Category Archives: LEDs

During SEMICON China 2016 on March 15-17 in Shanghai, key government decision makers, IC fund managers, and global industry analysts will share their insights on China’s IC manufacturing policy. SEMI expects record numbers of global industry executives will attend the world’s largest electronics manufacturing exposition to learn about the opportunities, challenges, and risks in China’s quickly changing market.

In 2016, semiconductor equipment spending is expected to be $5.3 billion, 9 percent above 2015 spending. In 2016, total spending on semiconductor materials in China will be $6.2 billion, with China representing the highest growth rate of all the regions tracked by SEMI.  SEMI is tracking ten 300mm facilities in China that are currently in production, with eight of these facilities either upgrading or ramping. Another three are either in construction or changing product type.  In addition, SEMI is tracking another six 300mm projects in various stages of planning.

The global industry is watching and taking cues from the bold industry investment policy and its implementation with its massive potential impact on the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain.  The policies represent major opportunities for China and global semiconductor companies who understand and have the ambition to play in the new ecosystem.

Dr. C.C. Wei, general manager and co-CEO of TSMC will present the grand opening keynote at SEMICON China. Keynote speakers from SMIC, National IC Investment Fund, BOE, Applied Materials, LAM Research, TEL and STATS ChipPAC will also present. The entire semiconductor industry ecosystem – including device manufacturing, equipment, materials, assembly and test services, design, and more – will participate.

2016 is the first year that SEMICON China will present forums on the entire ecosystem “Build China’s IC Manufacturing Ecosystem.” In addition, forums will include: Mobile and IOT Technology Forum (co-organized with JEDEC), China Memory Strategic Forum, Sensor Hub Solution for Wearable and IOT, LED China, and Power Semiconductors.

“Tech Investment Forum-China 2016” will be held on March 16. The Tech Investment Forum has already become an important platform between the investment and semiconductor industry in China. This year, Mr. Lu Jun, the president of SINO IC Capital will give a keynote speech. There will also be a session where startup companies can pitch to venture investors for project funding.

China Semiconductor Technology International Conference (CSTIC) precede at SEMICON China. Organized by SEMI and IEEE-EDS, CSTIC 2016 covers all aspects of semiconductor technology and manufacturing (more than than 400  papers), including devices, design, lithography, integration, materials, processes, and manufacturing, as well as emerging semiconductor technologies and silicon material applications.

FPD China and the LED China Conference are co-located with SEMICON China, leveraging synergies in these emerging and adjacent markets. Featuring more than 900 exhibitors occupying more than 2,600 booths, SEMICON China is the largest exposition of its kind in China with over 50,000 people expected to attend.

SEMICON China 2016 is approved by the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, co-organized by SEMI and the China Electronic Chamber of Commerce (CECC). Sponsors include: JCET, SMIC, TEL, Applied Materials, LAM Research, ASE, GCL, and ANJI.

For more information on SEMICON China 2016, visit www.semiconchina.org/

SEMICON Korea 2016 at COEX in Seoul opens tomorrow with more than 540 exhibiting companies and an expected 40,000 attendees. Today’s SEMICON Korea press conference expressed a positive lookout, for both 2016 and for longer-term growth drivers, like the Internet of Things (IoT).

Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI, reported at the Press Conference that even with slightly decreased annual spending, Korea is expected to remain the second largest equipment market for the second year in a row. In 2014, the materials market in Korea surpassed Japan to become the second largest materials market after Taiwan. This year, we expect Korea to represent about a $7.3 billion market, representing 16 percent of the world materials market.

Much of the semiconductor manufacturing capacity in Korea is targeted towards both advanced NAND Flash and DRAM. Korea represents the largest region of installed 300mm fab capacity in the world. Korean semiconductor manufacturers represent about 60 percent of the worldwide Memory output, and is the market leader for installed Memory fab capacity.  According to the SEMI World Fab Forecast, memory was a significant driver for semiconductor equipment spending in 2015 and is expected to remain the largest spending segment 2016, driven mainly by investments for 3D NAND. The primary driver for the Memory market continues to be mobility, keeping the pressure on scaling and added functionality.

Korea fab equipment spending (front-end) in 2016 is forecast to be US$ 8.1 billion. The combined equipment and materials spending outlook for Korea in 2016 will likely top $15.3 billion. The semiconductor, semiconductor equipment, and materials supply chain in Korea is increasingly deep and broad and filling out as a complete ecosystem.

In addition, the LED market will experience strong double-digit growth in lighting applications over the next several years. Overall LED fab capacity continues to expand, and many manufacturers are transitioning to manufacturing with 4-inch diameter sapphire wafers. Korean manufacturers are prominently positioned in the global LED rankings.

Tomorrow’s keynotes at SEMICON Korea will be presented by AUDI, Synopsys, and Texas Instruments. Highlights include: Semiconductor Technology Symposium which addresses the global trends and new technologies of the semiconductor manufacturing process; Market Seminar; Supplier Search Program; OEM Supplier Search Meeting; Presidents Reception; and International Standards meetings.

SEMICON Korea 2016 is a semiconductor technology event for market trends and breaking technology developments, featuring deep technical forums, business programs and standards activities.

Sponsors of SEMICON Korea 2016 include: Special sponsors Samsung, SK Hynix, and Dongbu HiTek; Platinum sponsors Lam Research, Applied Materials, Wonik, Exicon, ASE Group, Advantest, EO Technics, and TEL; and Gold sponsors Hitachi High-Tech and PSK.

The event is co-located with LED Korea 2016.  For more information on the events, visit SEMICON Korea: www.semiconkorea.org/en/  and LED Korea: www.led-korea.org/en/.

Making tiny switches do enormous jobs in a more efficient way than current technology allows is one of the goals of a research team led by Cornell engineering professor Huili (Grace) Xing.

Xing and her group – which includes her husband, Debdeep Jena, also an engineering professor at Cornell – have created gallium nitride (GaN) power diodes capable of serving as the building blocks for future GaN power switches. The group built a GaN power-switching device, approximately one-fifth the width of a human hair, that could support 2,000 volts of electricity.

With silicon-based semiconductors rapidly approaching their performance limits in electronics, GaN is seen as the next generation in power control and conversion. Applications span nearly all electronics products and electricity distribution infrastructure.

“With some of these new materials, it’s actually conceivable now to shrink medium-scale power-distribution systems onto a chip,” Jena said. “Looking into the future, this is one of the goals, and it’s not a moonshot. It’s possible, but the materials have to be right, the design has to be right.”

The team’s work was published Dec. 15 in the journal Applied Physics Letters, a publication of the American Institute of Physics. The group includes researchers from Cornell, the University of Notre Dame – from where Xing and Jena arrived at Cornell last year – and the semiconductor company IQE.

Xing said the key to her team’s discovery was building the device on a GaN base layer that contained relatively few energy-sapping defects, in comparison to traditional silicon-based substrates.

“We’re going to take the defects, some of them anyway, out of the equation,” said Xing, the Richard Lundquist Sesquicentennial Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of materials science and engineering. “Nothing can be 100 percent [free of defects], but we’re talking about improvements along an order of magnitude of up to 10,000 times.”

The team used a couple of indicators to determine the defect level in the GaN diode, including “diode ideality factor” as measured by the Shockley-Read-Hall recombination lifetime. The SRH lifetime is the average time it takes positively and negatively charged particles to move around before recombining at defects, which creates inefficiency.

The team’s work yielded near-ideal performance in all aspects, spawning hope for the future of GaN power diodes.

“Our results are an important step toward understanding the intrinsic properties and the true potential of GaN,” said Zongyang Hu, a Cornell postdoctoral associate and the paper’s co-lead author.

While much of energy-related research and development is focused on alternative energy sources, such as wind and solar, the Xing team’s efforts in power transmission are just as important, Jena said.

“Power generation gets a lot of press, and it should,” he said. “But once the power is generated, the amount of power that is lost because of inefficiencies is mind-bogglingly large. This problem is about conservation rather than generating power, which is really the same thing.

“And the scale of losses today actually far surpasses the total of renewable energies combined,” he said. “And it’s a clear and present solution; it’s not like we have to discover something fundamental.”

The team’s work is supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) “SWITCHES” program. SWITCHES stands for Strategies for Wide Bandgap, Inexpensive Transistors for Controlling High-Efficiency Systems.

“Leading one of these projects, we at Cornell – in collaboration with our industrial partners – have established an integrated plan to develop three terminal GaN power transistors, package them, and insert them into circuits and products,” Xing said.

The team’s paper is titled “Near unity ideality factor and Shockley-Read-Hall lifetime in GaN-on-GaN p-n diodes with avalanche breakdown.” Cornell collaborators included Kazuki Nomoto and Vladimir Protasenko, research associates in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and graduate students Bo Song and Mingda Zhu. The team also included Jena’s Ph.D. student Meng Qi at the University of Notre Dame, and engineers Ming Pan and Xiang Gao of IQE.

The Critical Materials Council (CMC) and TECHCET have issued a call for papers to be presented at the “Critical Materials for Device Driven Scaling” Seminar to be held May 5-6, 2016 in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA. Semiconductor manufacturing industry experts from IDMs, OEMS, and materials suppliers will gather to discuss actionable information on critical materials used in HVM fabs, while also looking at issues associated with new materials needed for future devices. Tim G. Hendry, Vice President, Technology & Manufacturing and Group Director of Fab Materials, Intel Corp., will provide the keynote address.

Following the annual members-only CMC meeting to be held May 3-4, the 2016 CMC Seminar is open to the public. Business drives our world, but technology enables the profitable business of manufacturing new devices in IC fabs, and new devices need new materials. In addition to panel discussions, presentation sessions will focus on the following topics:

  1. Semiconductor Market Briefing: application-specific demands for devices and materials
    II. Tracking the Supply Chain down to Earth, Wind, and Fire: manufacturing and supply chain
    III. Emerging Materials Evolutions: alternate logic channels and new memory switches, and
    IV. Materials Revolutions: beyond silicon CMOS.

Attendees will include industry experts handling supply-chains, business-development, R&D, and product management, as well as academics and analysts. The early-bird registration fee (before March 15th) for the CMC Seminar is $349; the standard registration fee is $425 (after March 15th). CMC member companies will be attending this meeting, as it is an important part of their membership. Additional information can be found online at http://cmcfabs.org/seminars.

To submit a paper for consideration, please send a 1-page abstract focusing on critical materials supply dynamics by February 29, 2016 to [email protected].

The Critical Materials Council for Semiconductor Device Fabricators was originally started by SEMATECH in the early 1990’s, and is now managed by TECHCET. It actively works to identify issues surrounding the supply, availability, accessibility, or lack thereof, of semiconductor process materials, current and emerging, also known as “Critical Materials”. This is done by collectively working to solve common materials related issues in a non-competitive environment. The CMC supports the continuous improvement of the Materials Supply Chain Community for Semiconductor Fabricators. For more information see www.CMCFabs.org .

UK-based chipmaker Dialog Semiconductor plc’s board of directors has determined not to revise its proposal to acquire US-based microcontroller and touch solutions specialist Atmel Corp., the company said.

On 13 January 2016, Atmel published that it had determined that the unsolicited acquisition proposal received from Microchip Technology Inc. constitutes a “company Superior Proposal” and that it intends to terminate its merger agreement with Dialog to accept Microchip’s proposal. Dialog will inform Atmel that it will waive the remainder of the four business day notice period to which Dialog is entitled under its merger agreement with Atmel.

Upon termination of the merger agreement by Atmel to accept Microchip’s proposal, Atmel is required to pay Dialog a $137.3M termination fee.

Dialog provides highly integrated standard and custom mixed-signal integrated circuits, optimised for smartphone, tablet, IoT, LED Solid State Lighting and Smart Home applications.

Scientists from Germany and Spain have discovered a way to create a BioLED by packaging luminescent proteins in the form of rubber. This innovative device gives off a white light which is created by equal parts of blue, green and red rubber layers covering one LED, thus rendering the same effect as with traditional inorganic LEDs but at a lower cost.

Increasingly popular LEDs, or light-emitting diodes, are the light of choice for the European Union and the United States when it comes to creating lighting devices of the future. This preference can be attributed to the fact that LEDs are more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs and more stable than energy-efficient light bulbs.

Despite their advantages, however, LEDs are manufactured using inorganic materials that are in short supply -such as cerium and yttrium-, thus meaning that they are more expensive and difficult to sustain in the long run. Additionally, white LEDs produce a colour that is not optimal for eyesight since they lack a red component that can psychologically affect individuals exposed to them for long periods of time.

Now, however, a German-Spanish team of scientists has drawn inspiration from nature’s biomolecules in search of a solution. Their technique consists in introducing luminescent proteins into a polymer matrix to produce luminescent rubber. This technique involves a new way of packaging proteins which could end up substituting the technique used to create LEDs today.

“We have developed a technology and a hybrid device called BioLED that uses luminescent proteins to convert the blue light emitted by a ‘normal’ LED into pure white light”, explains Rubén D. Costa to Sinc, a researcher at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) and co-author of the study.

It is always necessary to have either a blue or an ultraviolet LED to excite the rubbers that are put over the LED in order to make it white. In other words, we can combine blue LED/green rubber/red rubber, or ultraviolet LED/blue rubber/green rubber/red rubber. The result is the first BioLED that gives off a pure white light created by similar parts of the colours blue, green and red, all while maintaining the efficiency offered by inorganic LEDs.

The authors clear up that the blue or ultraviolet LEDs are much cheaper than white ones, which are made of an expensive and scarce material known as YAG:Ce (Cerium-doped Yttrium Aluminium Garnet). The idea is replace it by proteins.

“The Bio-LEDs are simple to manufacture and their materials are low-cost and biodegradable, meaning that they can easily be recycled and replaced”, points out Costa, while also highlighting the high stability of these proteins that have “luminescent properties that remain intact during the months of storage under different environmental conditions of light, temperature and humidity”.

In fact, with this technique “we have been able to achieve a sustained use of proteins in optoelectronic devices with an excellent stability for the first time, something that had not happened in the last 50 years. This thus represents a major breakthrough in this field,” stresses Pedro B. Coto, another one of the authors who also conducts research at this German university.

Scientists are already working on optimising this new elastic material in order to achieve greater thermal stability and an even longer operating lifetime. They are addressing how to optimise the chemical composition of the polymer matrix in addition to using proteins that are increasingly more resistant to device operating conditions. The goal is to make this new BioLED more accessible on an industrial scale in the not too distant future.

Use of copper as a fluorescent material allows for the manufacture of inexpensive and environmentally compatible organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Thermally activated delayed fuorescence (TADF) ensures high light yield. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), CYNORA, and the University of St Andrews have now measured the underlying quantum mechanics phenomenon of intersystem crossing in a copper complex. The results of this fundamental work are reported in the Science Advances journal and contribute to enhancing the energy efficiency of OLEDs.

Organic light-emitting diodes are deemed tomorrow’s source of light. They homogeneously emit light in all observation directions and produce brilliant colors and high contrasts. As it is also possible to manufacture transparent and flexible OLEDs, new application and design options result, such as flat light sources on window panes or displays that can be rolled up. OLEDs consist of ultra-thin layers of organic materials, which serve as emitter and are located between two electrodes. When voltage is applied, electrons from the cathode and holes (positive charges) from the anode are injected into the emitter, where they form electron-hole pairs. These so-called excitons are quasiparticles in the excited state. When they decay into their initial state again, they release energy.

Excitons may assume two different states: Singlet excitons decay immediately and emit light, whereas triplet excitons release their energy in the form of heat. Usually, 25 percent singlets and 75 percent triplets are encountered in OLEDs. To enhance energy efficiency of an OLED, also triplet excitons have to be used to generate light. In conventional light-emitting diodes heavy metals, such as iridium and platinum, are added for this purpose. But these materials are expensive, have a limited availability, and require complex OLED production methods.

It is cheaper and environmentally more compatible to use copper complexes as emitter materials. Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) ensures high light yields and, hence, high efficiency: Triplet excitons are transformed into singlet excitons which then emit photons. TADF is based on the quantum mechanics phenomenon of intersystem crossing (ISC), a transition from one electronic excitation state to another one of changed multiplicity, i.e. from singlet to triplet or vice versa. In organic molecules, this process is determined by spin-orbit coupling. This is the interaction of the orbital angular momentum of an electron in an atom with the spin of the electron. In this way, all excitons, triplets and singlets, can be used for the generation of light. With TADF, copper luminescent material reaches an efficiency of 100 percent.

Stefan Bräse and Larissa Bergmann of KIT’s Institute of Organic Chemistry (IOC), in cooperation with researchers of the OLED technology company CYNORA and the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, for the first time measured the speed of intersystem crossing in a highly luminescent, thermally activated delayed fluorescence copper(I) complex in the solid state. The results are reported in the Science Advances journal. The scientists determined a time constant of intersystem crossing from singlet to triplet of 27 picoseconds (27 trillionths of a second). The reverse process – reverse intersystem crossing – from triplet to singlet is slower and leads to a TADF lasting for an average of 11.5 microseconds. These measurements improve the understanding of mechanisms leading to TADF and facilitate the specific development of TADF materials for energy-efficient OLEDs.

Oxygen is indispensable to animal and plant life, but its presence in the wrong places can feed a fire and cause iron to rust.

In the fabrication of solid state lighting devices, scientists are learning, oxygen also plays a two-edged role. While oxygen can impede the effectiveness of gallium nitride (GaN), an enabling material for LEDs, small amounts of oxygen in some cases are needed to enhance the devices’ optical properties. GaN doped with europium (Eu), which could provide the red color in LEDs and other displays, is one such case.

Last week, an international group of researchers shed light on this seeming contradiction and reported that the quantity and location of oxygen in GaN can be fine-tuned to improve the optical performance of Eu-doped GaN devices. The group includes researchers from Lehigh, Osaka University in Japan, the Instituto Superior Técnico in Portugal, the University of Mount Union in Ohio, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

Writing in Scientific Reports, a Nature publication, the group said that small quantities of oxygen promote the uniform incorporation of Eu into the crystal lattices of GaN. The group also demonstrated a method of incorporating Eu uniformly that utilizes only the oxygen levels that are inevitably present in the GaN anyway. Eu, a rare earth (RE) element, is added to GaN as a “dopant” to provide highly efficient red color emission, which is still a challenge for GaN-based optoelectronic devices.

The devices’ ability to emit light is dependent on the relative homogeneity of Eu incorporation, said Volkmar Dierolf, professor and chair of Lehigh’s physics department.

“Some details, such as why the oxygen is needed for Eu incorporation, are still unclear,” said Dierolf, “but we have determined that the amount required is roughly 2 percent of the amount of Eu ions. For every 100 Eu ions, you need two oxygen atoms to facilitate the incorporation of Eu to GaN.

“If the oxygen is not there, the Eu clusters up and does not incorporate. When the oxygen is present at about 2 percent, oxygen passivation takes place, allowing the Eu to incorporate into the GaN without clustering.”

The article is titled “Utilization of native oxygen in Eu(RE)-doped GaN for enabling device compatibility in optoelectronic applications.” The lead author, Brandon Mitchell, received his Ph.D. from Lehigh in 2014 and is now an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Mount Union and a visiting professor at Osaka University.

 

A comprehensive study

Gallium nitride, a hard and durable semiconductor, is valued in solid state lighting because it emits light in the visible spectrum and because its wide band gap makes GaN electronic devices more powerful and energy-efficient than devices made of silicon and other semiconductors.

The adverse effect of oxygen on GaN’s properties has been much discussed in the scientific literature, the researchers wrote in Scientific Reports, but oxygen’s influence on, and interaction with, RE dopants in GaN is less well understood.

“The presence of oxygen in GaN,” the group wrote in their article, which was published online Jan. 4, “…is normally discussed with a purely negative connotation, where possible positive aspects of its influence are not considered.

“For the continued optimization of this material, the positive and negative roles of critical defects, such as oxygen, need to be explored.”

The group used several imaging techniques, including Rutherford Backscattering, Atomic Probe Tomography and Combined Excitation Emission Spectroscopy, to obtain an atomic-level view of the diffusion and local concentrations of oxygen and Eu in the GaN crystal lattice.

Its investigation, the group wrote, represented the “first comprehensive study of the critical role that oxygen has on Eu in GaN.” The group chose to experiment with Eu-doped GaN (GaN:Eu), said Dierolf, because europium emits bright light in the red portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, a promising quality given the difficulty scientists have encountered in realizing red LED light.

The group said its results “strongly indicate that for single layers of GaN:Eu, significant concentrations of oxygen are required to ensure uniform Eu incorporation and favorable optical properties.

“However, for the high performance and reliability of GaN-based devices, the minimization of oxygen is essential. It is clear that these two requirements are not mutually compatible.”

Preliminary LED devices containing a single 300-nanometer active GaN:Eu layer have been demonstrated in recent years, the group reported, but have not yet achieved commercial viability, in part because of the incompatibility of oxygen with GaN.

To overcome that hurdle, said Dierolf, the researchers decided that instead of growing one thick, homogeneous layer of GaN:Eu they would grow several thinner layers of alternating doped and undoped regions. This approach, they found, utilizes the relatively small amount of oxygen that is naturally present in GaN grown with organo-metallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE), the common method of preparing GaN.

“Instead of growing a thick layer of Eu-doped GaN,” said Dierolf, “we grew a layer that alternated doped and undoped regions. Through the diffusion of the europium ion, oxygen from the undoped regions was utilized to incorporate the Eu into the GaN. The europium then diffused into the undoped regions.”

To determine the optimal amount of oxygen needed to circumvent the oxygen-GaN incompatibility, the researchers also conducted experiments on GaN grown with an Eu “precursor” containing oxygen and on GaN intentionally doped with argon-diluted oxygen.

They found that the OMVPE- grown GaN contained significantly less oxygen than the other samples.

“The concentration of this oxygen [in the OMVPE- grown GaN] is over two orders of magnitude lower than those [concentrations] found in the samples grown with the oxygen-containing Eu…precursor,” the group wrote, “rendering the material compatible with current GaN-based devices.

“We have demonstrated that the oxygen concentration in GaN:Eu materials can be reduced to a device-compatible level. Periodic optimization of the concentration ratio between the normally occurring oxygen found in GaN and the Eu ions resulted in uniform Eu incorporation, without sacrificing emission intensity.

“These results appear to coincide with observations in other RE-doped GaN materials. Adoption of the methods discussed in this article could have a profound influence on the future optimization of these systems as well as GaN:Eu.”

The group plans next to grow GaN quantum well structures and determine if they enable Eu to incorporate even more favorably and effectively into GaN. Toward that end, Dierolf and Nelson Tansu, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of Lehigh’s Center for Photonics and Nanoelectronics, have been awarded a Collaborative Research Opportunity (CORE) grant from Lehigh.

The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) opened yesterday with the theme “Integrating for Growth: Markets, Technology, Ecosystem.” The packed conference of C-level executives gave the year’s first strategic outlook of the global electronics manufacturing industry.

Opening keynoter Mary J. Miller, deputy assistant secretary of research and technology at the U.S. Army, discussed future national defense needs and technological innovation capabilities. The most serious changes the Army needs to deal with are: technology parity (“high tech loses its advantage if everyone has it”); interconnected, global environment; and an unpredictable enemy- from individual actors to nation-states.

In the Economic Trends session, presenters took on macroeconomic trends and detailed industry-specific forecasts:

  • Duncan Meldrum, Hilltop Economics, believes that the effects of the financial crisis linger with the global economy more than two percent below potential – a full seven years after the financial crisis. However, the U.S. is farthest along the adjustment path. Looking at semiconductor Millions of Square Inches (MSI) outlook, he finds that the forecasts for 2015 and 2016 are both up about 2.8 percent while 2017 is expected to bring recovery (6.4 percent).
  • Bill McClean, IC Insights, cited expectations for improvement in global GDP and less strength of the U.S. dollar, forecasting the worldwide semiconductor market to grow 4 percent to $367 billion in 2016. He estimates that semiconductor capital spending will increase 1 percent to $66 billion and semiconductor materials revenues will increase 4 percent to $48 billion in the same period. McClean also predicts that the domestic production share of the Chinese semiconductor market will increase from 12.7 percent in 2015 to 18.1 percent in 2020.
  • Bob Johnson, Gartner, forecasts that the short-term outlook is weak but improving towards the end of the year. He believes that high single-digit growth will return in 2017 when 10nm starts volume production and 3D NAND ramp begins, and that China investment will boost spending in 2017-2019.
    Dan Tracy, SEMI, stated packaging is a key enabler of functionality in the mobile space – due to thin, small form factor multi-die and SiP applications growing. He also stressed that Fan-out wafer-level packaging (FO-WLP) is disruptive and will have a significant impact on the consumption of semiconductor packaging materials in the coming years.
  • Ezra Greenberg, McKinsey & Company, believes that the world is roughly 10 years into a dramatic transition as a result of four disruptive trends: growth and urbanization in emerging markets, rapid technological changes, increasing connectivity, and the aging of populations. The disruptions are producing change so significant that “management intuition that has served us in the past will become obsolete.”

The afternoon session focused on Market Perspectives, including China’s growing role in the ecosystem. Handel Jones, International Business Strategies, believes the many acquisitions – like OmniVision, STATS ChipPAC, and NXP’s RF Power – were made to gain fast access to products and IP. Multiple funding sources have been set up for the establishment of semiconductor manufacturing in China with large government and commercial funding coming into focus. The China supply ecosystem will go through many changes and bring major opportunities for the global industry. Mark Lipacis, Jefferies, emphasized that in contrast to 10-15 years ago, recent semiconductor M&A has been received positively by shareholders. China’’s emergence as an important industry player as it targets to double its industry share by 2020.

Jiri Marek, Robert Bosch, talked about how smart sensors are the enabler for the Internet of Thing (IoT). Connected devices will grow from today’s 5 billion to 20–50 billion devices. He highlighted sensor data fusion which enables use-cases, like activity monitoring, augmented reality, and intent prediction (location-based services and well-being recommendations).

Manish Bhatia, SanDisk, spoke about the exponential growth of data and devices: 44 trillion gigabytes of digital data by 2020; 26 billion connected devices by 2020; 1.7 trillion digital images created in 2016; and 400 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. With product categories blurring in terms of computing power and storage, he stressed that semiconductor makers need to focus on broader product portfolios and on solutions, not components.

Days 2 and 3 at ISS will delve deeper into the industry – technology, manufacturing, and collaboration with presentations from: Amkor Technology, ASM International, ASML, GlobalFoundries, IM Flash Technologies, Intel, Intel Capital, Micron, Qualcomm, SMIC, and SUNY Poly/CNSE. Additional keynote speakers include Ken Hansen, president and CEO of Semiconductor Research Corporation, and Haruyoshi Kumura, fellow at Nissan. In the final session of the last day, a panel on “It’s 2050… Moore’s Law is Dead… What’s the New Business Model” features Brewer Science, Cisco Systems, GlobalFoundries, Intel, Synopsys, and VLSI Research.

The SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) examines global economic, technology, market, business and geo-political developments influencing the semiconductor processing industry along with their implications for your strategic business decisions. For more than 35 years, ISS has been the premier semiconductor conference for senior executives to acquire the latest trend data, technology highlights and industry perspective to support business decisions, customer strategies and the pursuit of greater profitability.

Viewpoints: 2016 outlook


January 11, 2016

Each year, Solid State Technology turns to industry leaders to hear viewpoints on the technological and economic outlook for the upcoming year. Read through these expert opinions on what to expect in 2016.

New technologies will fuel pockets of growth in 2016

Plisinski_headshotBy Mike Plisinski, Chief Executive Officer, Rudolph Technologies, Inc.

While the 2016 outlook for the semiconductor industry as a whole appears increasingly uncertain, there are areas where significant growth remains likely. In particular, advanced packaging, driven by growing consumer demand in applications ranging from smartphones and tablets to the Internet of Things (IoT), shows great promise for continued innovation.

First, we see outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) manufacturers driving the development of new packaging technology. For example, we’ve seen major gains in the adoption of fan-out packaging and copper pillar technology, evidenced by ongoing capacity expansion, and the addition of new players—the most obvious perhaps being the large ongoing investment by a leading foundry in Asia where our inspection equipment has received a prominent role. We see more and more manufacturers choosing to add yield management and/or advanced process control (APC) software, to obtain a competitive advantage in not only cost, but also reliability. This is achieved by transforming ultra-large data sets into useful information used for predictive analytics (reducing costs) and analysis across the supply chain (improving reliability).

The growth in advanced packaging is also driving the adoption of sophisticated lithography techniques for these new technologies. Our JetStep advanced packaging stepper is now in high-volume manufacturing use at several top OSATs. The system allows our customers the flexibility to handle all of the current advanced processes within a single tool, which provides a compelling cost of ownership value. We also see emerging processes, such the adoption of rectangular panel substrates, in some packaging applications, certainly in fan-out, but also embedded and other packaging technologies. Rectangular panels promise significant gains in economy-of-scale and processing efficiency.

Lastly, expansion in radio frequency (RF) device capability continues to grow, with the increasing number of devices that communicate wirelessly and the increasing number of frequencies with which they communicate. Measuring the electrode and piezo layers of SAW/BAW filters will only grow as more and more filters are required in mobile devices. Beyond mobile, the expansion in RF is also driven by WiFi, Bluetooth and IoT requirements for connectivity, so we expect it to accelerate even as the smartphone growth curve flattens.

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