Category Archives: OLEDs

Entegris, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENTG), a provider of specialty chemicals and advanced materials solutions for the microelectronics industry, announced today that it acquired W. L. Gore & Associates’ water and chemical filtration product line for microelectronics applications in an asset purchase for approximately $20 million. Entegris expects the transaction to be accretive to earnings beginning in 2017.

Todd Edlund, Chief Operating Officer of Entegris, said: “We are excited to add these market-leading filtration solutions to our existing offerings for the microfiltration of high-purity water and bulk chemicals used in semiconductor, OLED and flat panel display manufacturing applications. The acquisition of these products complements our portfolio of advanced liquid filtration solutions. It also reflects our strategy to grow our served markets through the deployment of capital for strategic accretive acquisitions that augment our internal development initiatives.”

With a combined 500 booths, the exhibitions and conferences of LED Taiwan, opening tomorrow in Taipei, will attract over 12,000 visitors. Organized by SEMI and the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), LED Taiwan will be held simultaneously with 2017 Taiwan International Lighting Show (TiLS), serving as a one-stop platform for exchanging and sourcing LED manufacturing and lighting technologies, offering opportunities to meet potential partners, industry elites, and over 150 leading companies from the LED supply chain. The event is held at TWTC Nangang Exhibition Hall April 12-15.

The four-day LED Taiwan showcases a wide range of technology innovations and solutions in the six pavilions ─ High-Brightness LED, LED components, LED Manufacturing Equipment and Material Pavilion, IR/UV, Laser, and Sapphire. Leading players in the areas of LED equipment, materials, components and packaging ─ like Aurora Optoelectronics, Crystalwise Technology, EPILEDS, EPISTAR, Evest Corporation, Lite-On, NAURA Microelectronics Equipment, RAPITECH, Sentec, TAIKKISO and Yellow Stone Corp ─ are showcasing their products in the exhibition to help local and foreign visitors understand the structure, manufacturing processes and technologies of Taiwan’s LED industry.

To enable innovation and energize the show floor, events at TechSTAGE will focus on three topics this year, with presenters from leading companies:

  • LED Manufacturing Equipment & Materials: Atom Semicon, Aurotek, Galaxy Technology Development, Materials Analysis Technology,  Monocrystal, and Sil-More Industrial,
  • LED Advanced Technologies: ALLOS Semiconductors, CORIAL, Epileds Technologies, EPISTAR, MIRDC,TAIKKISO, UTITECH Technology, and Yole Developpement
  • Smart Lighting & Automobile Lighting: Billion Electric, High Power Lighting, MacAdam, National Chung Cheng University, Osram Taiwan, and PlayNitride

In addition, the IR/UV Summit focuses on IR and UV technologies and application products, with the latest research and development findings. The Academia Poster Section includes 46 papers from experts.

More than 12,000 visitors from over 60 countries and leading manufacturers will convene at LED Taiwan 2017.  Business events, forums, networking sessions and meetings enable Taiwan exhibitors and attendees to expand connections and secure business opportunities by gathering leading members of global industrial and academic circles.

To gain insights into the latest technologies and opportunities, attend LED Taiwan (April 12-15). Please visit:  www.ledtaiwan.org/en/ (English) or www.ledtaiwan.org/zh/ (Chinese).

Jülich researchers have succeeded in controlling the growth of organic molecules using a special trick. Molecules that repel each other play a key role in this process: due to their opposing forces, they always keep a certain distance from their neighbours. Therefore, they mix easily with a second, mutually attracting type of molecule that enters the spaces in-between and acts as a sort of “glue”. Tailored surface structures can thus be put together like pieces in a puzzle – in a seemingly self-solving manner. Applications in the field of organic electronics in particular could stand to benefit from this method.

Organic electronics is considered a pioneering technology of great promise. Organic light-emitting diodes, known as OLEDs, are today used all over the world. Further applications such as solar cells, sensors, and transistors are gradually finding their way into everyday use. However, as many fundamental correlations and processes have yet to be fully understood, these systems are still the subject of intensive ongoing research. In this context, the search for better mechanisms for the controlled and targeted production of active layer systems is one of the most important topics. Mixing molecules with opposing intermolecular interactions represents a possible new way of producing such structures in a targeted fashion.

Eutectic regions

In the system under study, the scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich were able to observe three different monocrystalline mixed structures at different mixing ratios. Curiously, it is particularly interesting to study the system beyond the correct mixing ratio for these mixed crystalline phases. The scientists headed by Prof. Christian Kumpf from the Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-3) found that in this case two phases coexist in equilibrium. In the phase diagram, this corresponds to eutectic regions, in which the equilibrium between the existing phases can be shifted in a large coverage regime by changing the mixing ratio, and thus the properties of the molecular layer can be tuned as desired.

In phase diagrams of conventional three-dimensional systems, usually no eutectic regions occur, but only eutectic points. This is, for example, the case for a number of metallic alloys, with soldering tin being a notable example. The large eutectic regions that occur in the heteromolecular layers investigated here are ultimately the result of the predefined size of the surface on which the molecules are adsorbed. The authors of the study were not only able to observe this behaviour experimentally, but also to explain it using fundamental thermodynamic considerations, and thus demonstrate that the existence of eutectic regions is a generic property of such two-dimensional mixed structures formed by molecules with opposing intermolecular interactions.

Over 60,000 attendees are expected at SEMICON China opening tomorrow at Shanghai New International Expo Centre (SNIEC). SEMICON China (March 14-16) offers the latest in technology and innovation for the electronics manufacturing industry. FPD China is co-located with SEMICON China, providing opportunities in this related market. Featuring nearly 900 exhibitors occupying nearly 3,000 booths, SEMICON China is the largest gathering of its kind in the world.

Worldwide fab equipment spending is expected to reach an industry all-time record, to more than US$46 billion in 2017, according to the latest version of the SEMI (www.semi.org) World Fab Forecast. In 2018, the record may break again, with spending close to the $50 billion mark.  SEMI forecasts that China will be third ($6.7 billion) for regional fab equipment spending in 2017, but its spending in 2018 may reach $10 billion – which would be a 55 percent increase year-over-year, placing China in second place for worldwide fab equipment spending in 2018.

On March 14, keynotes at SEMICON China include SMIC chairman of the Board Zhou Zixue. ASE Group director and COO Tien Wu, ASML president and CEO Peter Wennink, Intel VP Jun He, Lam Research CEO Martin Anstice, TEL CTO Sekiguchi Akihisa and imec president and CEO Luc Van den hove.

SEMICON China programs expand attendees’ knowledge, networking reach, and business opportunities. Programs this year feature a broad and deep range:

  • CSTIC: On March 12-13, the China Semiconductor Technology International Conference (CSTIC) precedes SEMICON China. CSTIC is organized by SEMI and imec and covers all aspects of semiconductor technology and manufacturing.
  • Technical and Business Programs: 
    • March 14: China Memory Strategic Forum.
    • March 15: Building China’s IC Ecosystem, Green High-Tech Facility Forum, and Smart Manufacturing Forum, in addition Power & Compound Semiconductor Forum (Day 1).
    • March 16: Smart Automotive Forum, MEMS & Sensors Conference Asia, plus Power & Compound Semiconductor Forum (Day 2)
  • Tech Investment Forum: On March 15, an international platform to explore investment, M&A, and China opportunities.
  • Theme Pavilions:  SEMICON China also features six exhibition floor theme pavilions: IC Manufacturing, LED and Sapphire, ICMTIA/Materials, MEMS, Touch Screen and OLED.
  • Networking Events: SEMI Industry Gala, China IC Night, and SEMI Golf Tournament

For additional information on sessions and events at SEMICON China 2017, please visit www.semiconchina.org/en/4.

Kateeva today announced that it is expanding its Silicon Valley headquarters. The company has leased an adjacent building at its Newark campus, adding 75,000 sq. ft. that is zoned for manufacturing and business operations. This brings Kateeva’s total campus footprint to 150,000 sq.ft. Kateeva moved to its current location in early 2015 to facilitate production ramp-up of its YIELDjet inkjet printing manufacturing equipment for the global flat panel display industry. Since then, headcount has nearly tripled to 330 people, and orders for YIELDjet systems have soared. With the new building, Kateeva’s doubles its manufacturing footprint, providing ample space to accelerate production.

Leading flat panel display manufacturers use Kateeva’s precision deposition equipment for cost-effective mass production of Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays. OLED technology is behind some of today’s most popular smartphones and tablets. Already, OLED screens curve around edges to enable unique form factors. Soon, when tablets, notebooks and smartphones can bend, roll and even fold without breaking, it will be thanks to OLED technology. OLED technology enables the production of displays on plastic (entirely free of glass), making them flexible and paper-thin.

Kateeva’s YIELDjet FLEX system for OLED TFE mass production

Kateeva’s YIELDjet FLEX system for OLED TFE mass production

Kateeva’s first product, the YIELDjet FLEX system, enabled a rapid transition from glass encapsulation to Thin Film Encapsulation (TFE) in new OLED production lines. The “freedom from glass” technology leap was the gateway to flexible displays. Each Kateeva inkjet printer is highly customized and built to extremely exacting specifications. Measuring approximately 2,000 sq.ft., the tool contains thousands of precision parts, and is differentiated by myriad innovations that are protected by 200 issued and pending patents. With the system, customers can achieve dramatically higher TFE yields and lower mass-production costs than what was previously possible with other deposition techniques. On an OLED mass-production line, Kateeva printers work in concert with tools from other leading equipment companies to process the panels.

Kateeva’s tools are designed and engineered in Newark, so the expansion will support the company’s growing R&D team. In addition, since Kateeva manufactures a majority of its products and components in Newark, the expansion will also support a large increase in its U.S. manufacturing capacity.

Kateeva’s President and Co-founder, Dr. Conor Madigan noted: “Kateeva’s manufacturing strategy utilizes a balance of production in Asia, as well as the U.S. This dual-region strategy generates optimum efficiencies and will continue as we grow. For now, our most complex and customized products will be built at our Newark facility where we can leverage our adjacent manufacturing and engineering teams to maintain highest quality while also satisfying our customers’ aggressive delivery timelines. This is far more difficult to achieve when our manufacturing and engineering teams are separated and remote. Building these products in the U.S. also helps us safeguard the intellectual property that differentiates our technology solution.”

Madigan listed other advantages of Kateeva’s newly expanded Newark HQ: “By obtaining an adjacent building we can maintain the operating efficiencies of a single site,” he said. “Also, in Newark we’re next door to several international airports, which is imperative for a manufacturer of capital equipment bound for production fabs in Asia. Finally, our location situates us ideally to draw talent from all regions in and around Silicon Valley.”

Engineering researchers at Michigan State University have developed the first stretchable integrated circuit that is made entirely using an inkjet printer, raising the possibility of inexpensive mass production of smart fabric.

Imagine: an ultrathin smart tablet that can be stretched easily from mini-size to extra large. Or a rubber band-like wrist monitor that measures one’s heartbeat. Or wallpaper that turns an entire wall into an electronic display.

Chuan Wang, a Michigan State University engineering researcher, displays the stretchable electronic material he and colleagues developed in his lab. Credit: Michigan State University

Chuan Wang, a Michigan State University engineering researcher, displays the stretchable electronic material he and colleagues developed in his lab. Credit: Michigan State University

These are some of the potential applications of the stretchable smart fabric developed in the lab of Chuan Wang, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. And because the material can be produced on a standard printer, it has a major potential cost advantage over current technologies that are expensive to manufacture.

“We can conceivably make the costs of producing flexible electronics comparable to the costs of printing newspapers,” said Wang. “Our work could soon lead to printed displays that can easily be stretched to larger sizes, as well as wearable electronics and soft robotics applications.”

The smart fabric is made up of several materials fabricated from nanomaterials and organic compounds. These compounds are dissolved in solution to produce different electronic inks, which are run through the printer to make the devices.

From the ink, Wang and his team have successfully created the elastic material, the circuit and the organic light-emitting diode, or OLED. The next step is combining the circuit and OLED into a single pixel, which Wang estimates will take one to two years. There are generally millions of pixels just underneath the screen of a smart tablet or a large display.

Once the researchers successfully combine the circuit and OLED into a working pixel, the smart fabric can be potentially commercialized.

Conceivably, Wang said, the stretchable electronic fabric can be folded and put in one’s pocket without breaking. This is an advantage over current “flexible” electronics material technology that cannot be folded.

“We have created a new technology that is not yet available,” Wang said. “And we have taken it one big step beyond the flexible screens that are about to become commercially available.”

The flat-panel display (FPD) industry is in the midst of a historic wave of building new factories to manufacture active matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) displays. This will drive $9.5 billion worth of AMOLED-specific production equipment purchases in 2017, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

amoled equipment

According to the IHS Markit Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker, the equipment used for producing TFT backplanes will account for 47 percent of the total market in 2017, worth $4.4 billion in revenues. Organic light-emitting layer deposition and encapsulation tools will generate record revenues of $2.2 billion and $1.2 billion, respectively, this year.

“A variety of approaches can be used to deposit OLED materials. However, fine metal mask (FMM) evaporation tools, used for high-resolution mobile display production, account for the majority of the deposition equipment revenue in the current wave of new factory construction,” said Charles Annis, senior director at IHS Markit.

Evaporation machines are technically highly complicated, consisting of multiple cluster vacuum tools linked by robots. Each tool consists of evaporation sources and mask-docking capabilities, and requires substantial pumping systems. The tools are typically very large and can exceed 100 meters in length at a high-volume production factory. This subsequently requires significant capital outlays.

“The market for high-performance AMOLED deposition equipment is dominated by Canon Tokki, which accounted for over half of the market in 2016,” Annis said. “At least five other evaporation makers are rushing to take advantage of the explosive market opportunity. However, with strong panel maker interest in Canon Tokki’s unrivaled mass production experience, we expect the company to make further market share gains in 2017.”

AMOLEDs also require high-performance encapsulation to prevent sensitive organic light-emitting materials from environmental degradation. Encapsulation barriers are typically fabricated from metal, glass or stacks of thin films. However, a substantial share of the new AMOLED factories now under construction will target production of plastic, flexible displays, which rely on cost intensive, multi-layer thin film encapsulation (TFE).

“Flexible AMOLED makers have done an incredible job simplifying their TFE structures over the past several years. Even so, the productivity of depositing high-quality inorganic films and printing organic layers all in a closed environment remains a complicated challenge,” Annis said. “The requirement of a large number of deposition chambers and auxiliary tools make TFE lines one of the largest segments of the AMOLED equipment market.”

With an estimated $23 billion of expenditures on AMOLED production equipment between 2016 and 2018, equipment makers, particularly those offering deposition and encapsulation solutions, will be enjoying a historic sales opportunity.

The IHS Markit Display Supply Demand & Equipment Tracker covers metrics used to evaluate supply, demand and capital spending for all major FPD technologies and applications.

Reproducibility is a necessity for science but has often eluded researchers studying the lifetime of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Recent research from Japan sheds new light on why: impurities present in the vacuum chamber during fabrication but in amounts so small that they are easily overlooked.

Organic light-emitting diodes use a stack of organic layers to convert electricity into light, and these organic layers are most commonly fabricated by heating source materials in vacuum to evaporate and deposit them onto a lower temperature substrate.

While issues affecting the efficiency of OLEDs are already well understood, a complete picture of exactly how and why OLEDs degrade and lose brightness over time is still missing.

Complicating matters is that devices fabricated with seemingly the same procedures and conditions but by different research groups often degrade at vastly different rates even when the initial performance is the same.

Unable to attribute these reproducibility issues to known sources such as the amount of residual water in the chamber and the purity of the starting materials, a report published online in Scientific Reports on December 13, 2016, adds a new piece to the puzzle by focusing on the analysis of the environment in the vacuum chamber.

“Although we often idealize vacuums as being clean environments, we detected many impurities floating in the vacuum even when the deposition chamber is at room temperature,” says lead author Hiroshi Fujimoto, chief researcher at Fukuoka i3-Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research (i3-OPERA) and visiting associate professor of Kyushu University.

Because of these impurities in the deposition chamber, the researchers found that the time until an OLED under operation dims by a given amount because of degradation, known as the lifetime, sharply increased for OLEDs that spent a shorter time in the deposition chamber during fabrication.

This trend remained even after considering changes in residual water and source material purity, indicating the importance of controlling and minimizing the device fabrication time, a rarely discussed parameter.

Research partners at Sumika Chemical Analysis Service Ltd. (SCAS) confirmed an increase of accumulated impurities with time by analyzing the materials that deposited on extremely clean silicon wafers that were stored in the deposition chamber when OLED materials were not being evaporated.

Using a technique called liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, the researchers found that many of the impurities could be traced to previously deposited materials and plasticizers from the vacuum chamber components.

“Really small amounts of these impurities get incorporated into the fabricated devices and are causing large changes in the lifetime,” says Professor Chihaya Adachi, director of Kyushu University’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research (OPERA), which also took part in the study.

In fact, the new results suggest that the impurities amount to less than even a single molecular layer.

To improve lifetime reproducibility, a practice often adopted in industry is the use of dedicated deposition chambers for specific materials, but this can be difficult in academic labs, where often only a limited number of deposition systems are available for testing a wide variety of new materials.

In these cases, deposition chamber design and cleaning in addition to control of the deposition time are especially important.

“This is an excellent reminder of just how careful we need to be to do good, reproducible science,” comments Professor Adachi.

From the ground-breaking research breakthroughs to the shifting supplier landscape, these are the stories the Solid State Technology audience read the most during 2016.

#1: Moore’s Law did indeed stop at 28nm

In this follow up, Zvi Or-Bach, president and CEO, MonolithIC 3D, Inc., writes: “As we have predicted two and a half years back, the industry is bifurcating, and just a few products pursue scaling to 7nm while the majority of designs stay on 28nm or older nodes.”

#2: Yield and cost challenges at 16nm and beyond

In February, KLA-Tencor’s Robert Cappel and Cathy Perry-Sullivan wrote of a new 5D solution which utilizes multiple types of metrology systems to identify and control fab-wide sources of pattern variation, with an intelligent analysis system to handle the data being generated.

#3: EUVL: Taking it down to 5nm

The semiconductor industry is nothing if not persistent — it’s been working away at developing extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for many years, SEMI’s Deb Vogler reported in May.

#4: IBM scientists achieve storage memory breakthrough

For the first time, scientists at IBM Research have demonstrated reliably storing 3 bits of data per cell using a relatively new memory technology known as phase-change memory (PCM).

#5: ams breaks ground on NY wafer fab

In April, ams AG took a step forward in its long-term strategy of increasing manufacturing capacity for its high-performance sensors and sensor solution integrated circuits (ICs), holding a groundbreaking event at the site of its new wafer fabrication plant in Utica, New York.

#6: Foundries takeover 200mm fab capacity by 2018

In January, Christian Dieseldorff of SEMI wrote that a recent Global Fab Outlook report reveals a change in the landscape for 200mm fab capacity.

#7: Equipment spending up: 19 new fabs and lines to start construction

While semiconductor fab equipment spending was off to a slow start in 2016, it was expected to gain momentum through the end of the year. For 2016, 1.5 percent growth over 2015 is expected while 13 percent growth is forecast in 2017.

#8: How finFETs ended the service contract of silicide process

Arabinda Daa, TechInsights, provided a look into how the silicide process has evolved over the years, trying to cope with the progress in scaling technology and why it could no longer be of service to finFET devices.

#9: Five suppliers to hold 41% of global semiconductor marketshare in 2016

In December, IC Insights reported that two years of busy M&A activity had boosted marketshare among top suppliers.

#10: Countdown to Node 5: Moving beyond FinFETs

A forum of industry experts at SEMICON West 2016 discussed the challenges associated with getting from node 10 — which seems set for HVM — to nodes 7 and 5.

BONUS: Most Watched Webcast of 2016: View On Demand Now

IoT Device Trends and Challenges

Presenters: Rajeev Rajan, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, and Uday Tennety, GE Digital

The age of the Internet of Things is upon us, with the expectation that tens of billions of devices will be connected to the internet by 2020. This explosion of devices will make our lives simpler, yet create an array of new challenges and opportunities in the semiconductor industry. At the sensor level, very small, inexpensive, low power devices will be gathering data and communicating with one another and the “cloud.” On the other hand, this will mean huge amounts of small, often unstructured data (such as video) will rippling through the network and the infrastructure. The need to convert that data into “information” will require a massive investment in data centers and leading edge semiconductor technology.

Also, manufacturers seek increased visibility and better insights into the performance of their equipment and assets to minimize failures and reduce downtime. They wish to both cut their costs as well as grow their profits for the organization while ensuring safety for employees, the general public and the environment.

The Industrial Internet is transforming the way people and machines interact by using data and analytics in new ways to drive efficiency gains, accelerate productivity and achieve overall operational excellence. The advent of networked machines with embedded sensors and advanced analytics tools has greatly influenced the industrial ecosystem.

Today, the Industrial Internet allows you to combine data from the equipment sensors, operational data , and analytics to deliver valuable new insights that were never before possible. The results of these powerful analytic insights can be revolutionary for your business by transforming your technological infrastructure, helping reduce unplanned downtime, improve performance and maximize profitability and efficiency.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $30.5 billion for the month of October 2016, an increase of 3.4 percent from last month’s total of $29.5 billion and 5.1 percent higher than the October 2015 total of $29.0 billion. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average. Additionally, a new WSTS industry forecast projects roughly flat annual semiconductor sales in 2016, followed by slight market growth in 2017 and 2018.

“The global semiconductor market has rebounded in recent months, with October marking the largest year-to-year sales increase since March 2015,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Sales increased compared to last month across all regional markets and nearly every major semiconductor product category. Meanwhile, the latest industry forecast has been revised upward and now calls for flat annual sales in 2016 and small increases in 2017 and 2018. All told, the industry is well-positioned for a strong close to 2016.

Regionally, year-to-year sales increased in China (14.0 percent), Japan (7.2 percent), Asia Pacific/All Other (1.9 percent), and the Americas (0.1 percent), but decreased in Europe (-3.0 percent). Compared with last month, sales were up across all regional markets: the Americas (6.5 percent), China (3.2 percent), Japan (3.0 percent), Europe (2.2 percent), and Asia Pacific/All Other (2.0 percent).

Additionally, SIA today endorsed the WSTS Autumn 2016 global semiconductor sales forecast, which projects the industry’s worldwide sales will be $335.0 billion in 2016, a 0.1 percent decrease from the 2015 sales total. WSTS projects a year-to-year increase in Japan (3.2 percent) and Asia Pacific (2.5 percent), with decreases expected in Europe (-4.9 percent) and the Americas (-6.5 percent). Among major semiconductor product categories, WSTS forecasts growth in 2016 for sensors (22.6 percent), discretes (4.2 percent), analog (4.8 percent) and MOS micro ICs (2.3 percent), which include microprocessors and microcontrollers.

Beyond 2016, the semiconductor market is expected to grow at a modest pace across all regions. WSTS forecasts 3.3 percent growth globally for 2017 ($346.1 billion in total sales) and 2.3 percent growth for 2018 ($354.0 billion). WSTS tabulates its semi-annual industry forecast by convening an extensive group of global semiconductor companies that provide accurate and timely indicators of semiconductor trends.