Category Archives: Semiconductors

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the third quarter 2018, surpassing record second quarter 2018 area shipments to set another all-time high, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

Total silicon wafer area shipments reached 3,255 million square inches during the most recent quarter, a 3.0 percent rise from the 3,164 million square inches shipped during the previous quarter. New quarterly total area shipments clocked in 8.6 percent higher than third quarter 2017 shipments.

“Silicon shipment volumes remained at record levels during the third quarter,” said Neil Weaver, chairman SEMI SMG and Director, Product Development and Applications Engineering of Shin Etsu Handotai America. “Silicon shipments are mirroring this year’s strong semiconductor unit growth in support of a growing and diversified electronics market during our stable economy.”

Silicon Area Shipment Trends – Semiconductor Applications Only
Millions of Square Inches
1Q2017
2Q2017
3Q2017
4Q2017
1Q2018
2Q2018
3Q2018
Total
2,858
2,978
2,997
2,977
3,084
3,164
3,255

Source: SEMI, (www.semi.org), November 2018

Silicon wafers are the fundamental building material for semiconductors, which in turn, are vital components of virtually all electronics goods, including computers, telecommunications products, and consumer electronics. The highly engineered thin round disks are produced in various diameters (from one inch to 12 inches) and serve as the substrate material on which most semiconductor devices, or chips, are fabricated.

All data cited in this release is inclusive of polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers and epitaxial silicon wafers, as well as non-polished silicon wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.

The Silicon Manufacturing Group (SMG)  is a sub-committee of the SEMI Electronic Materials Group (EMG) and is open to SEMI members involved in manufacturing polycrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon or silicon wafers (e.g., as cut, polished, epi, etc.). The purpose of the group is to facilitate collective efforts on issues related to the silicon industry including the development of market information and statistics about the silicon industry and the semiconductor market.

SkyWater Technology Foundry, the industry’s most advanced U.S.- based and U.S.-owned Trusted Foundry, today announced that Tom Legere has been appointed as Senior Vice President of Operations. In this role Legere will focus on evolving and enhancing SkyWater’s operations as they drive world-class foundry efficiency and customer support in support of the company’s long-term growth objectives.

“I’m extremely excited to have Tom join us at SkyWater as we accelerate our technology foundry transformation and work to blend best-in-class operational efficiency with a highly differentiated technology portfolio.” said Thomas Sonderman, President, SkyWater Technology Foundry. “Tom brings a unique set of operations leadership experiences across the semiconductor industry and the industry segments we serve. This deep understanding of our customers will be critical as we look to scale our business in 2019 and beyond.”

Legere brings an ideal combination of leadership and operational talent to the SkyWater executive team with extensive industry experience in aerospace and defense, life sciences, security, MEMS, renewable energy and semiconductors. He has led both mature and start-up organizations with extensive implementation experience in Design for Manufacturability (DFM), lean and six sigma principles, supply chain management and customer engagement. Over the last three decades Legere has held senior operational roles at a diverse range of companies, most notably Aurora Semiconductor, Sonavation, eSolar, SVTC, Cypress Semiconductor and Atmel.

Added Legere, “SkyWater brings a truly differentiated proposition to semiconductor industry, blending innovative advanced technology development with the ability to manufacture at scale. I’m excited to join the team as we look to further scale the business with an operationally efficient, customer-first approach.”

Praxair, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linde plc (NYSE:LIN; FWB:LIN) today announced it has signed a long-term agreement to supply ultra-high purity nitrogen to Samsung’s world-class semiconductor facility in Hwaseong, South Korea. This is the fifth plant Praxair will build at this site to help enable Samsung to meet increased global semiconductor demand.

The plant will supply Samsung’s facility with high purity nitrogen and is expected to start up in late 2019. Additionally, the company will install multiple purifiers and a new pipeline system to support the project.

“Praxair has been a reliable partner to Samsung for over four decades,” said B.S. Sung, president of Praxair Korea. “We are proud to continue to support their growth as global demand for electronics intensifies. This project increases our density in the region and positions us for future expansion.”

Earlier this year, Praxair announced two other long-term agreements with Samsung affiliates in South Korea, one to supply another of Samsung Electronics’ world-scale semiconductor plant in Pyeongtaek and a second to supply Samsung Electro-Mechanics’ facility in Busan.

A team of scientists has created the world’s most powerful electromagnetic pulses in the terahertz range to control in fine detail how a data-storage material switches physical form. This discovery could help find a way to scale down memory devices, eventually revolutionizing how computers handle information.

Compact discs might be falling out of fashion, but they may have inspired the next generation of computer nanotechnology. A glass layer in CDs consists of a phase-change material that can be encoded with information when light pulses cause crystals in small regions of the layer to either grow or melt.

Phase-change materials triggered by electrical impulses — rather than light — would offer new memory technologies with more stable and faster operation than that possible in many current types of memory devices. In addition, downscaling memory sites in phase-change materials could increase memory density. But this remains challenging because of the difficulty of controlling the crystal growth — crystallization — and melting — amorphization — processes.

Addressing this issue in an article in Physical Review Letters, a team of scientists led by Kyoto University observed nanometer-scale growth of individual crystals in a phase-change material composed of germanium, antimony and tellurium — or GST — after applying high-powered terahertz pulses as a trigger.

“One reason crystallization and amorphization of GST under an electric field are difficult to control is the heat diffusion effects in the micrometer scale associated with electrical inputs, which also contribute to the crystallization,” explains group leader Hideki Hirori. “Fortunately, terahertz technologies have matured to the point where we can use short pulses to generate strong electric fields while suppressing heating effects.”

Hirori and his coworkers developed a terahertz pulse generator that delivered ultra-short and highly intense terahertz pulses across a pair of gold antennas. These pulses created an electric field in the GST sample comparable to that of an electrically switched device. Importantly, this approach greatly reduced the heat diffusion because of the extremely short duration of terahertz pulses — around 1 picosecond, or 10?12 s — enabling fine control over the rate and direction of GST crystallization. A region of crystallization grew in a straight line between the gold antennas in the direction of the field, at a few nanometers per pulse.

When the team tracked stepwise changes in crystallization while increasing the number of terahertz pulses, they were surprised to find that after a certain point, crystal conductivity rapidly sped up instead of rising in line with the increase in terahertz strength. The researchers hypothesize that electrons jumping between states in the crystal added an unexpected source of heat to the system, boosting crystallization.

Hirori explains: “Our experiment reveals how nanoscale and direction-controlled growth of crystals in GST can be achieved. We also identified a phenomenon which should assist in the design of new devices and ultimately realize the fast and stable digital information handling potential that this material promises.”

BISTeL, a provider of adaptive intelligent (AI) applications for smart manufacturing today announced that it has joined the MindSphere Partner Program, Siemens’ partner program for Industrial IoT solution and technology providers. BISTel applications are expected to be available on the MindSphere platform Q1 2019.

BISTel’s advanced data analytics platform, eDatalzyer®, and its real-time, health monitoring and predictive maintenance (HMP) solution will connect with the MindSphere cloud-based, open Industrial IoT platform to deliver significant business value to the manufacturing sector. Opportunities for enhanced business value include access to the latest industrial IoT technology and access to industry leading manufacturing applications that are designed to accelerate the customers’ journey to smart manufacturing, improve engineering productivity, provide greater operational efficiencies, and increase quality and yield. Smart Manufacturing (also referred to as Industry 4.0), is event driven, enabling issues to be addressed before they occur, and machines taken offline only when it is absolutely necessary.

According to W.K. Choi, CEO, BISTel, “We are delighted to work with Siemens and build MindSphere applications to take advantage of Siemens’ leading industrial IoT technology. BISTel’s real-time monitoring, fault detection, data analysis and predictive maintenance applications on the MindSphere platform enable customers to quickly turn manufacturing data into actionable intelligence that improves business performance and creates significant efficiencies across their manufacturing organizations.”

“BISTel is capable of delivering tremendous value in engineering and automation applications for smart manufacturing,” said Paul Kaeley, senior vice president, global partner ecosystem at Siemens PLM Software. “With BISTel as a partner in the MindSphere ecosystem, customers now have more strong options to solve operational challenges with advanced data analytics and predictive maintenance.”

Industry 4.0 enables the digitalization of the manufacturing sector and transforms the way plants operate. Increased automation and the introduction of AI create new ways for engineers and operators to interface with factory equipment and processes and solve every day manufacturing problems in real time. Key to this, is Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) technology. According to a recent Gartner Group study, the number of IoT connected devices worldwide will grow from 8.4 billion in 2017 to more than 20.4 billion by 2020, creating access to a wealth of new data across the manufacturing ecosystem.  To achieve the vision of Industry 4.0 the manufacturing ecosystem must deliver this data to the right people, at the right place and at the right time. The proliferation of the Cloud, Big Data analytics and the adoption of AI based technologies are critical to achieving this goal.

Adaptive Intelligence for Smart Manufacturing

BISTel is redefining AI as adaptive intelligence for smarter manufacturing.  Several new AI based, real-time monitoring and advanced data analytics tools connect with IIoT platforms. These new solutions enable manufacturers to connect to and gather data from any data source. BISTel’s real-time monitoring applications detect faults before they occur, quickly conduct root cause analysis in hours and minutes versus the weeks and months it takes others.  With its new health monitoring and predictive maintenance (HMP) solution, engineers and operators can now predict outcomes and adapt real-time to changing factory conditions.

SEMI announced today that it has signed a new agreement with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) to expand the Nano-Bio Materials Consortium’s (NBMC) work in advancing human monitoring technology innovations for telemedicine and digital health. The program is designed to include $20 million in direct federal funding and $41 million overall in the next six years with additional contributions from state and industry sources. The grant guarantees $7 million of government funds for the first year’s launch of the renewed program.

Drawing on elements of nano-technology and biological research, nano-bio technology is at the core of the expanding field of human performance monitoring and augmentation (HPM/A). Human performance monitoring systems focus on using wearables and table-top devices that monitor blood pressure and glucose, the heart and brain, and other key features of human health to assess physical performance, identify anomalies and help prevent disease.

The expanded NBMC program will focus on research topics such as individual or mission customization, non-intrusive electronics, effects of extreme environments, new material integration (nano-materials, textiles, etc.), and regulatory considerations. Activities will consist of competitively bid research and development (R&D) projects, workshops, conferences, webinars, and extensive gap analysis exercises to determine market needs.

“SEMI is eager to renew NBMC programs and begin working with AFRL, commercial organizations, and universities to identify technology needs, fund research and development, and execute this public/private collaboration,” said Melissa Grupen-Shemansky, Ph.D, NBMC executive director and SEMI CTO. “The NBMC’s continued work will give SEMI members a first-hand understanding of how medical technology innovations will be shaped by advanced electronics and provide the platform for collaboration on R&D projects leading to new products and enabling personalized medicine.”

“Since its inception, NBMC has enabled new industrial and academic communities to engage and team up with AFRL and our mission to deliver new and innovative human monitoring capabilities to the airmen,” said Jeremy W. Ward, Ph.D., NBMC Government Program Manager. “We are eager to continue fostering and growing this community of innovators and to focus R&D on emerging nano-bio materials and technologies for human monitoring to enable solutions for the future monitoring and diagnostic needs of the United States Air Force’s Aeromedical En Route Care mission.”

AFRL awarded the cooperative agreement to SEMI after reviewing competitive responses to a Request for Information followed by a Request for Proposals. Twelve organizations joined SEMI to write the comprehensive proposal: Binghamton University, Brewer Science, Cambridge Display Technology, Dublin City University, GE, Lockheed Martin, Molex, NextFlex, Qualcomm Life Sciences, UCLA Medical School, UES, and the University of Arizona. SEMI and its FlexTech Group have been collaborating with AFRL and its Materials and Manufacturing Directorate to manage NBMC since its launch in 2013.

Micron Technology, Inc., (NASDAQ:MU) today received the announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice that on Nov. 1, 2018, it had issued indictments against United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit (Jinhua) and three former employees of Micron’s Taiwan unit for conspiracy to commit trade secret theft, economic espionage and related crimes.

“We appreciate the U.S. Department of Justice’s decision to prosecute the criminal theft of our intellectual property,” said Joel Poppen, senior vice president, legal affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary at Micron Technology. “Micron has invested billions of dollars over decades to develop its intellectual property. The actions announced today reinforce that criminal misappropriation will be appropriately addressed.”

The three former Micron employees named in the indictment are former Micron Memory Taiwan chairman Stephen Chen and engineers JT Ho and Kenny Wang.

In December 2017, Micron filed suit against UMC and Jinhua in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for the misappropriation of Micron intellectual property and trade secrets.

Background about prior cases

  • In August 2017, Taiwan authorities filed criminal indictments against UMC and three of its employees for the alleged theft and use of trade secrets from Micron, for the purpose of developing DRAM chip manufacturing technologies in cooperation with Jinhua. Two of those charged are former employees of Micron’s Taiwan unit who have now also been indicted for trade secret theft by the U.S. Department of Justice.
  • In December 2017, Micron filed a civil case against UMC and Jinhua in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for the misappropriation of Micron trade secrets.
  • In January 2018, in retaliation for the criminal indictments filed by Taiwan authorities and the civil lawsuit filed by Micron in Federal Court in California, UMC and Jinhua filed patent infringement suits in Fujian Province, China, against Micron’s China subsidiaries. On July 5, 2018, the court in Fujian notified the Micron subsidiaries that it had issued preliminary injunctions against them. Micron has asked the court to reconsider the injunctions, which the court issued without allowing Micron to present a defense. Micron strongly believes that the patents are invalid, that Micron’s products do not infringe the patents and that these suits are without merit.

IC Insights’ November Update to The 2018 McClean Report will present an in-depth analysis and detailed five-year forecast for the IC Industry, which is expected to enter a period of cyclical “cooling” after an extended period of very strong growth.

Figure 1 illustrates the worldwide quarterly year-over-year IC market increases from 1Q through 3Q and IC Insights’ forecast for 4Q of this year.  As shown, the first half of 2018 started out with strong quarterly year-over-year growth for the IC market.  However, year-over-year IC market growth dropped to 14% in 3Q.  Moreover, with the softening of the memory market, IC Insights projects that year-over-year IC market growth in 4Q will be only 6%.

Figure 1

Third quarter sequential growth confirms the slowing year-over-year trend. In 2017, 3Q/2Q IC market growth was 11%.  This year, 3Q/2Q growth slowed to a 6% increase (the same rate as the long term average).  As mentioned, the softening memory market has started to become a “headwind” on total IC market growth.  It is interesting that in 2017, the 3Q/2Q memory market growth rate was a very strong 18%.  In contrast, the 3Q/2Q memory market increase in 2018 was 8%, less than half of last year’s rate.

A team of scientists from Siberian Federal University (SibFU) together with foreign colleagues described the structural and physical properties of a group of two-dimensional materials based on polycyclic molecules called circulenes. The possibility of flexible design and variable properties of these materials make them suitable for nanoelectronics. The results are published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

Circulenes are organic molecules that consist of several hydrocarbon cycles forming a flower-like structure. Their high stability, symmetricity, and optical properties make them of special interest for nanoelectronics especially for solar cells and organic LEDs. The most stable and most studied tetraoxa[8]circulene molecule could be potentially polymerized into graphene-like nanoribbons and sheets. The authors have published the results of simulations proving this possibility. They also described properties and structure of the proposed materials.

“Having only one building block – a tetraoxa[8]circulene molecule – one can create a material with properties similar to those of silicon (a semiconductor traditionally used in electronics) or graphene (a semimetal) depending on the synthesis parameters. However, the proposed materials have some advantages. The charge carrier mobility is about 10 times higher compared to silicon, therefore, one could expect higher conductivity,” says the main author of the study Artem Kuklin, research associate at the department of theoretical physics of Siberian Federal University.

Having the equilibrium geometries and tested their stability, the scientists discovered several stable tetraoxa[8]circulene-based polymers. The difference between them lied in the type of coupling between the molecules resulting in different properties. The polymers demonstrate high charge carrier mobility. This property was analyzed by fitting of energy zones near bandgap – a parameter represented by separation of empty and occupied electronic states. The mechanical properties exhibit that the new materials 1.5-3 times more stretchable than graphene. The authors also emphasized existence of topological states in one of the polymers caused by spin-orbit coupling, which is not typical for light elements-based materials. The materials possessed such kind of properties are insulators in the bulk but can conduct electricity on the surface (edges).

“The proposed nanostructures possess useful properties and may be used in various fields, from the production of ionic sieves to elements of nanoelectronic devices. Further we plan to develop this topic and modify our compounds with metal adatoms to study their magnetic and catalytic properties. We would also like to find a research group that could synthesize these materials,” concludes Artem Kuklin.

Rudolph Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: RTEC) today announced the availability of its NovusEdge™ system for edge, notch and backside inspection of unpatterned wafers. The company plans to ship multiple systems totaling more than $3M by year end to fill existing orders from two customers. The new system is the result of a multi-year collaboration with bare wafer manufacturing partners that require one inspection tool capable of detecting defects near the wafer’s edge, bevel, back-side and notch. The NovusEdge system meets the stringent new requirements for defect control at the edge and backside of wafers being manufactured for 10nm process nodes. The system provides up to 50 percent faster throughput and two orders of magnitude better edge sensitivity than incumbent technology.

“Gartner estimated the unpatterned wafer inspection market at over $400M in 2017,” Tim Kryman, senior director of product marketing explained. “The bulk of this is focused on finding front surface defects as small as 10nm. However, our development partners also required tighter defect control at the wafer bevel and backside, to ensure the stringent quality standards required for these process nodes.  We estimate the NovusEdge system’s addressable market at 15 – 20 percent of the overall unpatterned market.”

The NovusEdge system uses multiple cameras and advanced imaging technologies to build a high-resolution, composite image of the entire wafer bevel then applies sophisticated analytical routines to identify and classify defects as small as the sub-micron level. On the backside it utilizes high-speed laser-scanning to detect particles, scratches, area defects and haze.