Category Archives: Advanced Packaging

December 4, 2012 – TechSearch International Inc. and the IEEE Women in Engineering Committee (WIE) are establishing a $2500 scholarship for women going into the field of engineering.

The scholarship, named the IEEE Frances B. Hugle Engineering Scholarship, honors the memory of the distinguished engineer who co-founded Hugle Industries, Siliconix, Stewart Warner Microcircuits Inc., and Opto-Electronics Devices Inc. TechSearch International, in celebration of its 25th anniversary, and its founder, E. Jan Vardaman, seeded the scholarship with a $5000 donation this year. The objective is to raise $100,000 during the next few years.

To encourage young women to follow in Hugle’s footsteps, IEEE WIE will select one scholar annually to receive a $2500 scholarship, beginning as early as 2013. The scholarship will be presented to one female in her third year of undergraduate study in an engineering curriculum at an accredited university or college in the US. Student membership in the IEEE is required.

Hugle graduated from the University of Chicago in 1946 with degrees in chemistry, physics, and philosophy and received her M.Sc. degree from the University of Cincinnati. In each of the companies she co-founded, she served as a director of R&D and as chief engineer. She held 16 known patents in the field of electronics and was one of the pioneers in the invention of tape automated bonding (TAB).

The IEEE Foundation, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization in the US, is accepting and managing the donations. Donations can be made:

  1. Online at www.ieee.org/donate by selecting the Frances B. Hugle Memorial Fund

  2. By check payable to the IEEE Foundation — Frances B. Hugle Memorial Fund and mailed to IEEE Foundation, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, US.

TechSearch International Inc., founded in 1987, is a market research firm specializing in technology trends, microelectronics packaging, and assembly.

November 30, 2012 – With the advent of two new touch sensor technologies, more than 7.5% of the mobile phone market will use "in-cell touch" in 2012 and tablet PCs will see a 5% shipment share of "DITO film structure" technology, reports NPD DisplaySearch. In-cell touch’s market share is estimated to grow to 16.7% by 2018.

Apple’s iPhone 5 uses in-cell touch technology, while the iPad mini features a DITO film structure.

"These two new projected capacitive touch sensor structures enabled Apple to reduce the thickness and weight of the iPhone 5 and iPad mini," said Calvin Hsieh, research director, NPD DisplaySearch. "These factors contribute to the consumer demand for these products, but manufacturing the new sensors has proven problematic."

Apple sources the 4-in. 1136 × 640 (326 ppi) in-cell touch LCD from LG Display, Japan Display Inc., and Sharp under a license to use Apple’s in-cell touch patents, and these panel makers are forbidden to sell LCD panels of any size using Apple’s in-cell touch patents to other companies. Limited production, along with the challenges in producing the new sensors with strict performance requirements, have resulted in poor yield rates (70%-80% or less) in LCD panel manufacturing and a higher price for in-cell touch.

The iPad mini represents the first tablet PC display to incorporate a DITO film touch sensor, which is lighter and thinner than DITO glass (0.125 mm vs. 0.4 mm). However, there are challenges with production of the sensor on film and lamination since it is easily broken when stretched. Also, alignment of film sensors is more difficult than with rigid glass, especially for larger sizes. These challenges have resulted in low production yield rates, which have been a contributor to the higher entry price of $329 for the iPad mini. Other less-expensive tablet PCs use glass sensors or a one-glass solution with optical bonding.

"In-cell touch and DITO film offer some clear advantages, but at the expense of lower yield rates and higher costs — at least in the early stages of production," added Hsieh. "Apple has concluded that the benefits of thinner, lighter devices will be highly valued by consumers."

NPD DisplaySearch’s 2012 Touch Panel Market Analysis offers a comprehensive breakdown of touch panel technologies and their market forecasts through 2018.

Touch technology shipments by category in mobile phones. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)

November 30, 2012 – Applied Materials this week said it will combine its Display and Energy and Environmental Solutions (EES, essentially its solar tech) under one exec: Ali Salehpour, who was most recently a SVP at KLA-Tencor. This change also will usher out the current top execs in those business units, Mark Pinto (EVP/GM of EES) and Tom Edman (group VP/GM of AGS), who will both be leaving the company "after assisting in a smooth leadership transition."

"We are optimizing our worldwide organization to more effectively and efficiently address the dynamic markets in which we operate," stated Applied chairman/CEO Mike Splinter. "By bringing together these two business units, we believe we can better support our customers’ roadmaps and advance our technology for large-area applications."

Two weeks ago in AMAT’s fiscal 4Q12 conference call, Splinter acknowledged the "extremely weak market environment for display and solar" with very little investment activity happening. "Until we see clearer signs that solar equipment demand is recovering, we will take additional steps to reduce our cost structure and associated losses." (He also said business conditions should improve entering 2013 … but moments later in that same call CFO George Davis said AGS sales would be down -15% to -25% in fiscal 1Q13, and EES sales would be off by more than -30%.) Company president Gary Dickerson expanded later on in the call, referencing a reduction in operating expenses "significantly beyond our previously announced plans for this business" as well as a workforce restructuring (which was separately announced in October and interpreted by industry watchers as a de-emphasis of both EES/solar and display businesses). While stating confidence in solar as a long-term growth driver for AMAT, asserting it could gain $100M in revenues for each industrywide GW of newly added capacity, "as long as the current market conditions exist we will significantly scale back our investment in this business," Dickerson said.

Pinto has been with Applied since 2004, serving as CTO from then until 2010. He initiated the company’s efforts in solar and solid-state lighting, which led to the formation of the EES division; he also once led the company’s Displays business. Edman spent 10 years with Applied Films, serving as president and CEO from 1998 to 2006, when Applied Materials acquired it.

The departure of both execs, and combining the two profit-dragging divisions under one reporting structure, is just the start of "a more serious restructuring of the divisions [… and] evaluation of the market opportunities and the divisions’ cost," surmises Barclays analyst CJ Muse. He notes, though, that AMAT hasn’t formally changed its previous EES plan of ~$400M-$500M breakeven levels, and Muse sees no improved visibility here until the company’s March Analyst Day.

November 29, 2012 – The market for materials used in printed electronics manufacturing will nearly double over the next five years as new materials are brought forth that are printing process-compatible and are sufficiently low-cost to support low-cost volume production of printed electronic devices, according to a Lux Research report.

"Much of the promise of printed electronics lies in the potential to manufacture devices through low-cost, high-throughput manufacturing," said Jonathan Melnick, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report, "Inking Money: The prospects for materials in printed electronics." To do that, though, will require creation and implementation of various materials that offer good enough performance and are compatible with printing processes — without becoming too costly themselves."

Examining a range of materials with a breadth of complexity, performance, and cost — focusing on conductive inks and pastes, new transparent conductive films, and semiconductor inks — Lux offers the following observations:

  • Silver thrives; alternatives struggle. The market for opaque conductive inks alone will grow to $2.4 billion in 2017, from $1.4 billion in 2012, with medical and RFID among the fastest-growing segments. However, silver paste will still dominate and other materials will only find traction in solar applications.

  • Rapid smartphone adoption offers a bonanza. Transparent conductive films (TCF) to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) widely used in touchscreens will grow to $705 million, of which $112 million will come from the inks. Most of that will be driven by smartphone touchscreens, with tablets a distant second — meaning there’s a wide range of potential growth scenarios.

  • Displays lead the way for printed semiconductors. Printed semiconductors will grow to $68 million in 2017, with solution-processed OLED emissive materials the lead application.

Rising silver cost will have less impact on emerging silver paste and ink alternatives prices. (Source: Lux Research)

November 29, 2012 – Despite graphene’s promise as a material in future electronics with excellent properties in almost all applications, it still faces difficulties in market acceptance, according to a report from IDTechEx.

The firm calculates a $100M market for graphene in 2018, as the material seems to be reaching the peak of its hype cycle: prototypes and first-generation products have been launched; a mushrooming of start-up formations has occurred; and the industry has seen a flurry of seed and early-stage funding. Several companies are already within the second or third round of financing, and the second generation of products are being launched with more realistic assessment of the near- to medium-term market opportunity, according to Khasha Ghaffarzadeh, technology analyst at IDTechEx, and co-author of the report "Graphene: Analysis of Technology, Markets and Players 2013-2018."

Figure 1: The hype cycle of graphene. Graphene is hyped but it is moving past the peak of inflated expectations.
(Source: IDTechEx)

Depending on the number of layers, purity, oxygen content, crystallinity, and form (powder or sheet), the quality of the graphene can vary, and each can be placed on a quasi-empirical chart, in which the limiting cases are graphite, graphite oxide, graphene oxide, and graphene.

Figure 2: The many different graphene types can be categorized between the limiting cases of graphene oxide, graphene, graphite oxide, and graphite. The properties will different depending on where the graphene sits within this space.
(Source: IDTechEx)

Different manufacturing techniques are used, including micro-cleavage, chemical vapor deposition, liquid-phase exfoliation, and oxidization-reduction and plasma, with a trade-off between cost and scalability vs. graphene quality, says IDTechEx. Certain techniques may be better suited for high-volume applications with relaxed performance requirements, while others serve applications demanding high performance levels.

In many cases, the main strategy for graphene acceptance is as a replacement for existing materials in products such as carbon black, carbon fiber, graphite, carbon nanotubes, silver nanowires, ITO, silver flakes, copper nanoparticles, aluminum, silicon, GaAs, and ZnO.

Figure 3: Scalability, cost and graphene quality trends for different manufacturing techniques. (Source: IDTechEx)

The industry is now gearing up to move beyond research activities, and other applications are being developed, including RFID, smart packaging, supercapacitors, composites, ITO replacement, sensors, logic, and memory. The largest near-term market opportunity for graphene beyond R&D is in composites and energy storage applications, IDTechEx says. Graphene’s adoption in transparent conduction applications will be limited because it falls short both on cost and performance compared to other options, the firm says. Similarly graphene won’t find easy inroads into transistors due to its lack of bandgap and the high level of standards set by existing materials

November 28, 2012 – NPD DisplaySearch analyst Paul Gagnon took the pulse of consumer shoppers on Black Friday and came away with three observations: bargains are a priority, consumers want bigger upgrades, and Walmart flexed its muscles. He bases them on what apparently was firsthand experience standing in line like everyone else, plus "reports from colleagues in the industry."

— Consumers love bargains… Customers seemed to have their Black Friday TV-deal priorities in order thusly: price, size, brand, and little interest in any other feature. Gagnon noted Emerson 32-in. LCD TVs vanished at a $148 price point, but same-sized Samsung versions stood stacked on the floor largely untouched later on Friday even at $100 off. At a Best Buy later in the day he reports customers sought out a "shockingly low" priced ($179) Toshiba 40-in. TV, but upon learning they were sold out they resigned to next year’s Black Friday rather than seek a replacement. That suggests the motivation was far more on finding a good deal vs. really wanting a new TV — "which should be a wake-up call to the to the industry to not focus so much on promoting shocking prices to drive traffic," he writes.

— …but not "step-up" features. At the same time, Gagnon noted that there was little "chatter" and activity surrounding "step-up models" of TVs featuring improvements such as Smart TV, 3D, or LED technology. Over 90% of Chinese LCD TV shipments were LED backlit in 3Q12, but North America isn’t even at 50% yet and ranks near last in the world in terms of unit shipment share, he points out. " Do US consumers understand the feature, and just not care? Are retailers not doing an effective job of educating customers about the technology? Are the prices too high? Probably some combination of all of these factors is at play."

— Confirmed: Bigger is believed better. While consumers flocked to promotions of sub-$200 32-in. TVs, a lot of them also sought out bigger models (≥40-in.). Gagnon lists a number of notable Black Friday promotions this year for bigger-sized panels, in some cases with 50-in. models at the same price point as last year’s 40-in. models; some of that is just natural price erosion, he acknowledges. But consumers are also eager to replace 32-in. TVs with significantly bigger models — and that’s particularly good news for panel makers who sell by the square meter.

— The power of Walmart compels them! Even in the face of a labor dispute, Walmart heavily promoted its Black Friday deals and it seems to have paid off as waves of promotions kept shopper traffic spread out and lines flowing smoothly, Gagnon writes. "It seemed Walmart was more effective at pulling shoppers looking for TVs this Black Friday, reporting today that it sold more than 1.3 million televisions since 8PM on Thursday," he notes, showing a photo of shoppers "Starbucks and Smartphones in hand" at 5am lined up for a $299 Panasonic 50-in plasma TV. He also notes that Funai "moved a lot of boxes during Black Friday" — the firm climbed to #1 in LCD TV shipments in 3Q12 and nearly 20% share, with many of those units destined for Walmart’s Black Friday push, with whom it has partnered for years, he notes.

EV Group has completed its expanded cleanroom IV facility at its corporate headquarters in Austria, which doubled its cleanroom space for process development and pilot production services.

As part of the company’s long-term growth strategy to address high-volume tool orders and speed time to market, EV Group, a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment, also increased the size of its application labs, added new R&D facilities for internal tool development and testing, and opened a new customer and employee training center.

The customer and employee training center provides several new rooms for instructional training courses, as well as a large number of manual and automated EVG tools for training.

While manufacturing and product development are centralized at EV Group’s corporate headquarters, technology and process development teams in Austria work closely with the company’s subsidiaries in Tempe, AZ; Albany, NY; Yokohama and Fukuoka, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Chung-Li, Taiwan, where additional, state-of-the-art application labs and cleanroom facilities are available.

Earlier this year, the addition of an ultra-modern manufacturing facility that doubled the production floor space marked the completion of the first phase of EVG’s long term expansion plans. Already positively contributing to EVG’s growth from the beginning of 2012, the company increased its order intake in FY12 (ended September 30) by 5 percent over fiscal 2011, and increased its revenue by 20 percent within the same period.

November 21, 2012 – A reference book from the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA) and IC Insights puts foundry information at the fingertips of those who need it the most.

GSA and IC Insights have joined forces again to produce the fifth edition of the IC Foundry Almanac, a concise annual reference book for foundry segment analysis, five-year forecasts, wafer and mask set pricing information, and foundry company profile data.

The partnership combines IC Insights’ analysis of market growth and capacity trends with GSA’s analysis of wafer and mask set pricing data and extensive database of IC foundry service provider profiles.

Report highlights include:

  • Foundry segment analysis, including IC foundry industry analysis, sales analysis, and capacity;

  • Wafer fabrication and mask set pricing & capacity trends, including median wafer fabrication and mask set pricing, additional purchase details, foundry details, and capacity trends; and

  • IC foundry service provider company profiles, with company contact information and stock exchange/ticker.

 

Many of the world’s 3D IC elite met last week at the 2nd annual Georgia Tech 2.5D Interposer Conference which focused on the technology and performance of silicon and glass interposers.

Matt Nowak of Qualcomm, long a 3D advocate, reported that Qualcomm has now built "thousands of parts" and does not see anything stopping high-volume manufacturing (HVM) except cost. Nowak indicates that Qualcomm will require a price of ~ $2 for a 200mm2 silicon interposer. The former is just out of the reach of those proposing "coarse" interposer fabrication, and the latter is significantly out of the pricing structure for dual damascene foundry-based fine interposers

Nagesh Vordharalli of Altera quoted an IMEC study which shows that the sweet spot for maximum bandwidth will come from interposers with RDL lines/spaces ~ 3

November 20, 2012 – Smart TVs, LED technology, and emerging markets are going to boost the IC market for TVs, says a new IC Insights study examining several key system applications, including the market for digital televisions and its impact on the IC market.

Total worldwide shipments of digital and analog televisions are forecast to slow considerably in 2012, growing only 1.2% to 236 million units, says the analyst firm. Digital televisions, which first surpassed CRT televisions in 2008, are forecast to represent 92% of new TV shipments this year.

Global TV shipments by technology. (Source: IC Insights)

The digital television upgrade cycle continues in full swing in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, and that’s helping offset slower growth in mature markets where upgrades to flat-panel digital televisions sets has largely taken place. Through 2016, TV shipments are forecast to grow to 269 million units, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.9% from 2011-2016.

In the near-term, smart TVs represent a solid growth driver for TV manufacturers. Smart TV is bringing Internet features to television by offering TV broadcasts, videos, movies, photos, and other content via the web and Cloud-based video on demand (VOD) services. IC Insights estimates that smart TVs represented 28% of television shipments in 2012, but will account for 62% of TV shipments in 2016.

Adoption of technologies such as wireless video connections, networking interfaces, multi-format decoders and LED backlighting will help boost the average IC content in TV sets — even as the growth rate for TV sets themselves slows through the forecast period. The IC market for DTVs grew 12% to an estimated $13.4 billion in 2012, up from $12.0 billion in 2011, and IC Insights projects total global IC revenue for televisions growing 9% to $14.6 billion in 2013.

Economic hardship is seen as one reason for the slow rate of growth for televisions in 2012. But perhaps more telling is that a younger, tech-savvy generation of consumers is choosing to watch TV when it wants via the Internet, using the mobile device of their choice.