Category Archives: LEDs

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).

Combined sales for optoelectronics, sensors and actuators, and discrete semiconductors increased 2% in 2016 to reach a seventh consecutive record-high level of $67.9 billion, but growth rates in the three market segments were all over the map last year. Optoelectronics sales fell 4% in 2016, primarily because of the first decline in lamp devices in 15 years due to an oversupply of high-brightness light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for solid-state lighting applications, but the slump was offset by a 16% increase in revenues for sensors and actuators along with a modest 4% rise in discretes, according to IC Insights’ new 2017 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes.

The new 360-page report shows O-S-D products generated 19% of total semiconductor sales in 2016, with the rest of the dollar volume coming in integrated circuits ($297.7 billion, which was a 4% increase from 2015).  IC Insights believes optoelectronics, sensors/actuators, and discretes sales will stabilize in 2017 and gradually return to more normal growth rates in the 2016-2021 forecast period of the new O-S-D Report (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 1

Slight improvements in the weak global economy, steady increases in electronics production, and new end-use applications—such as wearable systems, billions of connections to the Internet of Things (IoT), the spread of image recognition in all types of equipment, and the proliferation of LED lighting around the world—are forecast to lift the three O-S-D markets in the next five years to $92.2 billion, which is a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.3% from 2016 compared to a projected CAGR of 5.7% for ICs.  The newly released 2017 O-S-D Report offers detailed market forecasts of the optoelectronics, sensor/actuator, and discretes market segments through 2021. A summary of how the three O-S-D market segments performed in 2016 and their outlooks for 2017 are shown below.

Optoelectronics sales fell 3.6% in 2016 to $33.9 billion, suffering their first setback in eight years. Sales of lamp devices, the largest optoelectronics product category, declined 8%.  Meanwhile, an oversupply of high-brightness LEDs for solid-state lighting applications also dragged the market down. The downturn is expected to be short lived as image sensors, especially those made with CMOS technology, are in the midst of a major new wave of growth, driven by new embedded cameras and digital imaging applications in automotive, medical, machine vision, security, wearable systems, and user-recognition interfaces.  Laser transmitters are also hitting new record-high sales because of the build-out of high-speed optical networks for huge increases in Internet traffic, digital video transmissions, cloud-computing services, and billions of new IoT connections in the coming years. Total optoelectronics sales are expected to grow 7.5% in 2017 to reach a new record high of $36.5 billion.

Sensors/Actuators, the smallest and until recently the fastest-increasing semiconductor market, ended four straight years of severe price erosion in 2016 and finally benefitted from strong unit growth. Sensors/actuator sales climbed 15.9% to a record-high $11.9 billion.  All major sensor product categories (pressure, acceleration/yaw, and magnetic sensors) and the large actuator segment saw double-digit sales growth in 2016.  The sensors/actuators market is projected to rise 7.8% in 2017 to reach a new record-high level of $12.8 billion.  In the next five years, sensors/actuators sales are forecast to be driven by the spread of automated embedded-control functions in vehicles (including autonomous driving capabilities), flying drones, industrial and robotic systems, home electronics, and measurement units being tied to IoT.

Discretes, the semiconductor industry’s oldest market, returned to normal growth in 2016 with sales increasing 4.2% to $22.1 billion.  In the last seven years, worldwide discretes sales have swung back and forth between strong increases and declines because systems manufacturers tend to abruptly cancel purchases whenever the economy and end-use product markets appears to be slowing, but then quickly resume buying to replenish factory inventories once the outlook improves.  With inventories being replenished in much of 2016, growth returned to five out of the six discretes product categories—power transistors, small-signal transistors, diodes, rectifiers, and miscellaneous “other” discretes group. The only sales drop in discretes was recorded by thyristors.  Total discretes revenues are forecast to rise 4.7% in 2017 to a new record-high $23.1 billion.

Ultratech, Inc. (Nasdaq: UTEK), a supplier of lithography, laser­ processing and inspection systems used to manufacture semiconductor devices and high-brightness LEDs (HBLEDs), as well as atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems, today announced that it has received multiple commitments for its LM7 laser melt anneal system. After its recent introduction in Q416, two leading North American semiconductor manufacturers will target use of the LM7 melt system at 7nm and below nodes. Ultratech plans to ship both systems in the first half of 2017 to the customers’ facilities in the U.S.

As the industry faces the challenges of device manufacturing at 7nm and below, laser melt anneal technology has received attention as a solution not only for front-end-of-line, but also for middle- and back-end-of-line applications.  In particular, scaling at these nodes has resulted in scrutiny of the contact structure between the transistor and the first metal layer. The focus is not solely on the transistor device performance, but issues related to the resistance at the contact, which are becoming a limiting factor in the operation of the transistor, increasing drive current and limiting overall speed. A paper presented in December at the 2016 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), which used Ultratech’s laser melt anneal system, provided data to support the system’s capability to enable contact scaling consistent with transistor performance targets for the 7-nm node and beyond.

“As we continue to scale to smaller nodes, contact resistance is widely acknowledged to be one of the gating issues that must be addressed,” said Yun Wang, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Technologist, Laser Processing at Ultratech. “Ultratech’s laser melt anneal technology addresses emerging annealing requirements for 7nm and beyond, with applications spanning the front end where the focus is on device performance and leakage improvement, the middle-of-line for contact resistance, and at the back-end-of-line where the focus is on material modifications and reduction of resistive capacitive (RC) delay. Over the last few years, Ultratech has been engaged with multiple customers on all of these applications, running wafers at our facility using our laser melt anneal technology. We look forward to working with these two customers and to providing our laser melt technology to meet their aggressive technology roadmaps.”

Ultratech LM7 Laser Melt Annealing System
The LM7 laser melt annealing system is based on the production-proven LSA201 laser spike anneal platform with ambient control. Built on this proven hardware/software platform, the LM7 provides a novel solution for melt annealing applications for 7nm and below nodes. The LM7 uses a unique dual-laser process that provides nanosecond-scale melt anneal with reduced pattern effects compared to conventional melt anneal approaches.  Ultratech’s LM7 laser melt anneal system provides the industry with a low cost-of-ownership solution for advanced annealing requirements for high-volume manufacturing at 7nm and beyond.

The ConFab preview


April 1, 2017

BY PETE SINGER, Editor-in-Chief

The agenda is set for The ConFab, to be held May 14-17, 2017 in San Diego at the iconic Hotel del Coronado. While reviewing the abstracts for just the Monday morning session, it struck me how well our speakers will cover the complex opportunities and challenges facing the semiconductor industry.

In the opening keynote, for example, Hans Stork, Senior Vice President and Chief Technical Officer, ON Semiconductor we will discuss the challenge to realize high signal to noise ratio in small (read inexpensive) and efficient form factors, using examples of image sensors and power conversion in automotive applications. “It seems that at last, after many decades of exponential progress in logic and memory technologies, the “real world” devices of power handling and sensor functions are jointly enabling another wave of electronics progress in autonomously operating and interacting Things,” he said.

Next, Subramani Kengeri, Vice President of CMOS Platforms Business Unit, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, will describe how the rapid growth of applications in the consumer, auto and mobile space coupled with the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT) is driving the need for differentiated design and technology solutions. “While die-cost scaling is slowing down and power density is emerging as a major challenge, fabless semiconductor companies are hungry for innovation using application optimized technology solutions. Specifically, emerging SoC innovations are driving the need for low-power, performance, cost, and time-to-volume that solves the issues of voltage scaling and integration of “user-experience” functions,” he notes.

Islam Salama, a Director with Intel Corporation responsible for packaging substrate Pathfinding of the high-density interconnect across all Intel products, looks at it from a connectivity perspective. “The pervasive nature of computing drives a need for connecting billions of people and tens of billions of devices/things via cloud computing. Such connectivity effect will generate tremendous amounts of data and would require a revolutionary change in the technology infrastructures being used to transmit, store and analyze data,” he said.

Next-generation electronics will require several new packaging solutions, he adds. Smaller form factors, lower power consumption, flexible designs, increased memory performance, and-more than ever, a closely managed silicon package, co-optimization and architectural innovations. Heterogeneous integration through package with technologies such as system in package (SIP), on package integration (OPI) and fan-out (WLFO and PLFO) are poised to change the packaging industry and play a disruptive role in enabling next generation devices.

Heterogeneous Integration is also the focus of a talk by Bill Bottoms, Chairman and CEO, Third Millennium Test Solutions. Bill will report on the collaboration in the making of the HIR Roadmap to address disruptive changes in the global IT network, the explosive growth coming for IoT sensors and the multi-sensor fusion and data analytics that extract “awareness” from the expanding data.

I’m very much looking forward to these and many other talks this year, and the exciting panel discussions and networking events we have planned.

Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) announces the new XLamp XP-G3 Royal Blue LED, the industry’s highest performing Royal Blue LED. The new XP-G3 LED doubles the maximum light output of similar size competing LEDs and delivers breakthrough wall-plug efficiency of up to 81 percent. This superior performing Royal Blue LED expands Cree’s leading high power portfolio, enabling lighting manufacturers to deliver differentiated LED solutions for applications such as horticulture, architectural and entertainment lighting.

royal blue led

Using the new XP-G3 Royal Blue LED and the recently introduced XP-E High Efficiency Photo Red LED, Cree has created a new horticulture reference design that achieves a Photosynthetic Photon Flux (PPF) efficiency of up to 3.2 μmol/J at steady-state, which is over 50 percent more efficient than the traditional high pressure sodium solutions in use today. The XP-G3 Royal Blue LED delivers up to 3402 mW radiant flux, which corresponds to 13 μmol/s PPF, at its 2A maximum current and 85 C junction temperature.

“Our newest horticulture-optimized products help lighting manufacturers push LED horticulture systems into mainstream use,” said Dave Emerson, Cree LEDs senior vice president and general manager. “Cree’s high power LED technology provides the best combination of photon output, efficiency and reliability to drive the replacement of outdated high pressure sodium lights with LED lighting solutions that minimize power consumption and maximize crop yield.”

The XP-G3 Royal Blue LED is built on Cree’s ceramic high-power technology, which can deliver excellent lifetimes even at the extreme temperature of 105 C. Additionally, horticulture lighting manufacturers can immediately take advantage of the existing ecosystem of drivers and optics proven to work with Cree’s other 3.45 mm footprint XP products to shorten their time to market.

ams, a worldwide supplier of high performance sensor solutions, today announced the AS7225 tunable-white lighting smart system sensor, further broadening the solution set for sensor-integrated tunable-white lighting solutions. With the addition of the AS7225, OEM lighting manufacturers can access ams’ closed-loop CCT tuning and daylight compensation, while retaining the existing host microprocessor architecture in their smart lighting design. The result is higher precision, more flexible LED binning, and lower system costs for tunable white lighting systems.

The AS7225 is equipped with the product family’s industry-first embedded tri-stimulus CIE XYZ color sensor to enable precise color sensing with direct mapping to the International Commission on Illumination (CIE) 1931 color space which is recognized as the standard coordinate definition for human color perception. CCT and daylighting tuning directives are communicated to the host microprocessor via an industry-standard I2C interface, allowing IoT smart lighting manufacturers to avoid costly calibration and tuning algorithm development and reduce time to deployment.

“As the lighting industry moves to tunable solutions, the inclusion of closed loop sensor-driven integration not only increases white or daylighting tuning precision, it also loosens the required precision for both LED binning and system components. This results in cost reductions for both the overall bill of materials, as well as in time and cost savings in the materials management and manufacturing processes”, commented Tom Griffiths, Senior Marketing Manager at ams.

The AS7225 is an extension of ams’ Cognitive Lighting smart lighting manager family. The efficient AS7225 is available in a 4.5 x 4.7mm LGA package, for flexible integration into luminaires, light-engines and larger replacement lamps, such as LED linear T-LED products. The device provides precise CCT tuning direction between configured warm and cool white LED strings within a luminaire. In addition to the CCT- tuning functions, the AS7225 can additionally be used looking outward in luminaire designs to provide precise daylight management, or can deliver combined CCT-tuning and daylighting directives by the addition of ams’ TSL4531 ambient light sensor.

“Recent trends in LED device pricing show that chips have moved away from being the primary cost element in a typical commercial luminaire. This means that in just a few years, tunable lighting will become the standard for new commercial lighting installations”, Griffiths added. “The comfort, productivity and health benefits of good lighting have been clear for decades, and as it is becoming cost effective to do so, tunable lighting will be a key element in delivering those benefits from LED smart lighting platforms.”

Pricing for the AS7225 spectral tuning IoT smart lighting manager is set at $2.40 in quantities of 5,000 pieces, and is available in production volumes now.

Ultratech, Inc. (Nasdaq: UTEK), a supplier of lithography, laser-processing and inspection systems used to manufacture semiconductor devices and high-brightness LEDs (HB-LEDs), as well as atomic layer deposition (ALD) systems, this week announced that two China foundries placed follow-on orders for laser spike anneal systems. Ultratech’s LSA101 laser spike anneal systems will be used for 40- and 28-nm production. The LSA101 dual-beam tools were chosen over competing systems due to greater flexibility and capability for annealing with low overall thermal budgets. Ultratech plans to ship the LSA101 tools to the customers’ foundries to China in Q1 2017.

The low cost of 28nm planar technology continues to drive growth and numerous foundries are ramping capacity expansion to take advantage of the optimal performance-to-cost ratio at this geometry. Foundries in Asia are leveraging the value proposition offered at the 28-nm node to meet the strong demand for low-cost chips for mobile devices. The LSA101 dual-beam system is designed for advanced applications, such as gate stack formation, silicide or post-silicide anneal to deliver leading technology in a cost-effective solution. Cost-driven foundries value Ultratech’s LSA101 systems due to the impressive flexibility to meet requirements for today’s volume production at 40-nm, 28-nm, and extendibility to 14-nm, 10-nm and below nodes.

“These follow-on orders strengthen our dominant position for advanced millisecond anneal within the foundry market in China,” said Jim McWhirter, Ph.D., vice president and senior scientist, laser technology at Ultratech. “While we are currently working with these customers to ramp capacity for 40- and 28-nms, the LSA101 system has demonstrated extendibility for advanced FinFET nodes. As a result, building on our long-term relationships, we can effectively work with our customers using our LSA systems to support their planer device applications today with extendibility for their future FinFET device roadmaps. Ultratech’s product focus remains targeted at meeting customer requirements for their advanced millisecond annealing applications.”

Many large companies and startups are currently working on microLED technologies for display applications: from LED makers such as Epistar, Nichia or Osram to display makers like AUO, BOE or CSOT and OEMs such as Apple or Facebook/Oculus. Due to the multiplicity of players and the diversity of strategies, KnowMade, part of Yole Group of Companies underlines a complex and heavy patent landscape. “Enabling large scale microLED displays manufacturing requires to bring together 3 major disparate know-how and supply chain bricks including LED manufacturing, display manufacturing and technology transfer & assembly”, asserts Dr Eric Virey, Senior Technology & Market Analyst at Yole Développement (Yole), part of Yole Group of Companies. The microLED displays supply chain is therefore still under construction. Participants have to find the way to collaborate together and define the most efficient manufacturing approach.

display supply chain

While very promising in terms of performance, there are still multiple manufacturing challenges that need to be addressed to enable cost effective, high volume manufacturing of microLED displays. Based on its latest microLED display technology & market report , the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting company Yole proposes a live event titled Microled Displays: hype and reality | Hopes & challenges. Taking place on March 29 at 5:00 PM CET this webcast powered by I-micronews.com welcomes Dr Eric Virey from Yole. During this event, Dr Virey will expose the technical challenges and market opportunities of the microLED technologies. To register, click MicroLED Display.

“Even if the remaining technology roadblocks are removed, no company beside Apple and its startup Luxvue acquired in 2014 currently appear to have the positioning and leverage to enable the supply chain,” comments Yole’s expert. So what could happen?

If successful, microLED displays could have a profound impact on both the LED and display supply chains. Indeed, the development of large scale microLED displays requires the combination of three major disparate technologies: LED, TFT backplane and chip transfer. The supply chain is complex and lengthy compared with that of traditional displays. Each process is critical and managing every aspect effectively will be challenging. “No single player can solve all the issues and it seems unlikely that any will fully vertically integrate”, comments Dr Virey from Yole. And he details:

• Small companies could bring together the different technologies to serve the AR/MR market, but for high volume consumer applications such as mobiles or TVs, only a strong push from a leading OEM can enable a supply chain.
• Apple has a unique market positioning: and appears to be the most likely candidate with enough leverage and financial strength to bring all partners together.
• Other candidates including Oculus for example, have also invested in microLEDs for AR/MR applications.

So what will be the next step? Yole confirms: each company will attempt to capture as much added value as it can.

For LED makers, low defect requirements and high resolution features of microLED mean large investments in new clean room and lithography equipment which might be better suited to CMOS foundries.

Traditional display makers are used to manufacturing both back and front planes in an integrated fashion and delivering finished panels to OEMs. With microLEDs, they will push back against becoming component suppliers, only providing a TFT backplane to whichever participant will produce the final display assembly: OEMs or OSAT players.

In parallel, some companies will benefit from microLED displays independently of how the supply chain is shaped. These beneficiaries include MOCVD reactor and other LED equipment manufacturers as well as wafer suppliers.

SEMI, the global industry association representing the electronics manufacturing supply chain, today announced that it has moved its headquarters office to Milpitas, Calif. The new SEMI office is approximately five miles (eight kilometers) from the former location in San Jose, Calif.

SEMI is a global organization with offices in the U.S., China, Europe, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. SEMI’s headquarters houses its global leadership and administration staff as well as Americas region personnel. Through maintaining its headquarters in Silicon Valley, SEMI continues to be connected to the region’s unique innovation ecosystem.

In addition to providing efficient and cost-effective office space for SEMI staff, the new facility features a dedicated conference center with configurable seminar rooms, modern infrastructure and amenities. The new facility better supports SEMI member networking and collaboration needs ─ from SEMI Standards and Special Interest Groups to SEMI’s network of Strategic Association Partners, including FlexTech, MEMS & Sensors Group (MSIG), and the Fab Owners Association (FOA).

SEMI Headquarters new location is:

SEMI

673 S. Milpitas Blvd.

Milpitas, CA 95035

“Our new location with its enhanced operational capabilities and efficiencies will help us better serve the growth and evolving needs of our members,” said Rich Salsman, CFO and VP of Operations at SEMI.

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.