Category Archives: MEMS

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing a novel technology that would facilitate close monitoring of structures for strain, stress and early formation of cracks. Their approach uses wireless sensors that are low cost, require no power, can be implemented on tough yet flexible polymer substrates, and can identify structural problems at a very early stage. The only electronic component in the sensor is an inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip.

Georgia Tech researcher smart skin sensors
Credit: Gary Meek

Moreover, these sensor designs can be inkjet-printed on various substrates, using methods that optimize them for operation at radio frequency. The result would be low-cost, weather-resistant devices that could be affixed by the thousands to various kinds of structures.

“For many engineering structures, one of the most dangerous problems is the initiation of stress concentration and cracking, which is caused by overloading or inadequate design and can lead to collapse – as in the case of the I-35W bridge failure in Minneapolis in 2007,” said Yang Wang, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Placing a ‘smart skin’ of sensors on structural members, especially on certain high-stress hot spots that have been pinpointed by structural analysis, could provide early notification of potential trouble.”

Wang is collaborating with a team that includes professor Manos M. Tentzeris of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Roberto Leon, a former Georgia Tech professor who recently moved to Virginia Tech. The work is supported by the Federal Highway Administration.

crack testing smart skin sensors
Credit: Gary Meek

This research was recently reported in IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, Volume 11, 2012, and International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials, Volume 2, 2011. Parts of this research were also presented at ASME 2012 Conference on Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS) and several other conferences.

Antennas as Sensors

The Georgia Tech research team is focusing on wireless sensor designs that are passive, which means they need no power source. Instead, these devices respond to radio-frequency signals sent from a central reader or hub. One such reader can interrogate multiple sensors, querying them on their status at frequent intervals.

As long as the structural member to which the antenna/sensor is affixed remains entirely stable, its frequency stays the same. But even a slight deformation in the structure also deforms the antenna and alters its frequency response. The reader can detect that change at once, initiating a warning months or years before an actual collapse.

“A key benefit of this technology is that it’s completely wireless,” Wang said. “It doesn’t require a battery, and you don’t have to climb around on bridges running long connecting cables.”

The research team has developed a prototype strain/crack sensor that has been successfully tested in the laboratory, Wang said. The simple device consists of a small piece of copper mounted on a polymer substrate, plus a 10-cent 1mm by 1mm RFID chip. The chip is used to distinguish each individual sensing unit from others. The simple sensor architecture allows it to be made at very low cost and to potentially be deployed in large quantities on any bridge.

Inkjet-Printed Circuits

More sophisticated designs are in the works. Tentzeris’ team is tackling an approach that produces strain sensors using different applications of inkjet printing technology.

One such design uses a silver-nanoparticle-based ink that is applied to a flexible or semi-flexible substrate, said Rushi Vyas, a Ph.D. student working with Tentzeris. The ink lays down a structure that can change properties in response to strain.

smart skin sensors for aging infrastructure
Credit: Gary Meek

A second approach involves the use of inkjet-printed carbon-nanotube-based structures, Vyas said. In this case, the nanotubes themselves produce an altered response when subjected to deformation.

In laboratory testing, the team’s prototype sensors have demonstrated high sensitivity in response to even slight changes in metal structures, Wang said. The sensors have been able to reliably detect a degree of deformation change as low as tens of microstrains (one microstrain equals 0.0001 percent, or 1 part per million), and they can continuously monitor stress accumulation until the metal develops a severe crack.

One issue still being addressed is the capacity of the passive sensor to respond to a reader. A reader transmits a radio-frequency beam to a sensor, which utilizes that received energy to reflect a signal back to the reader.

But this technique can be rather inefficient, Vyas said. A signal from a reader might travel 50 feet, yet the sensor’s response might only travel back 10 feet. One issue is that readers are limited by FCC regulations, which govern how much power can be transmitted to the sensor.

Increasing the Power

What’s needed are ways to supply a sensor with a power source that would increase the range of the response signal. Batteries are not preferred because they can be undependable and require periodic replacement.

One candidate solution – in addition to solar-energy and vibration-energy harvesting – is scavenged energy, Tentzeris said. A Georgia Tech team that includes Tentzeris and Vyas is researching ways to gather power from ambient or electromagnetic energy in the air, such as television, radio, radar or other manmade signals found in Earth’s lower atmosphere.

Scavenging experiments utilizing TV bands have already yielded power amounting to hundreds of microwatts. Multi-band systems are expected to generate one milliwatt or more – enough to operate some small electronic devices such as low-power wireless sensors.

Tentzeris noted that smart-skin technology may soon help to enable a broad range of applications. These could include not only real-time stress monitoring in bridges, factories and buildings, but also new and extremely lightweight aircraft with self-sensing/self-diagnostic capabilities, and battery-free methods for monitoring structures after major disasters such as earthquakes or hurricanes.

“The wireless strain sensor could prove to be an effective, low-cost and easy-to-scale solution to a very important need,” Tentzeris said. “A simple device – consisting of an antenna, an inexpensive RFID chip and some power-boosting technology – could quietly monitor at-risk structures for many years, and then send back a real-time warning if there’s suddenly a problem.”

The gyroscope market is driven by mobile applications, where until recently only two players, STMicroelectronics (ST) and InvenSense, were competing. Now, many companies are present. The first patent disputes to develop over the last few years (linked to Wacoh’s patents) or that are currently occurring (ST vs. InvenSense) signal the beginning of a fight for gyro and inertial combo market ownership.

This analysis represents a link to the technical trends, Yole Développement has observed in the industry. Comparisons and matching between existing product process flows (reconstituted from teardowns) and related patents are provided. In particular, a case study on InvenSense’s MPU-9150 9-axis sensor is included.

As illustrated by the aforementioned disputes, IP is critical in this area; thus, the link between IP and market evolution is critical as well. One of this report’s most important findings is that the focus has shifted to the software side, where considerable value can be created. Indeed, an increasing number of companies with different value chain positions are developing functionalities based on MEMS gyroscopes, along with related IP.

Understanding the key players’ patent portfolios

MEMS gyroscopes

About 200 players are involved in MEMS gyroscope technologies, but the top ten represent 63 percent of the patents filed. Panasonic and Murata lead the way, according to Yole Développement. Both were early players in the industry, with piezo/ceramic style gyroscopes. Other players such as Analog Devices, Robert Bosch, ST and InvenSense developed their technologies based on silicon substrates and the capacitive detection principle. It’s important to note that these players’ MEMS portfolios are generally much larger than what’s included in this report, since many of their patents are generic publications which can apply to many types of MEMS components, and not specifically to gyros. This report provides an in-depth patent portfolio analysis of the three assignees which Yole Développement identifies as today’s industry leaders: STMicroelectroncis, InvenSense and Robert Bosch.

Though they be but little, they are fierce. The most powerful batteries on the planet are only a few millimeters in size, yet they pack such a punch that a driver could use a cellphone powered by these batteries to jump-start a dead car battery – and then recharge the phone in the blink of an eye.

Developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the new microbatteries out-power even the best supercapacitors and could drive new applications in radio communications and compact electronics.

Led by William P. King, the Bliss Professor of mechanical science and engineering, the researchers published their results in the April 16 issue of Nature Communications.

“This is a whole new way to think about batteries,” King said. “A battery can deliver far more power than anybody ever thought. In recent decades, electronics have gotten small. The thinking parts of computers have gotten small. And the battery has lagged far behind. This is a microtechnology that could change all of that. Now the power source is as high-performance as the rest of it.”

With currently available power sources, users have had to choose between power and energy. For applications that need a lot of power, like broadcasting a radio signal over a long distance, capacitors can release energy very quickly but can only store a small amount. For applications that need a lot of energy, like playing a radio for a long time, fuel cells and batteries can hold a lot of energy but release it or recharge slowly.

“There’s a sacrifice,” said James Pikul, a graduate student and first author of the paper. “If you want high energy you can’t get high power; if you want high power it’s very difficult to get high energy. But for very interesting applications, especially modern applications, you really need both. That’s what our batteries are starting to do. We’re really pushing into an area in the energy storage design space that is not currently available with technologies today.”

The new microbatteries offer both power and energy, and by tweaking the structure a bit, the researchers can tune them over a wide range on the power-versus-energy scale.

The batteries owe their high performance to their internal three-dimensional microstructure. Batteries have two key components: the anode (minus side) and cathode (plus side). Building on a novel fast-charging cathode design by materials science and engineering professor Paul Braun’s group, King and Pikul developed a matching anode and then developed a new way to integrate the two components at the microscale to make a complete battery with superior performance.

With so much power, the batteries could enable sensors or radio signals that broadcast 30 times farther, or devices 30 times smaller. The batteries are rechargeable and can charge 1,000 times faster than competing technologies – imagine juicing up a credit-card-thin phone in less than a second. In addition to consumer electronics, medical devices, lasers, sensors and other applications could see leaps forward in technology with such power sources available.

“Any kind of electronic device is limited by the size of the battery – until now,” King said. “Consider personal medical devices and implants, where the battery is an enormous brick, and it’s connected to itty-bitty electronics and tiny wires. Now the battery is also tiny.”

Now, the researchers are working on integrating their batteries with other electronics components, as well as manufacturability at low cost.

“Now we can think outside of the box,” Pikul said. “It’s a new enabling technology. It’s not a progressive improvement over previous technologies; it breaks the normal paradigms of energy sources. It’s allowing us to do different, new things.”

The National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported this work. King also is affiliated with the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology; the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory; the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory; and the department of electrical and computer engineering at the U. of I.

Researchers are developing a new type of semiconductor technology for future computers and electronics based on "two-dimensional nanocrystals" layered in sheets less than a nanometer thick that could replace today’s transistors.

The layered structure is made of a material called molybdenum disulfide, which belongs to a new class of semiconductors – metal di-chalogenides – emerging as potential candidates to replace today’s technology, CMOS.

New technologies will be needed to allow the semiconductor industry to continue advances in computer performance driven by the ability to create ever-smaller transistors. It is becoming increasingly difficult, however, to continue shrinking electronic devices made of conventional silicon-based semiconductors.

"We are going to reach the fundamental limits of silicon-based CMOS technology very soon, and that means novel materials must be found in order to continue scaling," said Saptarshi Das, who has completed a doctoral degree, working with Joerg Appenzeller, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and scientific director of nanoelectronics at Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center. "I don’t think silicon can be replaced by a single material, but probably different materials will co-exist in a hybrid technology."

The nanocrystals are called two-dimensional because the materials can exist in the form of extremely thin sheets with a thickness of 0.7 nanometers, or roughly the width of three or four atoms. Findings show that the material performs best when formed into sheets of about 15 layers with a total thickness of 8-12 nanometers. The researchers also have developed a model to explain these experimental observations.

Findings are appearing this month as a cover story in the journal Rapid Research Letters. The paper was co-authored by Das and Appenzeller, who also have co-authored a paper to be presented during the annual Device Research Conference at the University of Notre Dame from June 23-26.

"Our model is generic and, therefore, is believed to be applicable to any two-dimensional layered system," Das said.

Molybdenum disulfide is promising in part because it possesses a bandgap, a trait that is needed to switch on and off, which is critical for digital transistors to store information in binary code.

Analyzing the material or integrating it into a circuit requires a metal contact. However, one factor limiting the ability to measure the electrical properties of a semiconductor is the electrical resistance in the contact. The researchers eliminated this contact resistance using a metal called scandium, allowing them to determine the true electronic properties of the layered device. Their results have been published in the January issue of the journal Nano Letters with doctoral students Hong-Yan Chen and Ashish Verma Penumatcha as the other co-authors.

Transistors contain critical components called gates, which enable the devices to switch on and off and to direct the flow of electrical current. In today’s chips, the length of these gates is about 14 nanometers, or billionths of a meter.

The semiconductor industry plans to reduce the gate length to 6 nanometers by 2020. However, further size reductions and boosts in speed are likely not possible using silicon, meaning new designs and materials will be needed to continue progress. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The same material that formed the first primitive transistors more than 60 years ago can be modified in a new way to advance future electronics, according to a new study.

Chemists at Ohio State University have developed the technology for making a one-atom-thick sheet of germanium, and found that it conducts electrons more than ten times faster than silicon and five times faster than conventional germanium.

The material’s structure is closely related to that of graphene—a much-touted two-dimensional material comprised of single layers of carbon atoms. As such, graphene shows unique properties compared to its more common multilayered counterpart, graphite.  Graphene has yet to be used commercially, but experts have suggested that it could one day form faster computer chips, and maybe even function as a superconductor, so many labs are working to develop it.

 “Most people think of graphene as the electronic material of the future,” Goldberger said. “But silicon and germanium are still the materials of the present. Sixty years’ worth of brainpower has gone into developing techniques to make chips out of them. So we’ve been searching for unique forms of silicon and germanium with advantageous properties, to get the benefits of a new material but with less cost and using existing technology.”

In a paper published online in the journal ACS Nano, he and his colleagues describe how they were able to create a stable, single layer of germanium atoms. In this form, the crystalline material is called germanane.

Researchers have tried to create germanane before. This is the first time anyone has succeeded at growing sufficient quantities of it to measure the material’s properties in detail, and demonstrate that it is stable when exposed to air and water.

In nature, germanium tends to form multilayered crystals in which each atomic layer is bonded together; the single-atom layer is normally unstable. To get around this problem, Goldberger’s team created multi-layered germanium crystals with calcium atoms wedged between the layers. Then they dissolved away the calcium with water, and plugged the empty chemical bonds that were left behind with hydrogen. The result: they were able to peel off individual layers of germanane.

Studded with hydrogen atoms, germanane is even more chemically stable than traditional silicon. It won’t oxidize in air and water, as silicon does. That makes germanane easy to work with using conventional chip manufacturing techniques.

The primary thing that makes germanane desirable for optoelectronics is that it has what scientists call a “direct band gap,” meaning that light is easily absorbed or emitted. Materials such as conventional silicon and germanium have indirect band gaps, meaning that it is much more difficult for the material to absorb or emit light.

“When you try to use a material with an indirect band gap on a solar cell, you have to make it pretty thick if you want enough energy to pass through it to be useful. A material with a direct band gap can do the same job with a piece of material 100 times thinner,” Goldberger said.

The first-ever transistors were crafted from germanium in the late 1940s, and they were about the size of a thumbnail. Though transistors have grown microscopic since then—with millions of them packed into every computer chip—germanium still holds potential to advance electronics, the study showed.

According to the researchers’ calculations, electrons can move through germanane ten times faster through silicon, and five times faster than through conventional germanium. The speed measurement is called electron mobility.

With its high mobility, germanane could thus carry the increased load in future high-powered computer chips.

“Mobility is important, because faster computer chips can only be made with faster mobility materials,” Golberger said. “When you shrink transistors down to small scales, you need to use higher mobility materials or the transistors will just not work,” Goldberger explained.

Next, the team is going to explore how to tune the properties of germanane by changing the configuration of the atoms in the single layer.

Lead author of the paper was Ohio State undergraduate chemistry student Elizabeth Bianco, who recently won the first place award for this research at the nationwide nanotechnology competition NDConnect, hosted by the University of Notre Dame. Other co-authors included Sheneve Butler and Shishi Jiang of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Oscar Restrepo and Wolfgang Windl of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

The research was supported in part by an allocation of computing time from the Ohio Supercomputing Center, with instrumentation provided by the Analytical Surface Facility in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Ohio State University Undergraduate Instrumental Analysis Program. Funding was provided by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Office, the Center for Emergent Materials at Ohio State, and the university’s Materials Research Seed Grant Program.

SPIE leaders said they were encouraged to see proposed increases in funds for scientific research and development and a greater emphasis on STEM education in President Obama’s 2014 budget proposal released last Wednesday. At the same time, they stressed the importance of making applied research high priority, and expressed concerns about some funding levels.

The White House proposal includes an 8.4 percent increase over the 2012 enacted level for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Funding would rise for the NSF to an annual $7.6 billion. The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would increase by 5.7 percent, to $5 billion.

All told, the President’s 2014 budget proposes $143 billion for federal research and development, providing a 1 percent increase over 2012 levels for all R&D, and an increase of 9 percent for non-defense R&D.

“While the budget continues this Adminstration’s unflinching support for science and recognition of the importance of photonics to our future economy and health, I have some concerns,” said Eugene Arthurs, CEO of SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. “In these times of constraint, It is very encouraging to see proposed increases for NSF, DOE science, and NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and the investment in the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) earth observations program is overdue. But it is disturbing to see both NASA and NIH R&D budgets reduced, in real terms.”

Arthurs said that the decrease for NIH is particularly troubling because health issues are changing with demographics and risks are expanding with global disease mobility. He cited recognition by NIH director Francis Collins of the potential for imaging coupled with the power and possible economies from more use of data tools as ways to address those challenges.

A strong proposal, Arthurs said, is the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative announced by the President. The initiative would be launched with approximately $100 million in funding for research supported by the NIH, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and NSF.

“The decrease in real terms, compared with 2012 budgets, for defense basic and applied research and advanced technology development is worrying,” Arthurs said. “We need to better understand the deep cuts in defense development when this is where our security has come from and also where for decades there has been much spillover into our tech industry.”

To remain competitive in the global economy, the nation would benefit from even stronger support of applied research, Arthurs said.

“Canada and the European Union are among regions that have established policies focusing priority on applied research, and for good reason,” he said. “Applied research is concerned with creating real value through solving specific problems ― creating new energy sources, finding new cures for disease, and strengthening the security and stability of communication systems. Its metrics are improvements in the functioning of society as a whole and in the quality of individual human lives, not those of laboratory animals, and in patents and new inventions that spark economic growth, not just journal citations.”

That focus on applications is reflected in work being done by the National Photonics Initiative (NPI) committee to raise awareness of the positive force of photonics on the economy and encourage policy that promotes its development. Born out of the National Academies report issued last year on “Optics and Photonics, Essential Technologies for Our Nation,” the NPI is being driven by five scientific societies: SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics; OSA; LIA; IEEE Photonics Society; and APS.

The President’s budget proposal also moves 90 STEM programs across 11 different agencies under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education. This "reorganization" aims to "improve the delivery, impact, and visibility of STEM efforts," the budget document said.

Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually, netbook computers are now marking their final days, with the rise of tablets causing their shipments to wind down to virtually zero after next year, according to an IHS iSuppli Compute Electronics Market Tracker Report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Shipments of netbooks this year are forecast to amount to just 3.97 million units, a plunge off the cliff of 72 percent from 14.13 million units in 2012. The market for the small, inexpensive laptops had steadily climbed for three years from the time the devices were first introduced in 2007, peaking in 2010 when shipments hit a high of 32.14 million units. Since then, however, the netbook space has imploded and gone into decline—fast.

Next year will be the last hurrah for netbooks on the market, with shipments amounting to a mere 264,000 units. By 2015, netbook shipments will be down to zero, as shown in the attached figure.

“Netbooks shot to popularity immediately after launch because they were optimized for low cost, delivering what many consumers believed as acceptable computer performance,” said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS. “Initially intended for light productivity tasks such as web browsing and email, netbooks eventually became more powerful, taking advantage of a mature PC technology that allowed cost-effective implementation of various functionalities. And though never equaling the performance of full-fledged notebooks and lacking full laptop features like an optical drive, netbooks at one point began taking market share away from their more powerful cousins. However, netbooks began their descent to oblivion with the introduction in 2010 of Apple’s iPad.”

The following year, netbook shipments dived 34 percent on what would become a trend of irreversible decline.

“The iPad and other tablets came in a new form factor that excited consumers while also offering improved computing capabilities, leading to a massive loss of interest in netbooks,” Stice said.

At the other end of the spectrum, high-end laptops were also making their appearance. Although much more costly than netbooks, they offered premium performance. Squeezed in between, netbooks could only pass off pricing as their strong point, losing out in other benchmarks that consumers deemed important, including computing power, ease of use such as touch-screen capability, and overall appeal.

From the supply end of production, the major original equipment manufacturers of notebooks will have already terminated netbook production at this point. Whatever production is left is expected to be limited, or manufacturers will simply be shipping last-time builds to satisfy contractual obligations to customers.

Mobile PCs also get hit by media tablets

Mobile PCs retained the largest share of the overall PC market in the fourth quarter last year—the latest time for which full figures are available—compared to desktop PCs and entry-level servers. Mobile PCs had about 63 percent share, compared to 34 percent for desktops and 3 percent for entry-level servers.

Nonetheless, mobile PCs continued to be sideswiped by the ongoing popularity of tablets, and new Ultrabooks and similar ultrathin PCs have yet to take off to the extent hoped for by manufacturers.

Among the computer brands, Hewlett-Packard was No. 1 during the fourth quarter with a nearly 18 percent  share of total PC shipments. China’s Lenovo was second, followed by Dell in third place, Acer in fourth, and Asus—which introduced the first netbook in 2007—in fifth.

Landing in sixth place was Toshiba, which climbed one spot from the third quarter, sending Apple one rung down to seventh. Apple struggled during the last quarter of 2012 because of constraints related to panel supply for the company’s new iMac desktop system, which kept Apple PC shipments down.

In eighth place was Samsung, trailing Apple by a tenth of a percentage point, followed by Sony and Fujitsu rounding out the Top 10.

Glass is everywhere: from MEMS, CMOS image sensors and power to memory, logic IC and microfluidics

Glass is widely used in everyday life and found in large quantities in many industries, such as flat panel display applications. Over the last few years, glass has gained considerable interest from the semiconductor industry due to its very attractive electrical, physical and chemical properties, as well as its prospects for a relevant and cost-efficient solution. The application scope of glass substrates in the semiconductor field is broad and highly diversified.

The demand for glass is growing, and glass has already been adapted for various and unique wafer-processing functionalities and platforms supporting a wide range of end-applications. For example, WLCapping is driven mainly by MEMS and CMOS image sensors. In the coming years, the availability of other glass functionalities such as 3D TGV/2.5 D interposer in conjunction with end-applications like memory and logic IC will be the driving force for growth, creating new challenges and new technical developments along the way.

Mainly driven by the wafer-level packaging industry, the glass wafer market is expected to grow from $158 million in 2012 to $1.3B by 2018, at a CAGR of ~41 percent over the next five years

“Initially driven by CMOS image sensor and MEMS applications, this growing industry will be supported by relevant end-applications such as LED, memory and logic IC, where glass is on its way to being commercialized. In terms of wafers shipped, a 4x glass wafer growth is expected in the semiconductor industry over the next five years, achieving more than 15 million 8 inch equivalent wafer starts per year by 2018,” explains Amandine Pizzagalli, market and technology analyst, Equipment & Materials Manufacturing, at Yole Développement.

Glass substrate: a key enabler of various functionalities in the semiconductor field

The glass WLCapping platform is a mature functionality already adopted with significant volume in CMOS Image Sensors, where more than 3.3 million glass caps were shipped in 2012. This market is expected to grow slowly, with a CAGR of 14 percent from 2012-2018, mainly supported by MEMS devices impacted by the request for further miniaturization. On the flip side, the glass market for WLOptics will likely decline from 2015-2018 due to the development of competing technologies.

All of this said, we expect to see strong growth in the glass market, mainly supported by two emerging WLP platforms: with a CAGR of 110 percent and 70 percent respectively, the glass-type 2.5D interposer emerging platform and the carrier wafer will be glass’s fastest-growing fields over the next five years, since glass offers the best value proposition in terms of cost, flexibility, mechanical rigidity and surface flatness.

If glass is qualified for 2.5D interposer functionality, the glass market could exceed $1B revenue by 2018. However, it’s still unclear how BEOL wafer fabs will choose glass over the current silicon technology used for logic IC applications (for the 2.5D/3D SOC and system partitioning areas), but the glass variety of 2.5D interposer substrates is expected to significantly impact future glass wafer demand, and it’s obvious that the 2.5D glass interposer will attract many newcomers.

The use of glass interposers in packaging will certainly be on the HVM roadmap within a few years.

glass wafer market

Glass substrate: The top five players hold almost 80 percent of the market

In the semiconductor industry, the glass substrate market is split amongst five main suppliers. Schott (G), Tecnisco (JP), PlanOptik (G), Bullen (US) and Corning (US) will share more than 70 percent $158M glass substrate market this year, driven mainly by demand for WLCapping.

In the midst of this growing market, semiconductor glass suppliers are trying to differentiate themselves by proposing a variety of glass substrate material properties with a good CTE, solid thermal properties and no polishing/grinding steps required, which would result in reduced costs.

Many glass substrate suppliers such as AGC, Corning and HOYA are expected to increase their business in the next few years since they are quite aggressive in 2.5D interposers and glass carrier wafers, and are expected to ramp-up into high volume production. Since the big players are already deeply entrenched in the glass market, it will be very challenging for a new entrant to break through in the foreseeable future.

PC shipments fall, post worst quarter on recordIn another sign of the worldwide shift in preferred personal devices, PC shipments posted the steepest decline ever in a single quarter, according to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker (IDC).

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units in the first quarter of 2013, down -13.9 percent compared to the same quarter in 2012 and worse than the forecast decline of -7.7 percent, according to the IDC. Despite some mild improvements in the economic environment, PC shipments were down significantly across all regions compared to a year ago, marking the worst quarter reported since IDC began tracking the PC market in 1994. The results also marked the fourth consecutive quarter of year-on-year shipment declines.

The reduction in shipments isn’t entirely shocking, given the obvious cannibalization from tablets and smartphones. Smartphones shipments are expected to continue their historic rise at a rate of 24 percent CAGR from 2011 to 2016, according to Andy Oberst, Strategic Vice President of Qualcomm, and PC makers are collectively bracing for the change, as other indicators have risen throughout the past year. DRAM content growth is reported slowing, as slim notebooks have limited space for it, and tablets and smartphones have no use for it at all. Instead, its low-power variant, mobile DRAM, is seeing an increase. Additionally, the chip market outlook was downgraded in 2012, with the weak PC market mostly to blame.

"Although the reduction in shipments was not a surprise, the magnitude of the contraction is both surprising and worrisome," said David Daoud, IDC Research Director, Personal Computing. "The industry is going through a critical crossroads, and strategic choices will have to be made as to how to compete with the proliferation of alternative devices and remain relevant to the consumer. Vendors will have to revisit their organizational structures and go to market strategies, as well as their supply chain, distribution, and product portfolios in the face of shrinking demand and looming consolidation."

PC makers had pinned their hopes on the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS, which is a complete overhaul of the operating system with touch-screen capabilities. Unfortunately, these new shipment trends are indicating that the upgraded operating system has not had the desired effect on consumers.

Bob O’Donnell, IDC Program Vice President, believes it is clear that Windows 8 not only failed to provide a positive boost, but also appears to have slowed the market.

"While some consumers appreciate the new form factors and touch capabilities of Windows 8, the radical changes to the UI, removal of the familiar Start button, and the costs associated with touch have made PCs a less attractive alternative to dedicated tablets and other competitive devices,” said O’Donnell. “Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market."

Microsoft, at least in public, does not appear to be on the verge of making tough decisions at the moment, however. A Microsoft spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that, along with their partners, they planned “to continue to bring even more innovation to market across tablets and PCs.”

Increased spending in NAND and flash by Micron, LEDs by Philips and Osram, and continued investments by GLOBALFOUNDRIES will create new opportunities for equipment and materials suppliers in Southeast Asia. These trends will be explored at the upcoming SEMICON Singapore 2013, which will take place May 7-9 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Center. With a focus on new technologies and products for advanced IC packaging, test, and fab efficiency, as well as in new application areas including LEDs and MEMS, the event capitalizes on Southeast Asia’s strong contribution to the global semiconductor market.

For the Southeast Asia region, capital equipment investment will see some pickup in the second half of 2013, followed by a strong recovery in 2014. Overall front-end fab equipment spending is expected to double next year from $810 million in 2013 to $1.62 billion in 2014. Foundry and memory are the two major sectors that invest most in the region. The GLOBALFOUNDRIES expansion plan at Fab 7 will be completed by mid-2014 while UMC continues to upgrade their Fab 12i capacity to 40nm process.

The Southeast Asia region’s capacity growth for front-end fabs shows two percent increase this year and an expectation of  higher growth, eight percent, in 2014, exceeding overall global capacity growth of five percent according to the SEMI World Fab Forecast.  The growth will mainly be driven by memory sector, specifically from NAND flash capacity as Micron gears up for further expansion at its Singapore NAND flash facility next year plus ongoing capacity conversion from DRAM to NAND flash at Fab 7 (Tech). Singapore is emerging to become the third largest NAND flash manufacturing country in the world by the end of 2014.  The conversion and the expansion projects will drive related semiconductor investment in the region in 2013 and 2014.     

For the assembly and test sector, Southeast Asia has long been the focal point of the industry with a large installed capacity from both IDMs and OSATs.  This position contributes to the region being the largest packaging materials consumption market in the world, representing a market size of $6.6 billion in 2013 and $6.8 billion in 2014. The region’s back-end equipment investment remain significant with over $1 billion spending each year throughout 2012 to 2014, accounting for about 17 percent of worldwide share according to SEMI’s WWSEMS.

Aside from manufacturing capacity, Southeast Asia region is now extending its value proposition to IC design and R&D areas with more joint development projects between multi-national corporations (MNC) and local institutes. SEMI expects to see a more robust semiconductor ecosystem arise from the region as a result of these endeavors and as companies seek ready access to customers throughout Asia-Pacific and South Asia.

Currently, Singapore has 14 wafer fabrication plants, including the world’s top three wafer foundries.  Singapore also has 20 semiconductor assembly and test operations, including three of the world’s top six outsourced assembly and test companies. There are about 40 IC design centers, which comprise nine of the world’s “top 10” fabless IC design companies.

SEMICON Singapore, in its 20th year, will feature over 40 programs and forums to highlight the industry’s major technology trends, and investment and expansion opportunities in manufacturing.  Forum themes include: Market Trends Briefing, Lithography Technology, Assembly Packaging Technology, 2.5D/3D-IC, LED Manufacturing Technology, Product Test, and MEMS.  Attendees can save up to 30 percent on programs by registering before April 15.

Other special programs include a job fair, a SEMICON University Program, and both an OEM Sourcing Program ad a Suppliers Search Program. These programs demonstrate SEMI Singapore’s commitment to connecting the global semiconductor manufacturers to Singapore-based resources and professions.