification testing is expected to be completed sometime in the second or third quarter of this year and Chait says the company expects to be in full production by the end of 2011.

Click to Enlarge

Figure 2. Two keys to the success of the xLC are controlling the feature shape and engineering the metastructure interface.

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January 27, 2011 — A fast-cure, low-shrinkage adhesive for optics and optical assembly, DYMAX OP-67-LS opto-mechanical adhesive cures in seconds for bonding of optical components. The product’s low-shrink nature virtually eliminates movement during curing and subsequent thermal cycling.

OP-67-LS offers the ability to "cure on demand" with exposure to longwave UV and visible light, allowing maximum flexibility in positioning parts prior to cure. OP-67-LS features 0.2% linear shrinkage upon cure.

OP-67-LS offers superior moisture resistance, very low outgassing, and adhesion to a variety of substrates including metal, glass, ceramic and polycarbonate, allowing its use in many critical and demanding applications such as fibre-optic "V" groove bonding, positioning laser diodes, fibre pig tailing, transceiver potting, VCSEL positioning and mounting active devices, or passive couplers, prisms and other optical device assemblies.

Also read: Device-level packaging for optical integration by Gilbert Lecarpentier (SUSS) and Livia Racz (AXSUN)

Learn more at http://www.intertronics.co.uk/products/lensbond.htm

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January 26, 2011 – PR Newswire — Steed Technology, thermal processing equipment provider for semiconductor, LED, and solar cell manufacturers, acquired all of the outstanding stock of Applied Technology Specialists, Inc. (ATSI), an advanced engineering firm that specializes in developing advanced pollution control equipment and technology to render safe volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and toxic exhaust gases found in high-tech industries.

As part of the acquisition, both companies will share the Steed name. The manufacturing of all products will remain in Northern California with research and development of new products and technologies remaining in Oklahoma. Sales channels will be expanded both domestically and internationally to accommodate existing and new customers, focusing on regions with new air quality restrictions.

With the acquisition, Steed will incorporate the ATSI EcoGuard line of Point of Use (PoU) gas abatement/scrubber and pollution control equipment. Steed is currently working to combine these technologies to work in unison. Customers of Steed and ATSI will soon be able to purchase diffusion/LPCVD process and abatement equipment as a totally integrated system with onboard environmental control features developed by ATSI.

With new, increasingly strict, environmental regulations such as the Greenhouse law (AB32), many companies in the semiconductor, LED, solar and other industries are closely examining ways to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their current abatement systems. Environmental control will play a major roll with manufacturing companies in the years ahead. To help meet this need Steed will, in addition to offering products that help companies meet such strict requirements, offer Green consulting and solutions services to help companies reduce emissions of gasses such as Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), Oxides of Nitrogen (NOx), and Carbon dioxide (CO2), to levels that comply with local and federal laws, while reducing consumption of utilities such as fuel and water. The merger adds considerable value to this consulting service through the addition of the ATSI solutions team with a combined 50 years of gas abatement and clean-air solutions experience.

Existing abatement solutions aim to scrub then dispose of hazardous byproducts created during the production of LCDs, semiconductors and solar cells. With increasing regulations, and the high cost associated with utilities such as power and water the common "wet scrubbers" and "chemical adsorption" methods utilized by such technologies have become inefficient. Steed’s EcoGuard products are designed to destroy and eliminate hazardous by-products, vs. capturing the by-products for further, costly, hazardous waste disposal. Steeds abatement product line also offers a low-operating-cost solution for process and abatement savings through an innovation known as the "On-Demand" Control Program. Using sensor-driven process signals, operators can control the type of abatement required for the particular gas and only use what is necessary to abate and emit clean air to the environment.

Steed Technology provides thermal processing equipment and environmentally responsible Point of Use (PoU) gas abatement products for the semiconductor, LCD and solar industries. Learn more at www.steedtech.com

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UT Dallas nanotechnologists have invented a groundbreaking new technology for producing weavable, knittable, sewable and knottable yarns containing giant amounts of otherwise unspinnable powders. The reseaerchers see applications for the technology in energy storage, energy conversion and energy harvesting. 
Click to Enlarge
Caption: The researchers at the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute at UT Dallas have reported a new technology to embed large amounts of guest powders in nanofibers.

A tiny amount of host carbon nanotube web holds "guest" powders in the corridors of highly conducting scrolls, without altering their performance. With conventional technology, powders are either held together in a yarn using a polymer binder or incorporated on fiber surfaces. Both approaches can restrict powder concentration, powder accessibility for providing yarn functionality, or the strength needed for yarn processing into textiles and subsequent applications.

In the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Science, co-authors working in the Alan G. MacDiarmid NanoTech Institute of UT Dallas describe the use of “bi-scrolling” to solve these problems.

“In this study, we demonstrated the feasibility of using our bi-scrolled yarns for applications ranging from superconducting cables to electronic textiles, batteries and fuel cells,” said Dr. Ray H. Baughman, Robert A. Welch Professor of Chemistry and director of the UT Dallas NanoTech Institute.

Bi-scrolled yarns get their name from the way they are produced: A uniform layer of guest powder is placed on the surface of a carbon nanotube web. This two-layer stack is then twisted into a yarn.

The carbon nanotube webs used for bi-scrolling are not ordinary— they can be lighter than air and stronger pound-per-pound than steel. Four ounces of these webs would cover an acre of land and are about a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

These strong carbon nanotube webs hold together yarns that are mostly powders and can even be machine-washed. The web’s thinness means that hundreds of scroll layers can be included in a bi-scrolled yarn no thicker than a human hair.

The choice of embedded powder determines yarn function. For instance:

  • UT Dallas researchers used yarns imbedded with metal oxide powder to make high-performance lithium ion batteries that can be sewn into fabrics.
  • Bi-scrolled yarns for self-cleaning fabrics were obtained using photocatalytic powder.
  • A powder of nitrogen-containing carbon nanotubes provided highly catalytic yarns for chemical generation of electricity, avoiding the need for expensive platinum catalyst.
  • Using other types of powders, the team made superconducting yarns for potential use in applications ranging from powerful magnets to underground electrical transmission lines.

“UT Dallas’s bi-scrolling technology is rich in application possibilities that go far beyond those we described in Science,” Baughman said. “For instance, our collaborator, professor Seon Jeong Kim of Hanyang University in Korea has already used bi-scrolled yarn to make improved biofuel cells that might eventually be used to power medical implants.”

“I am especially proud of two of our former NanoExplorer high school students, Carter Haines and Stephanie Stoughton, who are undergraduate co-authors of both our article in Science magazine and our internationally filed patent application on bi-scrolling,” Baughman added.

Other co-authors of this article are postdoctoral fellows Dr. Márcio Lima, who is lead author; Dr. Elizabeth Castillo-Martínez, Dr. Javier Carretero-Gonzáles, Dr. Raquel Ovalle-Robles and Dr. Jiyoung Oh; graduate students Xavier Lepró, Mohammad Haque, Neema Rawat, and Vaishnavi Aare; laboratory associate Chihye Lewis; research professors Dr. Shaoli Fang and Dr. Mikhail Kozlov; and Dr. Anvar Zakhidov, professor of physics and associate director of the NanoTech Institute.

Funding for this research was provided by grants from the Air Force, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert A. Welch Foundation.

January 24, 2011 – Appropriate for ski season, it looks like the clear view of semiconductor equipment demand is heading down a slope, according to data from North America-based makers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, reported by SEMI.

The December, and preliminary full-year 2010 numbers, in a nutshell:

  • Bookings were up slightly (1.4%) from November to $1.53B. Year-on-year growth is now down to 68%, vs. the multiple-triple-digit-rates seen over the past year. Billings, which gained steam during the year as the high levels of tool orders pushed through suppliers’ chains, rose nearly 9% in December to $1.70B, about double what they were a year ago. Good sign: Both orders and sales posted single-digit gains following single-digit declines in November. As for year-on-year comparisons, there was nowhere to go but back down to earth. Bad sign: Orders have been in negative territory M/M four out of the last five months, giving up $300M/16% in the process; that’ll translate to lower sales in coming months, which will reflect in tool suppliers’ profits.
  • The book-to-bill ratio fell in December to 0.90, not far from but noticeably below the parity mark of 1.0. (B:B >1.0 indicates more business coming vs. going out; B:B<1.0 means the opposite.) That means $90 worth of orders were received for every $100 billed during the month. Good sign: The B:B’s not too far from the 1.0 parity mark, so a good month could tip it back over. Bad sign: The B:B has been below 1.0 for three months now, after being in the ~1.2 range for most of the year. We haven’t seen three consecutive sub-1.0 B:B since the spring of 2009, and the trend now is clearly heading down.
  • Calculating preliminary 2010 full-year data, semiconductor equipment billings look to have risen 145% from 2009 to $16.72B, with billings up 203% to $18.40B. Good sign: Triple-digit growth! (And positive signs for 2011 are emerging, like Intel’s big capex splurge.) Bad sign: The Y/Y peak appears to have been in the spring (April-May).

 

 

In Japan the trend’s the same: heading down. December billings for tool suppliers sunk 7% to ¥99.43B (US $), while bookings declined more than 8% to ¥106.83B, according to data from the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ). Like SEMI’s numbers, Japanese bookings have shed their growth in recent months (down 16% for bookings). The B:B is still above parity at 1.07 (meaning $107 came in as orders for every $100 going out as sales), but Japan’s B:B is typically higher than SEMI’s version, having touched 1.5 or more in recent months, and have been steadily decreasing as well.