Category Archives: Process Materials

A new technique makes it possible to obtain an individual fingerprint of the current-carrying edge states occurring in novel materials such as topological insulators or 2D materials. Physicists of the University of Basel present the new method together with American scientists in Nature Communications.

Measured tunneling current and its dependence on the two applied magnetic fields: The fans of red/yellow curves each correspond to a fingerprint of the conducting edge states. Each individual curve separately shows one of the edge states. Credit: University of Basel, Department of Physics

While insulators do not conduct electrical currents, some special materials exhibit peculiar electrical properties: though not conducting through their bulk, their surfaces and edges may support electrical currents due to quantum mechanical effects, and do so even without causing losses.

Such so-called topological insulators have attracted great interest in recent years due to their remarkable properties. In particular, their robust edge states are very promising since they could lead to great technological advances.

Currents flowing only along the edges

Similar effects as the edge states of such topological insulators also appear when a two-dimensional metal is exposed to a strong magnetic field at low temperatures. When the so-called quantum Hall effect is realized, current is thought to flow only at the edges, where several conducting channels are formed.

Probing individual edge states

Until now, it was not possible to address the numerous current carrying states individually or to determine their positions separately. The new technique now makes it possible to obtain an exact fingerprint of the current carrying edge states with nanometer resolution.

This is reported by researchers of the Department of Physics and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute of the University of Basel in collaboration with colleagues of the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as of Harvard and Princeton University, USA.

In order to measure the fingerprint of the conducting edge states, the physicists lead by Prof. Dominik Zumbühl have further developed a technique based on tunneling spectroscopy.

They have used a gallium arsenide nanowire located at the sample edge which runs in parallel to the edge states under investigation. In this configuration, electrons may jump (tunnel) back and forth between a specific edge state and the nanowire as long as the energies in both systems coincide. Using an additional magnetic field, the scientists control the momentum of tunneling electrons and can address individual edge states. From the measured tunneling currents, the position and evolution of each edge state may be obtained with nanometer precision.

Tracking the evolution

This new technique is very versatile and can also be used to study dynamically evolving systems. Upon increasing the magnetic field, the number of edge states is reduced, and their distribution is modified. For the first time, the scientists were able to watch the full edge state evolution starting from their formation at very low magnetic fields.

With increasing magnetic field, the edge states are first compressed towards the sample boundary until eventually, they move towards the inside of the sample and then disappear completely. Analytical and numerical models developed by the research team agree very well with the experimental data.

“This new technique is not only very useful to study the quantum Hall edge states,” Dominik Zumbühl comments the results of the international collaboration. “It might also be employed to investigate new exotic materials such as topological insulators, graphene or other 2D materials.”

Sandwiching two-dimensional materials used in nanoelectronic devices between their three-dimensional silicon bases and an ultrathin layer of aluminum oxide can significantly reduce the risk of component failure due to overheating, according to a new study published in the journal of Advanced Materials led by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Engineering.

An experimental transistor using silicon oxide for the base, carbide for the 2D material and aluminum oxide for the encapsulating material. Credit: (Image: Zahra Hemmat).

Many of today’s silicon-based electronic components contain 2D materials such as graphene. Incorporating 2D materials like graphene — which is composed of a single-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms — into these components allows them to be several orders of magnitude smaller than if they were made with conventional, 3D materials. In addition, 2D materials also enable other unique functionalities. But nanoelectronic components with 2D materials have an Achilles’ heel — they are prone to overheating. This is because of poor heat conductance from 2D materials to the silicon base.

“In the field of nanoelectronics, the poor heat dissipation of 2D materials has been a bottleneck to fully realizing their potential in enabling the manufacture of ever-smaller electronics while maintaining functionality,” said Amin Salehi-Khojin, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering in UIC’s College of Engineering.

One of the reasons 2D materials can’t efficiently transfer heat to silicon is that the interactions between the 2D materials and silicon in components like transistors are rather weak.

“Bonds between the 2D materials and the silicon substrate are not very strong, so when heat builds up in the 2D material, it creates hot spots causing overheat and device failure,” explained Zahra Hemmat, a graduate student in the UIC College of Engineering and co-first author of the paper.

In order to enhance the connection between the 2D material and the silicon base to improve heat conductance away from the 2D material into the silicon, engineers have experimented with adding an additional ultra-thin layer of material on top of the 2D layer — in effect creating a “nano-sandwich” with the silicon base and ultrathin material as the “bread.”

“By adding another ‘encapsulating’ layer on top of the 2D material, we have been able to double the energy transfer between the 2D material and the silicon base,” Salehi-Khojin said.

Salehi-Khojin and his colleagues created an experimental transistor using silicon oxide for the base, carbide for the 2D material and aluminum oxide for the encapsulating material. At room temperature, the researchers saw that the conductance of heat from the carbide to the silicon base was twice as high with the addition of the aluminum oxide layer versus without it.

“While our transistor is an experimental model, it proves that by adding an additional, encapsulating layer to these 2D nanoelectronics, we can significantly increase heat transfer to the silicon base, which will go a long way towards preserving functionality of these components by reducing the likelihood that they burn out,” said Salehi-Khojin. “Our next steps will include testing out different encapsulating layers to see if we can further improve heat transfer.”

Scientists have developed a photoelectrode that can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods.

In the pursuit of realizing a sustainable society, there is an ever-increasing demand to develop revolutionary solar cells or artificial photosynthesis systems that utilize visible light energy from the sun while using as few materials as possible.

The research team, led by Professor Hiroaki Misawa of the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University, has been aiming to develop a photoelectrode that can harvest visible light across a wide spectral range by using gold nanoparticles loaded on a semiconductor. But merely applying a layer of gold nanoparticles did not lead to a sufficient amount of light absorption, because they took in light with only a narrow spectral range.

Left: The newly developed photoelectrode, a sandwich of semiconductor layer (TiO2) between gold film (Au film) and gold nanoparticles (Au NPs). The gold nanoparticles were partially inlaid onto the surface of the titanium dioxide thin-film to enhance light absorption. Right: The photoelectrode (Au-NP/TiO2/Au-film) with 7nm of inlaid depth traps light making it nontransparent (top). An Au-NP/TiO2 structure without the Au film are shown for comparison (bottom). Credit: Misawa H. et al., Nature Nanotechnology, July 30, 2018

In the study published in Nature Nanotechnology, the research team sandwiched a semiconductor, a 30-nanometer titanium dioxide thin-film, between a 100-nanometer gold film and gold nanoparticles to enhance light absorption. When the system is irradiated by light from the gold nanoparticle side, the gold film worked as a mirror, trapping the light in a cavity between two gold layers and helping the nanoparticles absorb more light.

To their surprise, more than 85 percent of all visible light was harvested by the photoelectrode, which was far more efficient than previous methods. Gold nanoparticles are known to exhibit a phenomenon called localized plasmon resonance which absorbs a certain wavelength of light. “Our photoelectrode successfully created a new condition in which plasmon and visible light trapped in the titanium oxide layer strongly interact, allowing light with a broad range of wavelengths to be absorbed by gold nanoparticles,” says Hiroaki Misawa.

When gold nanoparticles absorb light, the additional energy triggers electron excitation in the gold, which transfers electrons to the semiconductor. “The light energy conversion efficiency is 11 times higher than those without light-trapping functions,” Misawa explained. The boosted efficiency also led to an enhanced water splitting: the electrons reduced hydrogen ions to hydrogen, while the remaining electron holes oxidized water to produce oxygen — a promising process to yield clean energy.

“Using very small amounts of material, this photoelectrode enables an efficient conversion of sunlight into renewable energy, further contributing to the realization of a sustainable society,” the researchers concluded.

Air Products (NYSE : APD ) today announced it has been awarded by Samsung Electronics additional gaseous nitrogen and hydrogen supply to its semiconductor fab in Giheung, South Korea.

Air Products, who has been supplying industrial gases to Samsung Electronics’ Giheung site since 1998, will invest in building a new air separation unit, multiple hydrogen plants, and pipelines, which are scheduled to be operational in 2020 to supply the customer’s increased demand.

“We are proud to expand our longstanding relationship with Samsung Electronics and have their continued confidence in our ability to support their technological development and growth plans,” said Kyo-Yung Kim, president of Air Products Korea. “Our latest investment once again reinforces Air Products’ commitment to serving our strategic customer, as well as the broader semiconductor and electronics industries, with our safety, reliability, efficiency and excellent service.”

Air Products supplies many of Samsung’s operations worldwide, including its semiconductor cluster in the north region of South Korea spanning Giheung, Hwaseong and Pyeongtaek. In Pyeongtaek, the company has been undertaking a multi-phase expansion project to support Samsung Electronics’ multibillion dollar fab.

A leading integrated gases supplier, Air Products has been serving the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to most of the world’s largest technology companies. Air Products is working with these industry leaders to develop the next generation of semiconductors and displays for tablets, computers and mobile devices.

Schottky diode is composed of a metal in contact with a semiconductor. Despite its simple construction, Schottky diode is a tremendously useful component and is omnipresent in modern electronics. Schottky diode fabricated using two-dimensional (2D) materials have attracted major research spotlight in recent years due to their great promises in practical applications such as transistors, rectifiers, radio frequency generators, logic gates, solar cells, chemical sensors, photodetectors, flexible electronics and so on.

The understanding of 2D material-based Schottky diode is, however, plagued by multiple mysteries. Several theoretical models have co-existed in the literatures and a model is often selected a priori without rigorous justifications. It is not uncommon to see a model, whose underlying physics fundamentally contradicts with the physical properties of 2D materials, being deployed to analyse a 2D material Schottky diode.

Reporting in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have made a major step forward in resolving the mysteries surrounding 2D material Schottky diode. By employing a rigorous theoretical analysis, they developed a new theory to describe different variants of 2D-material-based Schottky diodes under a unifying framework. The new theory lays down a foundation that helps to unite prior contrasting models, thus resolving a major confusion in 2D material electronics.

Schematic drawing of a 2D-material-based lateral (left) and vertical (right) Schottky diode. For broad classes of 2D materials, the current-temperature relation can be universally described by a scaling exponent of 3/2 and 1, respectively, for lateral and vertical Schottky diodes. Credit: Singapore University of Technology and Design

“A particularly remarkable finding is that the electrical current flowing across a 2D material Schottky diode follows a one-size-fits-all universal scaling law for many types of 2D materials,” said first-author Dr. Yee Sin Ang from SUTD.

Universal scaling law is highly valuable in physics since it provides a practical “Swiss knife” for uncovering the inner workings of a physical system. Universal scaling law has appeared in many branches of physics, such as semiconductor, superconductor, fluid dynamics, mechanical fractures, and even in complex systems such as animal life span, election results, transportation and city growth.

The universal scaling law discovered by SUTD researchers dictates how electrical current varies with temperature and is widely applicable to broad classes of 2D systems including semiconductor quantum well, graphene, silicene, germanene, stanene, transition metal dichalcogenides and the thin-films of topological solids.

“The simple mathematical form of the scaling law is particularly useful for applied scientists and engineers in developing novel 2D material electronics,” said co-author Prof. Hui Ying Yang from SUTD.

The scaling laws discovered by SUTD researchers provide a simple tool for the extraction of Schottky barrier height – a physical quantity critically important for performance optimisation of 2D material electronics.

“The new theory has far reaching impact in solid state physics,” said co-author and principal investigator of this research, Prof. Lay Kee Ang from SUTD, “It signals the breakdown of classic diode equation widely used for traditional materials over the past 60 years, and shall improve our understanding on how to design better 2D material electronics.”

An international research group improved perovskite solar cells efficiency by using materials with better light absorption properties. For the first time, researchers used silicon nanoparticles. Such nanoparticles can trap light of a broad range of wavelengths near the cell active layer. The particles themselves don’t absorb light and don’t interact with other elements of the battery, thus maintaining its stability. The research was published in Advanced Optical Materials.

Perovskite solar cells have become very popular over the last few years. This hybrid material allows scientists to create inexpensive, efficient, and easy to use solar cells. The only problem is that the thickness of a perovskite layer should not exceed several hundred nanometers, but at the same time a thin perovskite absorbs less amount of incident photons from the Sun.

For this reason, scientists had to find a way to enhance light harvesting properties of the absorbing perovskite layer without increasing its thickness. To do this, scientists use metal nanoparticles. Such particles allow for better light absorption due to surface plasmon excitation but have significant drawbacks. For example, they absorb some energy themselves, thus heating up and damaging the battery. Scientists from ITMO University, in collaboration with colleagues from St. Petersburg State University, Italy and the USA, proposed using silicon nanoparticles to solve these problems.

“Dielectric particles don’t absorb light, so they don’t heat up. They are chemically inert and don’t affect the stability of the battery. Besides, being highly resonant, such particles can absorb more light of a wide range of wavelengths. Due to special layout characteristics, they don’t damage the structure of the cells. These advantages allowed us to enhance cells efficiency up to almost 19%. So far, this is the best known result for this particular perovskite material with incorporated nanoparticles,” shares Aleksandra Furasova, a postgraduate student at ITMO’s Faculty of Physics and Engineering.

According to the scientists, this is the first research on using silicon nanoparticles for enhancing light harvesting properties of the absorbing upper layer. Silicon nanoparticles have already surpassed plasmonic ones. The scientists hope that a deeper study of the interaction between nanoparticles and light, as well as their application in perovskite solar cells will lead to even better results.

“In our research, we used MAPbI3 perovskite, which allowed us to study in detail how resonant silicon nanoparticles affect perovskites solar cells. Now we can further try to use such particles for other types of perovskites with increased efficiency and stability. Apart from that, the nanoparticles themselves can be modified in order to enhance their optical and transport properties. It is important to note that silicon nanoparticles are very inexpensive and easy to produce. Therefore, this method can be easily incorporated in the process of solar cells production,” commented Sergey Makarov, head of ITMO’s Laboratory of Hybrid Nanophotonics and Optoelectronics.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory induced a two-dimensional material to cannibalize itself for atomic “building blocks” from which stable structures formed.

The findings, reported in Nature Communications, provide insights that may improve design of 2D materials for fast-charging energy-storage and electronic devices.

“Under our experimental conditions, titanium and carbon atoms can spontaneously form an atomically thin layer of 2D transition-metal carbide, which was never observed before,” said Xiahan Sang of ORNL.

He and ORNL’s Raymond Unocic led a team that performed in situ experiments using state-of-the-art scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM), combined with theory-based simulations, to reveal the mechanism’s atomistic details.

“This study is about determining the atomic-level mechanisms and kinetics that are responsible for forming new structures of a 2D transition-metal carbide such that new synthesis methods can be realized for this class of materials,” Unocic added.

The starting material was a 2D ceramic called a MXene (pronounced “max een”). Unlike most ceramics, MXenes are good electrical conductors because they are made from alternating atomic layers of carbon or nitrogen sandwiched within transition metals like titanium.

The research was a project of the Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport (FIRST) Center, a DOE Energy Frontier Research Center that explores fluid-solid interface reactions that have consequences for energy transport in everyday applications. Scientists conducted experiments to synthesize and characterize advanced materials and performed theory and simulation work to explain observed structural and functional properties of the materials. New knowledge from FIRST projects provides guideposts for future studies.

The high-quality material used in these experiments was synthesized by Drexel University scientists, in the form of five-ply single-crystal monolayer flakes of MXene. The flakes were taken from a parent crystal called “MAX,” which contains a transition metal denoted by “M”; an element such as aluminum or silicon, denoted by “A”; and either a carbon or nitrogen atom, denoted by “X.” The researchers used an acidic solution to etch out the monoatomic aluminum layers, exfoliate the material and delaminate it into individual monolayers of a titanium carbide MXene (Ti3C2).

The ORNL scientists suspended a large MXene flake on a heating chip with holes drilled in it so no support material, or substrate, interfered with the flake. Under vacuum, the suspended flake was exposed to heat and irradiated with an electron beam to clean the MXene surface and fully expose the layer of titanium atoms.

MXenes are typically inert because their surfaces are covered with protective functional groups–oxygen, hydrogen and fluorine atoms that remain after acid exfoliation. After protective groups are removed, the remaining material activates. Atomic-scale defects–“vacancies” created when titanium atoms are removed during etching–are exposed on the outer ply of the monolayer. “These atomic vacancies are good initiation sites,” Sang said. “It’s favorable for titanium and carbon atoms to move from defective sites to the surface.” In an area with a defect, a pore may form when atoms migrate.

“Once those functional groups are gone, now you’re left with a bare titanium layer (and underneath, alternating carbon, titanium, carbon, titanium) that’s free to reconstruct and form new structures on top of existing structures,” Sang said.

High-resolution STEM imaging proved that atoms moved from one part of the material to another to build structures. Because the material feeds on itself, the growth mechanism is cannibalistic.

“The growth mechanism is completely supported by density functional theory and reactive molecular dynamics simulations, thus opening up future possibilities to use these theory tools to determine the experimental parameters required for synthesizing specific defect structures,” said Adri van Duin of Penn State.

Most of the time, only one additional layer [of carbon and titanium] grew on a surface. The material changed as atoms built new layers. Ti3C2 turned into Ti4C3, for example.

“These materials are efficient at ionic transport, which lends itself well to battery and supercapacitor applications,” Unocic said. “How does ionic transport change when we add more layers to nanometer-thin MXene sheets?” This question may spur future studies.

“Because MXenes containing molybdenum, niobium, vanadium, tantalum, hafnium, chromium and other metals are available, there are opportunities to make a variety of new structures containing more than three or four metal atoms in cross-section (the current limit for MXenes produced from MAX phases),” Yury Gogotsi of Drexel University added. “Those materials may show different useful properties and create an array of 2D building blocks for advancing technology.”

At ORNL’s Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), Yu Xie, Weiwei Sun and Paul Kent performed first-principles theory calculations to explain why these materials grew layer by layer instead of forming alternate structures, such as squares. Xufan Li and Kai Xiao helped understand the growth mechanism, which minimizes surface energy to stabilize atomic configurations. Penn State scientists conducted large-scale dynamical reactive force field simulations showing how atoms rearranged on surfaces, confirming defect structures and their evolution as observed in experiments.

The researchers hope the new knowledge will help others grow advanced materials and generate useful nanoscale structures.

They are among the thinnest structures on earth: “two dimensional materials” are crystals which consist of only one or a few layers of atoms. They often display unusual properties, promising many new applications in opto-electronics and energy technology. One of these materials is 2D-molybdenum sulphide, an atomically thin layer of molybdenum and sulphur atoms.

The production of such ultra-thin crystals is difficult. The crystallisation process depends on many different factors. In the past, different techniques have yielded quite diverse results, but the reasons for this could not be accurately explained. Thanks to a new method developed by research teams at TU Wien, the University of Vienna and Joanneum Research in Styria, for the first time ever it is now possible to observe the crystallisation process directly under the electron microscope. The method has now been presented in the scientific journal ACS Nano.

At first, the atoms are randomly distributed, after being manipulated with the electron beam, they form crystal structures (right). Credit: TU Wien

From gas to crystal

“Molybdenum sulphide can be used in transparent and flexible solar cells or for sustainably generating hydrogen for energy storage”, says the lead author of the study, Bernhard C. Bayer from the Institute of Materials Chemistry at TU Wien. “In order to do this, however, high-quality crystals must be grown under controlled conditions.”

Usually this is done by starting out with atoms in gaseous form and then condensing them on a surface in a random and unstructured way. In a second step, the atoms are arranged in regular crystal form – through heating, for example. “The diverse chemical reactions during the crystallisation process are, however, still unclear, which makes it very difficult to develop better production methods for 2D materials of this kind”, Bayer states.

Thanks to a new method, however, it should now be possible to accurately study the details of the crystallisation process. “This means it is no longer necessary to experiment through trial and error, but thanks to a deeper understanding of the processes, we can say for certain how to obtain the desired product”, Bayer adds.

Graphene as a substrate

First, molybdenum and sulphur are placed randomly on a membrane made of graphene. Graphene is probably the best known of the 2D materials – a crystal with a thickness of only one atom layer consisting of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice. The randomly arranged molybdenum and sulphur atoms are then manipulated in the electron microscope with a fine electron beam. The same electron beam can be used simultaneously to image the process and to initiate the crystallization process.

That way it has now become possible for the first time to directly observe how the atoms move and rearrange during the growth of the material with a thickness of only two atomic layers. “In doing so, we can see that the most thermodynamically stable configuration doesn’t necessarily always have to be the final state”, Bayer says. Different crystal arrangements compete with one another, transform into each other and replace one another. “Therefore, it is now clear why earlier investigations had such varying results. We are dealing with a complex, dynamic process.” The new findings will help to adapt the structure of the 2D materials more precisely to application requirements in future by interfering with the rearrangement processes in a targeted manner.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology designed a new type of molecular wire doped with organometallic ruthenium to achieve unprecedentedly higher conductance than earlier molecular wires. The origin of high conductance in these wires is fundamentally different from similar molecular devices and suggests a potential strategy for developing highly conducting “doped” molecular wires.

The proposed wire is ‘doped’ with a ruthenium unit that enhances its conductance to unprecedented levels compared with previously reported similar molecular wires. Credit: Journal of the American Chemical Society

Since their conception, researchers have tried to shrink electronic devices to unprecedented sizes, even to the point of fabricating them from a few molecules. Molecular wires are one of the building blocks of such minuscule contraptions, and many researchers have been developing strategies to synthesize highly conductive, stable wires from carefully designed molecules.

A team of researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology, including Yuya Tanaka, designed a novel molecular wire in the form of a metal electrode-molecule-metal electrode (MMM) junction including a polyyne, an organic chain-like molecule, “doped” with a ruthenium-based unit Ru(dppe)2. The proposed design, featured in the cover of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is based on engineering the energy levels of the conducting orbitals of the atoms of the wire, considering the characteristics of gold electrodes.

Using scanning tunneling microscopy, the team confirmed that the conductance of these molecular wires was equal to or higher than those of previously reported organic molecular wires, including similar wires “doped” with iron units. Motivated by these results, the researchers then went on to investigate the origin of the proposed wire’s superior conductance. They found that the observed conducting properties were fundamentally different from previously reported similar MMM junctions and were derived from orbital splitting. In other words, orbital splitting induces changes in the original electron orbitals of the atoms to define a new “hybrid” orbital facilitating electron transfer between the metal electrodes and the wire molecules. According to Tanaka, “such orbital splitting behavior has rarely been reported for any other MMM junction”.

Since a narrow gap between the highest (HOMO) and lowest (LUMO) occupied molecular orbitals is a crucial factor for enhancing conductance of molecular wires, the proposed synthesis protocol adopts a new technique to exploit this knowledge, as Tanaka adds “The present study reveals a new strategy to realize molecular wires with an extremely narrow HOMO?LUMO gap via MMM junction formation.”

This explanation for the fundamentally different conducting properties of the proposed wires facilitate the strategic development of novel molecular components, which could be the building blocks of future minuscule electronic devices.

Global semiconductor industry revenue grew 4.4 percent, quarter over quarter, in the second quarter of 2018, reaching a record $120.8 billion. Semiconductor growth occurred in all application markets and world regions, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

“The explosive growth in enterprise and storage drove the market to new heights in the second quarter,” said Ron Ellwanger, senior analyst and component landscape tool manager, IHS Markit. “This growth contributed to record application revenue in data processing and wired communication markets as well as in the microcomponent and memory categories.”

Due to the ongoing growth in the enterprise and storage markets, sequential microcomponent sales grew 6.5 percent in the second quarter, while memory semiconductor revenue increased 6.4 percent. “Broadcom Limited experienced exceptional growth in its wired communication division, due to increased cloud and data-center demand,” Ellwanger said.

Memory component revenue continued to rise in the second quarter, compared to the previous quarter, reaching $42.0 billion dollars. “This is the ninth consecutive quarter of rising revenue from memory components, and growth in the second quarter of 2018 was driven by higher density in enterprise and storage,” Ellwanger said. “This latest uptick comes at a time of softening prices for NAND flash memory. However, more attractive pricing for NAND memory is pushing SSD demand and revenue higher.”

Semiconductor market share

Samsung Electronics continued to lead the overall semiconductor industry in the second quarter with 15.9 percent of the market, followed by Intel at 13.9 percent and SK Hynix at 7.9 percent. Quarter-over-quarter market shares were relatively flat, with no change in the top-three ranking. SK Hynix achieved the highest growth rate and record quarterly sales among the top three companies, recording 16.4 percent growth in the second quarter.