Category Archives: Displays

Outdoor LED adoption trends


August 23, 2011

August 23, 2011 — Light emitting diode (LED) packages for outdoor luminaire have experienced a 20%-25% drop in price since Q4 2010, which Strategies Unlimited expects to continue into 2012. The viability of LEDs in outdoor applications will be a test for LED technology’s competitiveness as a whole. Particularly in China, street lighting is the biggest sector for LED adoption.

The price decline is proving to be a boon for quality luminaire manufacturers, spurring post-pilot and post-stimulus programs, says Strategies Unlimited.

China is the world’s largest market for outdoor LED lighting, but the market contracted in 2011 due to reliability issues, Strategies Unlimited reports. China’s LED market will jump to $5.8 billion in 2011, up 23% from $4.7 billion last year, according to IHS’s IHS iSuppli China Electronics Supply Chain Service. China’s LED market will then rise to $11.1 billion in 2015, for a 5-year CAGR of 17.7%.

Street lighting is a major LED adoption driver, the largest in China, says Vincent Gu, senior analyst for China electronics research at IHS. LED street lights will bring in $1.5 billion this year and should hit $1.8 billion in 2012. It is followed by other LED applications, such as LCD TV and laptop backlights.

In North America, quality consciousness has kept the LED transition’s momentum up, thanks in part to the US Department of Energy (DOE), and efforts by the Municipal Solid-State Street Lighting Consortium and the Design Lights Consortium, Strategies Unlimited notes. IHS agrees that China’s LED industry is in its "infancy," and "lagging technological capabilities [and] a paucity of adequately experienced management teams and R&D engineers," are keeping it from the steadier progress seen in the US and Taiwan.

Get the reports:
Strategies Unlimited: LED Outdoor and Area Lighting; Market Analysis and Forecast. www.strategies-u.com.
IHS iSuppli: China Witnessing the Rise of its Flourishing LED Industry. http://www.isuppli.com/China-Electronics-Supply-Chain/Pages/China-Witnessing-the-Rise-of-its-Flourishing-LED-Industry.aspx?PRX

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August 18, 2011 – BUSINESS WIRE — The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense (DoD) awarded QD Vision Inc. $900,000 to advance their quantum dot (QD) based infrared (IR) materials and deliver two prototype devices. The R&D is expected to take 12 months.

QD Vision is tasked with creating a prototype device using quantum dots as an emissive layer in an electronic device (electroluminescent application) and another in a film that is activated by external light sources (photoluminescent application). The company has previously demonstrated a quantum-dot-based display, and proprietary printing method to fabricate QDs.

QD Vision has worked with DARPA before as a prime contractor. To learn more about QD Vision’s Government Business, visit www.qdvision.com/government-contracts.

Although this project is sponsored by DARPA, the content of the information does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

QD Vision makes quantum dots, semiconductor crystals that control light, in highly differentiated display and lighting solutions. Learn more at www.qdvision.com

August 5, 2011 – Rice University’s James Tour’s Lab has created thin films from graphene that eliminate expensive, brittle indium tin oxide (ITO) films for touchscreen displays, solar panels, and LED lights. The see-through graphene-hybrid film is flexible, allowing integration into body-wearable electronics or building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), among other commercial applications.

Rice University’s hybrid graphene/aluminum mesh material. (Credit: Yu Zhu, Rice University)

The Tour Lab’s thin film combines a single-layer sheet of highly conductive graphene with a fine grid of metal nanowire. The combination outperformed ITO and competing materials at the Lab, offering better transparency and lower electrical resistance. The hybrid works better than pure graphene, which interacts too much with its substrate, Tour said. The fine metal mesh maintains conductivity without blocking transparency, added postdoctoral researcher Yu Zhu. The gaps in the nanowires make them unsuitable stand-alone components in conductive electrodes. The researchers settled on a grid of 5um aluminum nanowires.

Standard roll-to-roll (R2R) and ink-jet printing could produce the metal grids on a commercial scale. Roll-to-roll graphene production is also becoming more readily available from nanomaterials manufacturing companies. Tour believes the ITO replacement can be scaled up immediately.

An electron microscope image of a hybrid electrode developed at Rice University shows solid connections after 500 bends. (Credit: Tour Lab, Rice University.)

In tests, the hybrid film’s conductivity decreased 20%-30% with the initial 50 bends, but after that the material stabilizes. "There were no significant variations up to 500 bending cycles," Zhu said. More rigorous bending test should be performed by commercial users, he added.

The film also proved environmentally stable. When the research paper was submitted in late 2010, test films had been exposed to the environment in the lab for six months without deterioration. After a year, they remain so.

Yu Zhu holds a sample of a transparent electrode that merges graphene and a fine aluminum grid. Clockwise from top right: James Tour, Zhu, Zheng Yan, and Zhengzong Sun. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow, Rice University.)

The Office of Naval Research Graphene MURI program, the Air Force Research Laboratory through the University Technology Corporation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Lockheed Martin Corp./LANCER IV program supported the research.

The research was reported in the online edition of ACS Nano. James Tour is Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. Yu Zhu is lead author on the paper. Rice graduate students Zhengzong Sun and Zheng Yan and former postdoctoral researcher Zhong Jin are co-authors of the paper.

July 27, 2011 — Solvay provided EUR10 million (USD15 million) to printed electronics company Plextronics, in a financing round to accelerate Plextronics’ technology development and product delivery. Solvay is Plextronics’ largest minority shareholder.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, Plextronics focuses on organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and organic solar photovoltaics (OPV) technology, specifically the conductive inks and process technologies that enable those and other similar applications. It was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2002, based on the research of Dr. Richard McCullough. The company is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certified.

Printed electronics enable new form factors and cost structures for electronic devices.

Plextronics has achieved milestones in the last two years as an advanced ink provider for solution-processed OLED and OPV manufacturers, noted Andy Hannah, President and Chief Executive Officer of Plextronics, who called attention to the company’s OLED development for flat panel displays and lighting applications.

Léopold Demiddeleer, Head of Future Businesses & Corporate Platforms, a section of Solvay’s newly created Innovation Center, noted that OLED adoption is a sign that printed electronics are headed for mass markets.

PLEXTRONICS Inc. an international technology company that specializes in printed lighting, display, solar and other organic electronics. For more information about Plextronics, visit www.plextronics.com.

SOLVAY is an international industrial Group active in chemistry. Solvay is listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange in Brussels (NYSE Euronext: SOLB.BE – Bloomberg: SOLB.BB – Reuters: SOLBt.BR). Learn more at www.solvay.com.

Also read: Organic Electronics Workshop: OLEDs, OTFTs, OPV, and futile resistance by Michael A. Fury

by Michael A. Fury, Techcet Group

Click to Enlarge July 20, 2011 – About 70 researchers from around the world are gathered this week at The Westin San Francisco for this 7th Organic Microelectronics and Optoelectronics Workshop, co-sponsored by ACS, MRS, IEEE, and IEEE CPMT. The attendee distribution reflects the early research stage of these technologies: 60% university, 20% government labs, and the remainder split between device and materials manufacturers.

John Rogers of UIUC gave the opening talk. Although his group does not deal with organic electronics per se, the applications he targets do indeed overlap quite nicely with those of the organic electronics development programs underway. Semprius, a Rogers Lab spin out, now has an equity investment from Siemens following the successful implementation of a utility scale solar power pilot plant near Tucson using thin flex GaAs cells with optical concentrators. Physiological interfaces to silicon electronics suffer from a severe mismatch in mechanical properties. Flexible silicon on stretchable membranes enables a more highly functional, data-rich interface to the conventional electronics that does not damage living tissue.

Flexible displays using organic TFTs was the topic addressed by Iwao Yagi of Sony. The simplest OLED display circuit is 2T-1C (2 TFT and 1 capacitor) with the single OLED pixel. Different device configurations are used for a flexible design vs. a rollable design to minimize the cumulative mechanical stress on the display components.

Organic Electronics Workshop 2011
Day 1: TFTs, FETs, and a seeing microphone
Day 2: Pushing organic PV performance
Day 3: OLEDs, OTFTs, OPV, and futile resistance

Richard McCreery of the National Institute of Nanotechnology (U. of Alberta, Canada) talked about a robust molecular tunnel junction with high temperature stability (to 150

July 19, 2011 — Matthew Taylor became CEO of Edwards about one year ago. He speaks about the business and the industry’s ramp up over 2010-2011.

2010 was a record year for Edwards, with another half-year record so far in 2011. Margins and delivery times are improving, and new products are entering the market.

Each market in which Edwards is a supplier — semiconductors, flat panel, photovoltaics, LEDs, has its own cycles and technology requirements. Semiconductor remains the largest sector for Edwards, but flat panel display (FPD) and photovoltaics manufacturing are growth areas. Edwards uses a core architecture then specializes it to meet the needs of each sector. AMOLED and latest-gen flat panel display manufacturing present gas delivery/vacuum challenges, which Edwards has found to be exciting and evolving.

Edwards received the 2011 SEMICON West Sustainable Technology Award. The EZENITH integrated vacuum and abatement system was selected by a panel of industry experts, demonstrating the product

July 13, 2011 — Nigel Farrar, VP of marketing and lithography technology at Cymer, Inc. (Nasdaq:CYMI), provides a status report on EUV lithography source technology, extensions to argon fluoride (ArF) lithography, and the laser crystallization process from the company’s TCZ display equipment product division. This laser process is used in OLED and LCD display manufacture. He discusses Cymer’s newest DUV source product as well: the OnPulse Plus data monitoring system that enables correlation of light source performance to wafer process performance.

With respect to the current EUV source technology (HVM I source) performance, Farrar said that the source has achieved <0/2% dose stability at 11W average exposure power (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. <0.2% dose stability at 11W average exposure power. SOURCE: Cymer

The current dose stability target is <1.0%, 3s in >90% of fields. The second generation (HVM II) source architecture is complete and detailed design is in progress for ASML’s NXE 3300B scanners. The company has also demonstrated 200hr collector lifetime (Fig. 2) — which is more than double since last year, said Farrar.

Figure 2. 200hr collector lifetime demonstration at Cymer. Collector coating and vessel environment control improves lifetime. SOURCE: Cymer

The company’s TCZ display equipment product division offers a laser crystallization tool that is used for both LCD and OLED displays (Fig. 3). In the podcast, Farrar notes that the company recently received multiple orders for its product.

Figure 3. Process uniformity is critical for high production yield for advanced displays. SOURCE: Cymer

OnPulse Plus, paired with ArF and krypton fluoride (KrF) light sources, provides real-time light source monitoring to help improve fab productivity and wafer quality.

OnPulse Plus will display, in real-time, light source performance data in a new user interface. Future enhancements will improve the data resolution and correlation of light source performance indicators at the wafer and die level. The product, and subsequent developments for light source monitoring, result from Cymer’s recent acquisition of eDiag Solutions.

OnPulse Plus is now available for Cymer ArF and KrF light sources.

SEMICON West 2011 is held from July 12-14 at Moscone Center in San Francisco, CA. Visit our SEMICON West center for news, products, and live blogs.

Cymer Inc. makes light sources used by chipmakers as the essential light source for DUV lithography systems. Visit www.cymer.com

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July 12, 2011 — Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) introduced a toolset for manufacturing low-power, fast interconnects in 22nm and lower logic chips: the Applied Producer Black Diamond 3 deposition system and Applied Producer Nanocure 3 UV curing system. The systems create low-k dielectric films that insulate copper wire interconnects. Applied also debuted a full-vacuum gate stack fab tool today.

The Black Diamond 3 technology, extendible to 14nm, can be integrated into existing process flows. Black Diamond was first introduced for the 90nm node.

Applied’s Black Diamond 3 process creates a dielectric film with uniform porosity. This engineered nano-porosity increases the mechanical strength and hardness of the film, enabling it to withstand the stress of hundreds of downstream processes and packaging steps. The new film also delivers a 2.2 k-value, which reduces parasitic capacitance in interconnects.

The new Applied Producer Nanocure 3 system enhances Applied’s ultraviolet (UV) curing technology for porous low-k films with advancements in UV source optics and chamber design that provide up to 50% more uniform curing than conventional processes. The Nanocure 3 employs a high intensity UV source with a low pressure curing process that results in 40% faster curing. Combined with the Black Diamond 3 film, this two-step deposition and cure process provides up to twice the mechanical strength of Applied’s successful second generation Black Diamond film, reducing device variability and boosting chip yield.

Applied Materials will showcase the breakthrough Black Diamond 3 and Nanocure 3 technologies at Semicon West in San Francisco from July 12-14. Read more product news from SEMICON West.

Applied Materials Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT) provides equipment, services and software to advanced semiconductor, flat panel display and solar photovoltaic manufacturers. Learn more at www.appliedmaterials.com.

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July 12, 2011 — Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT) launched the Applied Centura Integrated Gate Stack system for creating gate dielectric structures in 22nm logic chips. It processes the entire high-k multilayer stack in a single vacuum environment, preserving integrity of film interfaces.

Applied Materials developed the Integrated Gate Stack system to build the dielectric film stack atomically, based around Applied’s advanced atomic layer deposition (ALD) technology, which builds ultra-thin, hafnium-based layers less than 2nm in thickness a fraction of a monolayer at a time.

By fabricating the entire gate dielectric stack under vacuum, the Centura system is able to prevent interface contamination from exposure to ambient air. AMAT reports that eliminating air exposure during processing improves mobility in the transistor by up to 10% and reduces switching voltage variability between transistors by up to 40%.

Applied Materials will showcase its Centura Integrated Gate Stack technology at SEMICON West in San Francisco from July 12-14, booth 303, South Hall. More news and products from SEMICON West

Applied Materials, Inc. (Nasdaq:AMAT) provides equipment, services and software to advanced semiconductor, flat panel display and solar photovoltaic manufacturers. Learn more at www.appliedmaterials.com.

Recent Applied Materials toolset introductions:

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