Category Archives: MEMS

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and design, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $28.2 billion for the month of May 2015, an increase of 5.1 percent from May 2014, when sales were $26.8 billion. Global sales from May 2015 were 2.1 percent higher than the April 2015 total of $27.6 billion. Regionally, sales in the Americas increased 11.4 percent compared to last May to lead all regional markets. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

“The global semiconductor industry overcame lingering macroeconomic uncertainty to post solid year-to-year growth in May,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Year-to-year sales have now increased for 25 straight months, month-to-month sales increased for the first time in six months, and we expect modest growth to continue for the remainder of 2015 and beyond.”

In addition to the Americas market, year-to-year sales also increased in China (9.5 percent) and Asia Pacific/All Other (8.0 percent), but decreased in Europe (-7.8 percent) and Japan (-11.8 percent). Compared to last month, sales were up in China (4.0 percent), Asia Pacific/All Other (3.3 percent), and the Americas (0.2 percent), but decreased slightly in Europe (-0.6 percent) and held flat in Japan.

“Congress and the President recently gave the U.S. semiconductor industry and other trade-dependent sectors a major boost by enacting Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which makes it easier for the United States to strike deals on free trade agreements,” said Neuffer. “With TPA, the United States is more likely to get the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other critical trade agreements across the finish line, leading to continued growth and innovation in our industry and across the U.S. economy.”

May 2015

Billions

Month-to-Month Sales                               

Market

Last Month

Current Month

% Change

Americas

5.61

5.62

0.2%

Europe

2.89

2.87

-0.6%

Japan

2.54

2.54

0.0%

China

7.78

8.09

4.0%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.78

9.07

3.3%

Total

27.61

28.20

2.1%

Year-to-Year Sales                          

Market

Last Year

Current Month

% Change

Americas

5.05

5.62

11.4%

Europe

3.12

2.87

-7.8%

Japan

2.88

2.54

-11.8%

China

7.39

8.09

9.5%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.40

9.07

8.0%

Total

26.83

28.20

5.1%

Three-Month-Moving Average Sales

Market

Nov/Dec/Jan

Feb/Mar/apr

% Change

Americas

6.23

5.62

-9.7%

Europe

2.88

2.87

-0.2%

Japan

2.55

2.54

-0.6%

China

7.76

8.09

4.4%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.32

9.07

9.0%

Total

27.74

28.20

1.7%

 

By Christian Dieseldorff and Lara Chamness, SEMI

We, in the semiconductor supply chain, are constantly immersed in detailed numbers. It’s important to pull back and look at the major trends that have profoundly changed and are reshaping our industry.

Data from SEMI World Fab Forecast reports

1997

2002

2007

2012

2017
Global Volume Fab Count
Number of Fabs WW 

682

802

849

861

864
Number of Fabs WW (excluding discrete and LED)

472

508

499

440

440
Global Volume Fabs by Wafer Size
Number of volume 200mm fabs (excluding discrete and LED)

111

170

173

152

149
Number of volume 300mm fabs (excluding discrete and LED)

0

13

62

81

109
Global Fab Capacity by Device Type
Fab Capacity (200mm equiv. thousand wafer starts per month)

5,655 

7,519 

15,441 

18,068 

20,609 

Memory

20%

19%

36%

29%

27%

Foundry

13%

19%

18%

27%

30%

MPU&Logic

35%

31%

22%

17%

16%

Analog, Discretes, MEMS & Other

32%

31%

24%

27%

26%
Largest Regional Fab Capacities
Fab Capacity Regional Trends (excluding discrete and LED)

Largest installed capacity

Japan

Japan

Japan

Japan

Taiwan

Second largest installed capacity

Americas

Americas

Taiwan

S. Korea

S. Korea

Third largest installed capacity

Europe

Europe

S. Korea

Taiwan

Japan
Source: SEMI (www.semi.org) 

The table shows that the largest increase of new fabs occurred in the time frame from 1997 to 2002 with 18 percent growth rate. The growth rate drops to 6 percent from 2002 to 2007, 1 percent from 2007 to 2012 and flat from 2012 to 2017. This drop in change rate does not mean that there are no new fabs being built but is explained by fabs closing. There are still new fabs being built ─ especially for 300mm ─ but the rate of fabs closing is overshadowing this fact. From 2007 to 2012 alone over 150 facilities closed with majority from 2008 to 2010.

With the rise of 300mm at begin of the millennium we see a rapid increase of 300mm fabs from 2002 to 2007 with 380 percent and at the same time a decrease of new 200m fabs from 50 percent to 2 percent. From 2007 to 2012 more 200mm fabs were closed but this trend is slowing. With emerging IOT demand, 200mm fabs will be part of the capacity mix for the foreseeable future.

Fueled by the fabless or “fab lite” movement, we see that the foundry era has a strong and steady growth since begin of its era in the 90s. By 2017, foundry capacity will have surpassed memory with 30 percent of the total capacity.

Both foundry and memory mainly use 300mm wafers which contribute to the large increase in capacity. The other sector MPU & Logic uses mainly 300mm but there are still fabs with wafer sizes of 200mm or less. While the Logic sector is increasing in capacity with System LSI applications, we see a decline for MPU which contributed to the decline in share.  Although we see an increase of capacity for sensors and analog/mixed signal, the sector combined as “Analog, Discretes, MEMS & Others” shows modest growth mainly because the wafer sizes used are 200mm and below which contributes to the less share of capacity.

For decades Japan was the leader in installed capacity which will have changed by 2017 when Taiwan will have taken over the highest capacity spot.  Japan is restructuring business models and approaching a more fab-lite to fabless model.  Korea is mainly driven by Samsung and is benefitting from the mobile business using memory and System LSI chips.

For more information on market data, visit www.semi.org/en/MarketInfo and attend an upcoming SEMICON: SEMICON West 2015 (July 14-16) in San Francisco, Calif; SEMICON Taiwan 2015 (September 2-4) in Taipei, Taiwan; SEMICON Europa 2015 (October 6-8) in Dresden, Germany; SEMICON Japan 2015 (December 16-18) in Tokyo, Japan.

Engineers at Oregon State University have invented a way to fabricate silver, a highly conductive metal, for printed electronics that are produced at room temperature.

There may be broad applications in microelectronics, sensors, energy devices, low emissivity coatings and even transparent displays.

A patent has been applied for on the technology, which is now available for further commercial development. The findings were reported in Journal of Materials Chemistry C.

Silver has long been considered for the advantages it offers in electronic devices. Because of its conductive properties, it is efficient and also stays cool. But manufacturers have often needed high temperatures in the processes they use to make the devices, adding to their cost and complexity, and making them unsuitable for use on some substrates, such as plastics that might melt or papers that might burn.

This advance may open the door to much wider use of silver and other conductors in electronics applications, researchers said.

“There’s a great deal of interest in printed electronics, because they’re fast, cheap, can be done in small volumes and changed easily,” said Chih-hung Chang, a professor in the OSU College of Engineering. “But the heat needed for most applications of silver nanoparticles has limited their use.”

OSU scientists have solved that problem by using a microreactor to create silver nanoparticles at room temperatures without any protective coating, and then immediately printing them onto almost any substrate with a continuous flow process.

“Because we could now use different substrates such as plastics, glass or even paper, these electronics could be flexible, very inexpensive and stable,” Chang said. “This could be quite important and allow us to use silver in many more types of electronic applications.”

Among those, he said, could be solar cells, printed circuit boards, low-emissivity coatings, or transparent electronics. A microchannel applicator used in the system will allow the creation of smaller, more complex electronics features.

Smartphones first accounted for more than 50 percent of total quarterly cellphone shipments in 1Q13. In 4Q15, smartphones are forecast to reach 435 million units or 80 percent of total cellphones shipped according to data in IC Insights’ newly released Update to its IC Market Drivers Report (Figure 1). On an annual basis, smartphones first surpassed the 50 percent penetration level in 2013 (54 percent) and are forecast to represent 93 percent of total cellphone shipments in 2018.

Figure 1

Figure 1

In contrast, non-smartphone cellphone shipments dropped by 18 percent in 2013 and 23 percent in 2014.  Moreover, IC Insights expects the 2015 non-smartphone cellphone unit shipment decline to be steeper than 2014’s drop with a decline of 27 percent. Total cellphone unit shipments grew by only 5 percent in 2014 and are forecast to grow by only 3 percent in 2015 (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Figure 2

Samsung and Apple dominated the smartphone market in both 2013 and 2014.  In total, these two companies shipped 457 million smartphones and held a combined 47 percent share of the total smartphone market in 2013.  These two companies shipped over 500 million smartphones in 2014 (503.9 million), but their combined smartphone unit marketshare dropped seven percentage points to 40 percent.  It appears that both Samsung and Apple are losing smartphone marketshare to the up-and-coming Chinese producers like Xiaomi, Yulong/Coolpad, and TCL.

In contrast to the weakening fortunes of Nokia, BlackBerry, and HTC, 2013-2014 smartphone sales from China-based Lenovo (which acquired Motorola’s smartphone business from Google in October of 2014), Huawei, Xiaomi, Yulong/Coolpad, and TCL surged.  Combined, the six top-10 China-based smartphone suppliers shipped 359 million smartphones in 2014, a 79 percent increase from the 201 million smartphones these six companies shipped in 2013.  As a result, the top six Chinese smartphone suppliers together held a 29 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market in 2014, up eight points from the 21 percent share these companies held in 2013.

In early 2015, there were numerous reports of slowing in the Chinese smartphone market.  Since most of the Chinese smartphone producer’s sales are to Chinese customers, this slowdown became evident in their 1Q15 smartphone sales figures.  In total, the top six China-based smartphone suppliers shipped 83.4 million smartphones and held a 25 percent share of the 1Q15 worldwide smartphone market, down four points from their 29 percent combined marketshare in 2014.

Chinese smartphone suppliers primarily serve the China and Asia-Pacific marketplaces.  Their smartphones, unlike those from Apple, Sony, and HTC are low-cost low-end handsets that typically sell for less than $200.  In some cases, smartphones sold by the Chinese companies have been known to sell for as little as $50.

With much of the growth in the smartphone market currently taking place in developing countries such as China and India, low-end smartphones are expected to be a driving force in the smartphone market over the next few years.  IC Insights defines low-end smartphones as those that sell for $200 or less and high-end smartphones as those that sell for greater than $200.

Ambiq Micro, a developer of ultra-low power integrated circuits for power-sensitive applications, today announced the appointment Mike Noonen as interim Chief Executive Officer with immediate effect.  Mr Noonen brings over 25 years’ experience in semiconductors and has been on the Board of Directors of Ambiq Micro since February 2014. His career includes senior management roles in semiconductor businesses including National Semiconductor, NXP Semiconductors, and GlobalFoundries, and he is a board director at Quora Semiconductor, Kilopass, Adapteva Inc. and the Chairman of Silicon Catalyst, the first incubator for semiconductor start-ups.

Commenting on the appointment, Mike Noonen said, “Ambiq Micro has brought game-changing technology to semiconductors and new possibilities and value to IoT and wearable device makers. At a time when power consumption is the key criterion for designers, Ambiq Micro has developed the world’s most energy efficient ICs. I look forward to working with Scott Hanson and the Ambiq Micro team during this transition to accelerate the ultra-low power revolution they have created.”

Ambiq Micro co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, Scott Hanson, added, “Mike’s wide-ranging semiconductor industry experience is going to be a great asset as we build upon the success achieved under Mark Foley’s leadership as CEO since 2012. Mike has a clear vision of how the industry is evolving and of the vital role that Ambiq plays in enabling designers of wearables and other battery-powered IoT devices to make their products more attractive to consumers through outstanding battery life. ”

Mr Noonen holds a BSEE from Colorado State University.

Flexing graphene may be the most basic way to control its electrical properties, according to calculations by theoretical physicists at Rice University and in Russia.

The Rice lab of Boris Yakobson in collaboration with researchers in Moscow found the effect is pronounced and predictable in nanocones and should apply equally to other forms of graphene.

The researchers discovered it may be possible to access what they call an electronic flexoelectric effect in which the electronic properties of a sheet of graphene can be manipulated simply by twisting it a certain way.

The work will be of interest to those considering graphene elements in flexible touchscreens or memories that store bits by controlling electric dipole moments of carbon atoms, the researchers said.

Perfect graphene – an atom-thick sheet of carbon – is a conductor, as its atoms’ electrical charges balance each other out across the plane. But curvature in graphene compresses the electron clouds of the bonds on the concave side and stretches them on the convex side, thus altering their electric dipole moments, the characteristic that controls how polarized atoms interact with external electric fields.

The researchers who published their results this month in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters discovered they could calculate the flexoelectric effect of graphene rolled into a cone of any size and length.

The researchers used density functional theory to compute dipole moments for individual atoms in a graphene lattice and then figure out their cumulative effect. They suggested their technique could be used to calculate the effect for graphene in other more complex shapes, like wrinkled sheets or distorted fullerenes, several of which they also analyzed.

“While the dipole moment is zero for flat graphene or cylindrical nanotubes, in between there is a family of cones, actually produced in laboratories, whose dipole moments are significant and scale linearly with cone length,” Yakobson said.

Carbon nanotubes, seamless cylinders of graphene, do not display a total dipole moment, he said. While not zero, the vector-induced moments cancel each other out.

That’s not so with a cone, in which the balance of positive and negative charges differ from one atom to the next, due to slightly different stresses on the bonds as the diameter changes. The researchers noted atoms along the edge also contribute electrically, but analyzing two cones docked edge-to-edge allowed them to cancel out, simplifying the calculations.

Yakobson sees potential uses for the newly found characteristic. “One possibly far-reaching characteristic is in the voltage drop across a curved sheet,” he said. “It can permit one to locally vary the work function and to engineer the band-structure stacking in bilayers or multiple layers by their bending. It may also allow the creation of partitions and cavities with varying electrochemical potential, more ‘acidic’ or ‘basic,’ depending on the curvature in the 3-D carbon architecture.”

Wearable electronics is one of the consumer market’s hottest topics. Indeed, giants like Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, and Huawei are now competing for a slice of a very promising pie. Under this context, Yole Développement (Yole) releases a technology & market analysis entitled Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare. According to this analysis, the wearable industry will reach 295 million units by 2020, with a market value of US$90B. According to Yole’s report, three markets will drive this impressive growth: consumer, healthcare, and industrial.

Sensors for Wearable Electronics & Mobile Healthcare report is a comprehensive analysis providing a deep understanding of the wearable landscape, applications and market drivers. With this new technology and market analysis, Yole proposes an overview of the sensors portfolio for the wearable markets including inertial, pressure, biosensor, environmental. This report also presents a detailed technology and applications roadmap.

“Wearable technology is expected to be part of the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution, bringing useful information directly to the user in a more natural and friendly way than with traditional electronic devices,” commented Guillaume Girardin, Technology & Market Analyst, MEMS & Sensors at Yole.

Yole expects the consumer market, which is mostly comprised of fitness bands and smart watches to grow faster than the other two. The healthcare market, which covers devices like hearing aids, blood pressure monitors, and back monitor sensors, is expected to grow at a lower rate, since this market has already been growing for many years. Regarding the industrial market, Yole expected slow, steady growth through 2019, with a significant uptick commencing in 2020.

Until recently, wearable electronics were often associated with the healthcare market – typically, bulky medical devices with only a few features and not optimized for “customer-friendly” usage. Often times, these devices including hearing aids and blood pressure monitors, perform a single task and are solely dedicated to patient monitoring and/or well-being.

“They are not “smart devices.” Indeed their only mission is to accurately complete a single task. At Yole, we believe that a large part of the healthcare market will evolve in association with the consumer market, eventually blurring the lines between healthcare and consumer devices,” said Dr. Benjamin Roussel, Activity Leader, Medical Technology at Yole.

And Yole’s report details: in fact, the healthcare market will slowly merge with the consumer one, resulting in personalized medicine that involves self-monitoring of one’s health with smart and reliable devices. However, these kind of devices, which require a highly accurate, highly reliable tracking of biological signs in a non-invasive fashion, are not expected for another few years.

From a technology point of view, the “More than Moore” strategy consulting and market research company, Yole, analyses in this new report, the impact on the MEMS industry. Indeed, the MEMS sensors industry has acquired from the smartphone market a strong experience in inertial sensors, microphones, and pressure or environmental sensors.

Based on this experience, the MEMS players have pushed the boundaries of performance and size. Sensors are now small enough, reliable enough, and accurate enough to be included in a pocket-sized device of only 9cm3, while delivering a performance comparable to a smartphone from 2013! These sensors are the ones that wearable devices identified by Yole’s analysts and listed in this new report, until 2018.
The integration of biosensors (HRM, sweat sensor, skin temperature) is more difficult due to lack of experience, and technical challenges. Moreover, battery limitation is pushing the industry towards more optimization, even on the hardware side, through either packaging innovation or new designs with lower power consumption. Software is another area that’s acquiring value, with sensor fusion creating smarter sensors. Such improvements have led to sublime new features like context awareness or “always-on” sensors, which has increased device intelligence.

“All these improvements will lead the global sensors market for wearable from 112 million units in 2014, to 835 million units by 2020, which is proof that this market is still in its infancy”, confirms Guillaume Girardin from Yole.

Semiconductor equipment manufacturer ClassOne Technology announced that X-FAB — recently named “MEMS Foundry of the Year” — has just purchased a new Solstice S8 Electroplating System. The 8-chamber, fully-automated tool will be installed at the X-FAB facility in Erfurt, Germany.

“X-FAB selected ClassOne from a field of major equipment vendors after an in-depth evaluation that compared plating technology, price and overall value,” said Win Carpenter, ClassOne’s V.P. of Global Sales. “X-FAB was particularly interested in process performance, so our advanced and flexible chamber design gave ClassOne a strong advantage.”

“We see the MEMS market growing significantly,” said Kevin Witt, ClassOne’s V.P. of Technology. “However, one of the fundamental challenges is that MEMS users need to be cost sensitive, so they generally cannot afford the large, expensive tools that were developed for CMOS technology. This is why Solstice has become very attractive to many emerging markets like MEMS: It gives them the advanced processing technology they want at a price they can afford.”

ClassOne Technology introduced its Solstice family in 2014 as a high-performance yet cost-efficient electroplating solution for users of ≤200mm wafers, in MEMS and many other emerging markets. Solstice systems are priced at less than half of what similarly configured plating systems from the larger manufacturers would cost — which is why Solstice has been described as “Advanced Plating for the Rest of Us.” These tools can electroplate many different metals and alloys in a broad spectrum of processes, either on transparent or opaque substrates. Solstice models are available for development use as well as for fully-automated, cassette-to-cassette production, with throughput of up to 75 wph. ClassOne also supports customers with world-class process development, deployment and service around the globe.

X-FAB Semiconductor Foundries, with headquarters in Erfurt, Germany, is one of the industry’s leading analog/mixed-signal and MEMS foundry groups, manufacturing silicon wafers for automotive, industrial, consumer, medical and other applications. Its worldwide customers utilize X-FAB’s modular CMOS processes in geometries ranging from 1.0 to 0.18 µm, and its special BCD, SOI and MEMS long-lifetime processes. The company operates five production facilities in Germany, Malaysia and the U.S.

ORBOTECH LTD. today announced that SPTS Technologies Group Ltd. (SPTS), an Orbotech company and supplier of advanced wafer processing solutions, has sold its Thermal Products business to SPP Technologies Co, Ltd. (SPT), a subsidiary of Sumitomo Precision Products Co., Ltd. SPT specializes in the production, sales and support of micro electromechanical systems (MEMS) and semiconductor related process equipment. The transaction includes sale of all thermal product lines and virtually all worldwide assets of SPTS’s Thermal Product business, and will involve approximately fifty SPTS employees worldwide, who are currently engaged in the Thermal Products business, becoming employees of SPT. 

Kevin Crofton, President of SPTS and Corporate Vice President at Orbotech said: “Historically, the Thermal Products business has been part of SPTS’s growth and success, with a range of production-proven vertical batch furnaces that continue to be the process tools of choice at leading semiconductor fabs around the world.  Divestment at this time, however, will benefit SPTS by enabling us to focus resources on our core Advanced Packaging, MEMS, RF and Power devices businesses.  We believe this sale will provide new opportunities for the Thermal Products business under the ownership of SPT, and we wish them continued achievement and success.”

Toshihiro Hayami, President of SPT, said: “This acquisition will allow us to expand the product portfolio that we offer our customers, create a footprint in the global semiconductor capital equipment industry and establish a worldwide presence for our company. We expect the Thermal Products business to contribute to the success of SPT and look forward to new product development activities related to this business in its current and adjacent markets.”

SPT acquired the assets of the Thermal Products business based on a valuation of approximately $28 million, comprised of $22 million in cash plus approximately $6 million in accounts receivable. Half of the cash was paid on completion and the balance will be paid in 2016, without any performance conditions. Orbotech intends to use the net proceeds to repay a portion of the amount outstanding under its credit facilities.  The sale does not materially affect Orbotech’s expectations for its financial performance in the second half of 2015 or its long term business model.

Each year at SEMICON West, the largest microelectronics exposition in North America, the “Best of West” awards are presented by Solid State Technology and SEMI. The award was established to recognize new products moving the industry forward with technological developments in the microelectronics supply chain.

The Best of West 2015 Finalists will be displaying their tools on the show floor at Moscone Center from July 14-16:

  • ClassOne Technology: Solstice S4 — Solstice S4 is the first automated plating tool that delivers advanced performance on smaller substrates at affordable prices. Described as “advanced plating for the rest of us,” Solstice is designed specifically for the smaller-substrate users in emerging technologies such as MEMs, LEDs, Power Devices, RF Communications, Interposers, Photonics and Microfluidics. Solstice sets new standards for plating performance and affordability. South Hall, Booth #2521.
  • National Instruments: NI Semiconductor Test Systems — NI’s Semiconductor Test Systems (STS) feature PXI modular instrumentation and open system design software for semiconductor test environments. Unlike traditional ATE systems that incur costs as old generations of equipment become obsolete, NI STS’ open architecture allows engineers to retain their investments and easily scale. Its compact design eliminates floor space, power, and maintenance costs, and is ideal for characterization and production to decrease time to market. North Hall, Booth #5472.
  • Nordson ASYMTEK: Programmable Tilt + Rotate 5-Axis Fluid Dispenser — With requirements for precision, accuracy, and speed more stringent than ever and pushing the limits of dispensing equipment capabilities, the new programmable Tilt + Rotate 5-Axis Fluid Dispenser solves these problems, achieving unparalleled accuracy and precision in X, Y, and Z axes for thin lines and small dots, to make high-volume manufacturing possible for today’s new products. North Hall, Booth #5743.

The Best of West Award winner will be announced during SEMICON West (www.semiconwest.org) on Wednesday, July 15, 2015.