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The global semiconductor foundry United Microelectronics Corporation announced the opening of its UMC Korea office. UMC intends for this office to help expand regional business and provide local support to customers. In its official release, UMC said the proximity of its new office to its Korean customers will create working synergies that will help expedite engagement and support, thus shortening time-to-market for Korea-based customers designing and manufacturing on UMC process technologies.

Steve Wang, vice president in charge of Asia sales division at UMC said, "Korean companies have been deeply involved in the global IC supply chain as high-tech applications become increasingly mobile with more demands on power saving, portability, and performance. We see this as a great opportunity to partner with Korea based IC companies as they can take advantage of UMC’s expertise in power management, display driver, touch panel IC, and leading-edge process technologies as well as our flexible, collaborative foundry working model. We look forward to creating new opportunities with Korea-based customers with the opening of UMC’s new Korea office."

In addition to opening its Korea office, UMC was the first independent foundry to introduce a Korean language website.

A team of researchers from the Nanoengineering Research Centre (CRNE) and the Department of Electronic Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya · BarcelonaTech (UPC) has found a way to make the manufacture of crystalline silicon materials faster and more affordable. The results of their research have recently been published in the online version of the landmark journal Applied Physics Letters ("’Silicon millefeuille’: From a silicon wafer to multiple thin crystalline films in a single step").

Thin crystalline silicon wafers measuring around 10 µm (micres) are costly but also very sought after in the field of microelectronics, especially in view of the growing demand for 3D circuit integration with microchips. Silicon wafers also have potential photovoltaic applications in the medium term in the conversion of sunlight to electricity and the production of more affordable, more flexible and lighter solar cells.

In recent years, techniques have been developed to obtain increasingly thinner crystalline silicon wafers from monocrystalline cylindrical ingots. Layers cut from the ingots using a multithreaded saw infused with abrasive material have a minimum thickness of around 150 µm. Obtaining wafers that are any thinner is more complicated, as existing methods only allow such wafers to be obtained one at a time. Furthermore, 50 percent of the silicon is lost in the process.

The technology developed by the research team – David Hernández, Trifon Trifonov and Moisés Garín, led by Professor Ramon Alcubilla – enables a large number of crystalline layers, controlled for thickness, to be produced from a single crystalline silicon wafer in just a single step. The outcome is a kind of crystalline silicon “millefeuille” produced more efficiently, more rapidly and more affordably than by existing methods.

The methodology developed by the scientists is based on making small pores in the material and applying a high temperature during the manufacturing process. Multiple separate crystalline silicon wafers are obtained by carefully controlling the pore profiles. Precise control over diameter controls both the number of layers and their thickness. The millefeuille silicon layers are then separated by exfoliation. The resulting number of silicon layers is determined by the thickness of the layers themselves and the initial thickness of the wafer. The CRnE researchers have succeeded in creating up to 10 thin wafers (5-7mm thick) from a single 300 mm thick wafer.

Reduced costs for industry

The demand for thin and ultra-thin crystalline silicon wafers responds to the application possibilities offered by 3D circuit integration of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) with conventional microchips and also to the latest generation of photovoltaic technology. Wafer cutting for solar cell production, for example, has been steadily improving. Thickness has been reduced (350mm in the 1990s to 180mm currently) while efficiency has been enhanced, resulting in reduced manufacturing costs; nonetheless, greater reductions are likely to be difficult to achieve. It has been shown that, despite lesser thickness, the wafers retain a high capacity to absorb solar energy and convert it into electricity.

Road and street lighting is a key driver for LED technology in general lighting. In less than a decade, LED technology has created more turmoil in the lighting industry than anything occurring over the previous century. Every professional agrees that what used to be a conservative, well-controlled market is undergoing a massive change, referred to as “the LED revolution.” Therefore, it’s high time to take a close look at what’s happening and why, since each General Lighting application, be it indoor or outdoor, has its own way of adopting LEDs. Outdoor lighting is no stranger to revolution. In fact, today it’s one of the two most dynamic General Lighting market segments for LED adoption. Within the segment, architectural lighting was the early adopter, but the main driver these days is definitely road and street lighting. Historically the largest outdoor segment, it now offers the best prospects for LED development in professional exterior lighting. Road and street lighting is a very attractive market, with EBIT levels generally between five and 15 percent and steady growth despite the economic downturn.

 “We estimate that LED luminaire revenue will reach $435M in 2013 and peak at $516M by 2016, fuelled by the increased need for energy efficiency. Growth will be driven firstly by tunnel lighting, and then relayed into highway, road, residential and amenity lighting applications starting in 2014”, explains Pars Mukish, Market and technology analyst, LED at Yole Développement. “By 2017, market size should decline because of a decreasing replacement market (due to LED-based systems’ higher lifetime) and also because of LED luminaire’s ASP,” he adds.

Yole’s report presents all road and street lighting applications and associated market metrics within the period 2008-2020 for each application and region, detailing drivers & challenges, key players, associated volume/market size (luminaires installed base, LED luminaire and packaged LED sales), and LED penetration rate.

A new approach to luminaire design requiring new manufacturer competencies

Designing with LED implies major changes for conventional luminaire manufacturers – mostly at the optical, electrical and physical levels. With the move to LED technology, traditional luminaire manufacturers face dramatic organizational changes, such as integrating electronic competencies, upgrading optical competencies, taking ownership of the light source (SSL), and revamping production organization. Consequently, internal revolution is required within luminaire companies in order to take full advantage of the LED boom.

This report analyses the LED value proposition in road and street lighting, detailing: major changes between conventional luminaire and LED luminaire, how LED technology can be applied to road and street lighting (drivers, key decision-making criteria, impacts of LED adoption on the overall industry), associated lighting design requirements, etc.

The path to an outdoor lighting market involves several players which have already embraced major changes

“Compared to other lighting applications (residential, commercial, etc.), the outdoor lighting supply chain involves more associated/parallel industries, such as the pole and bracket industry, the control industry and the cable industry,” explains Christophe Richon, CEO of Lux Fit. As is the case for other lighting applications, these industries must also redesign their products in order to make their business sustainable: smaller-size pole and bracket equivalents due to LED miniaturization, new power supply and control capacities due to LEDs’ higher start current, etc.

At the business chain level, outdoor lighting is also quite unique in terms of involving different player types: end-users and specifiers such as municipalities, lighting designers, installers, etc. With LEDs offering longer lifetime, better energy savings and increased aesthetic potential, each player must adapt its activity to make best use of the technology.

This report presents an overview of the road and street lighting industry’s supply chain and business chain (conventional and LED), detailing: each player’s role, main industrial trends, impact of LED integration, etc. Also, company profiles are provided for eight key LED luminaire manufacturers.

Developing new business models to increase LED’s penetration rate

Around the world, LED adoption in road and street lighting has benefitted from financial incentives to hasten the change. While recession in many economies has led some governments to revise their subsidizing policies, others have maintained them, and other support forms are emerging. However, in many countries, public end-users are now faced with a dilemma: invest in public lighting (mainly because of increasing urbanization and the need to implement energy efficient systems) or reduce spending (less public money available, political pressure, etc.).
As a result, public end-users are turning more and more to new business models that provide energy efficient lighting at reduced initial costs, such as Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) and performance contracts (ESCOs).
This report presents an overview of LED technology drivers, detailing: technology drivers, application drivers and economic drivers.

 

SEMI, the global industry association for companies that supply manufacturing technology and materials to the world’s chip makers, today reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 7.31 billion in the first quarter of 2013. The billings figure is 8 percent higher than the fourth quarter of 2012 and 32 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago. The data is gathered jointly with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) from over 100 global equipment companies that provide data on a monthly basis.

Worldwide semiconductor equipment bookings were $7.78 billion in the first quarter of 2013. The figure is 23 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago and 14 percent higher than the bookings figure for the fourth quarter of 2012.

The quarterly billings data by region in billions of U.S. dollars, quarter-over-quarter growth and year-over-year rates by region are as follows:

The Equipment Market Data Subscription (EMDS) from SEMI provides comprehensive market data for the global semiconductor equipment market. A subscription includes three reports: the monthly SEMI Book-to-Bill Report, which offers an early perspective of the trends in the equipment market; the monthly Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Statistics (SEMS), a detailed report of semiconductor equipment bookings and billings for seven regions and over 22 market segments; and the SEMI Semiconductor Equipment Consensus Forecast, which provides an outlook for the semiconductor equipment market.

SEMATECH announced today that Applied Seals North America (ASNA) has joined SEMATECH’s Manufacturing Technology Center, which is designed to improve semiconductor equipment manufacturing productivity, yield and cost. 

The Manufacturing Technology Center is working on particle management solutions to reduce the number of particle excursions that are found in vacuum process tools. As a part of this project, fab participants identified chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems as the largest contributor to the failure rate and shallow trench isolation (STI) gap fill as the most problematic process application within the CVD tool group.

As a member of SEMATECH’s Manufacturing Technology Center, ASNA will collaborate with SEMATECH engineers to reduce the number of particle excursions by identifying seal designs and materials for STI gap fill process tools that are used in both 200 mm and 300 mm semiconductor manufacturing facilities. Additionally, ASNA and SEMATECH will work together to develop and introduce new material solutions that will help to significantly extend the life of the seals and reduce the number of particles that are shed from them.

“We are excited to collaborate with SEMATECH on innovative technology development to help address current and future technology challenges for sealing of vacuum systems,” said Dalia Vernikovsky, CEO of ASNA. “This project will help spearhead initiatives and collaborative efforts to drastically improve sealing performance while significantly decreasing defects that are attributed to seals. As the complexity of the technology increases, innovations in materials, seal design and particle control is essential for successful manufacturing.” 

“Particle excursions are a major cost-of-ownership issue for vacuum tools and there is a technology gap that ASNA can help address to enable fabs to squeeze additional productivity from their very expensive vacuum tools,” said Julian Richards, Manufacturing Technology project manager. “We look forward to working closely with ASNA in a collaborative effort to engineer sealing solutions that reduce the number of down events caused by particle excursions.”

ISORG and Plastic Logic have co-developed the first conformable organic image sensor on plastic, with the potential to revolutionize weight/power trade-offs and optical design parameters for any systems with a digital imaging element. First mechanical samples will be publicly unveiled at LOPE-C 2013 (ISORG / CEA booth B0-509) from June 12 to 13 in Munich, Germany.

The collaboration is based on the deposition of organic printed photodetectors (OPD), pioneered by ISORG, onto a plastic organic thin-film transistor (OTFT) backplane, developed by the technology leader, Plastic Logic, to create a flexible sensor with a 4×4 cm active area, 375um pitch (175um pixel size with 200um spacing) and 94 x 95 = 8 930 pixel resolution.

organic image sensor

The backplane design, production process and materials were optimized for the application by Plastic Logic to meet ISORG’s requirements. The result, a flexible, transmissive backplane, represents a significant breakthrough in the manufacture of new large area image sensors and demonstrates the potential use of Plastic Logic’s unique flexible transistor technology to also move beyond plastic displays. Combined with ISORG’s unique organic photodetector technology, it opens up the possibilities for a range of new applications, based around digital image sensing, including smart packaging and sensors for medical equipment and biomedical diagnostics, security and mobile commerce (user identification by fingerprint scanning), environmental, industrial, scanning surfaces and 3D interactive user interfaces for consumer electronics (printers, smartphones, tablets, etc.).

ISORG’s CEO, Jean-Yves Gomez stated: “We are extremely pleased to showcase our disruptive photodiode technology in a concrete application for imaging sensing. The ability to create conformal and large area image sensors, which are also thinner, lighter and more robust and portable than current equipment is of increasing importance, especially in the medical, industrial and security control sectors.”

Indro Mukerjee, CEO Plastic Logic said: “I am delighted that Plastic Logic can now demonstrate the far-reaching potential of the underlying technology. Our ability to create flexible, transmissive backplanes has led us not only to co-develop a flexible image sensor, but is also key to flexible OLED displays as well as unbreakable LCDs.”

The 10th International Conference on Group IV Photonics (GFP 2013) will feature presentations spanning a broad range of topics focused on silicon photonics and other Group IV element-based photonic materials and devices. Professionals from industry, academia, and government around the world will gather from August 28-30, 2013 for the GFP 2013 conference, held for the first time in Seoul, Korea at the Grand Hilton Seoul. 

Planned as a single-track conference, GFP 2013 will feature both oral and poster sessions of contributed and invited papers focused on silicon photonics and other Group IV element-based photonic materials, applications, and manufacturing technology. In addition, a post-deadline session will feature the most up-to-date results involving Group IV element photonic materials and devices, including integration and fabrication technologies.

Some of the major topic areas will include:

  • Electro-Photonic Convergence on Silicon: mainstreaming industrial Si photonics; optical interconnect technology, including light sources, modulators, and detectors; technology platforms, design tools/rules, and industrial fabrication concerns.
  • Novel Materials and Structure: novel materials and material combinations, and/or structures generating scientific interest; graphene, complex oxides, photonic crystals, gratings, as well as plasmonics and its hybrids.
  • Photonic Devices and Nanophotonics: devices and systems that are at the stage of focusing on real applications but do not necessarily need/require integration with electronics; couplers, (bio) sensors, Si photonics for telecom applications.

A supplier exhibition and a range of sponsorship opportunities are available for participating companies to promote awareness, discuss the latest new products, interact with customers and develop new sales contacts.  Individualized sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact conference planner Megan Figueroa at +1 732 562 3895 or via e-mail at [email protected] for more information.

For the first time ever, no clear winner has emerged to claim top honors in the MEMS business for 2012, with Bosch of Germany and French-Italian STMicroelectronics ending up evenly splitting the title of No. 1 supplier for the year, according to a MEMS Competitive Analysis Report from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS).

With both companies just shy of the $800 million mark, Bosch and STMicroelectronics each had MEMS revenue of approximately $793 million in 2012. The two companies do not use the same exchange rates every quarter when converting their revenue from euros to the U.S. dollar, and as a difference of less than 1 percent separates the revenue levels of both, IHS found it was not possible this time to declare a clear winner as to who was No. 1 for 2012.

“With billions of dollars up for grabs, competition in the MEMS market is intense,” said Jérémie Bouchaud, director and senior principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. “Nowhere is the rivalry more furious than the battle for the market’s top spot. In fact, the content for number one is so closely contested that Bosch and STMicroelectronics battled each other to a draw in 2012.”

MEMS in the money

Overall, the top 20 MEMS manufacturers last year accounted for a whopping 77 percent of the industry total of some $8.3 billion, as shown in Table 1. The figure excludes foundry revenue in order to avoid double-counting of fabless and foundry takings within the same ranking. For instance, excluded is MEMS foundry revenue from STMicroelectronics for its fabrication of Hewlett-Packard inkjet print heads, or similar foundry revenue from Texas Instruments for Lexmark inkjet print heads.

top 20 mems suppliers
Table 1.

Foremost among all the players were the four companies at the top, each with revenue ranging from $675 million to $800 million, and collectively well ahead of the rest of the pack.

Bosch vs. STMicroelectronics

Bosch, the No. 3 entity in 2011, enjoyed a MEMS revenue boost of 8 percent last year including a nearly 5 percent uptick in its primary automotive MEMS business, which accounted for 82 percent of overall Bosch MEMS takings. Bosch is unchallenged as the top automotive MEMS supplier with 27 percent share of the market. The company also has a growing consumer and mobile MEMS trade—up 17 percent for the year—thanks to the soaring sales of pressure sensors in handsets, compensating for slightly down revenues in accelerometers and microphones. But while the company did well in 2012, its result was impacted by an unfavorable exchange currency rate, especially in its U.S. automotive business.

STMicroelectronics, the No. 4 player in 2011, counted on a robust consumer and mobile business as its main source of MEMS revenue. While rival Bosch dominates automotive, STM leads in consumer and mobile MEMS with 32 percent of the market. STM also made inroads into automotive with $15 million in 2012, up from $10 million the year earlier. Gyroscopes were ahead of accelerometers in contributing to STM’s cache, and similar to Bosch, pressure sensors for handsets boomed because of shipments into smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S III.

Texas Instruments tumbles from the top

Falling out of the No. 1 spot was Texas Instruments, down to No. 3, with revenue down 3 percent to $751 million. While front projectors for business and education still formed the majority of its digital light processing (DLP) chip revenue, the segment was flat last year. In particular, DLP revenue in home theater and rear-projection TVs was down, especially with the exit of Mitsubishi as the last remaining rear-projection TV brand in North America. DLP revenue for pico-projectors also has not taken off as expected, with the chipset still too expensive and its adoption slow in the consumer and mobile markets.

At the No. 4 spot was Hewlett-Packard with revenue of $677 million. HP also suffered a drop in ranking, down from No. 2 in 2011, as revenue associated with its inkjet printer heads contracted 10 percent last year. This follows a 15 percent decline in the shipment of inkjet printers. Moreover, HP’s revenue from the replacement of disposable print heads has been shrinking continually as the company long ago started to move to printers with permanent print heads.

Rounding out the Top 5 but at a relatively far remove from the four other companies above it was Canon of Japan, with revenue of $377 million.

InvenSense on the rise

In all, revenue for companies from the succeeding sixth spot all the way to No. 15 each had takings between $100 million to just under $300 million.

Worth noting outside of the Top 5 was California-based InvenSense at No. 13, with revenue up 30 percent to $186 million. InvenSense is the most successful MEMS startup ever, its market breakthrough coming in 2009 thanks to its design in the Nintendo Wii Motion Plus gaming accessory. While InvenSense initially had been heavily dependent on gaming, the company wisely diversified its business and now looks to handsets and tablets as even more important sources of revenue.

InvenSense has also pioneered serial production of 6-axis inertial measurement unit comprising accelerometers and gyroscopes in a 4 x 4-millimeter package. Combo sensors last year accounted for half of the company’s revenue, and InvenSense is now producing a very small 9-axis inertial measurement unit also containing a 3-axis magnetometer that measures only 3 x 3 millimeters.

In an industry where finer features are driving market needs, current deposition processes are no longer sufficient to address challenges like interconnect dimensions below 16/14nm or high aspect ratio TSVs (>8) without experiencing defects, voids, or low reliability. Beyond process performance, cost remains a critical consideration for manufacturing next-generation devices. Today, Alchimer is announcing a new collaboration with imec to validate its wet deposition technology.

Alchimer is a provider of wet deposition technologies for dual damascene, TSVs, MEMS and solar. The new joint development project with imec will evaluate and implement copper filling solutions for advanced nano-interconnect technologies. The focus of the project will be on Alchimer’s Electrografting products, which have demonstrated void-free filling on 7nm node devices and allow direct Cu fill on barrier with no seed layer required for damascene processes.

As CMOS scaling creates finer features, market requirements for copper damascene include smaller dimensions (≤16/14 nm) with a thin barrier layer, and thin or no Cu seed layer. Filling processes must be defect/void free to meet reliability specifications, and achieve high yields. Conventional physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes are not meeting these requirements. Alchimer’s wet deposition technologies are based on a molecular build-up process that breaks through the limitations of dry deposition processes.

"We believe that as the industry moves to smaller technology nodes, performance and cost will drive technology adoption," said Bruno Morel, CEO of Alchimer. "The performance of eG in advanced damascene applications, including single and dual damascene below 20nm, hasbeen very promising both in terms of performance and cost of ownership. Collaborating with imec gives us access to tremendous resources to validate our technology’s suitability at 300mm and understand what it would take to get ready for 450mm."

The goal of the JDP is to obtain reliability data and electrical performance for eG wet deposition processes in a 300mm manufacturing environment for sub-22nm technologies. As part of the JDP, the companies will assess the plating chemistry and work to identify the optimal process conditions for 300mm wafer-level advanced damascene plating applications.

 

 

Researchers from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), South Korea, and University of Illinois, U.S.A, developed the large-scale heteroepitaxial growth III-V nanowires on a Si wafer.

The research team demonstrated a novel method to epitaxially synthesize structurally and compositionally homogeneous and spatially uniform ternary InAsyP1-y nanowire on Si at wafer-scale using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The high quality of the nanowires is reflected in the remarkably narrow PL and X-ray peak width and extremely low ideality factor in the InAsyP1-y nanowire/Si diode.

semiconductor nanowires
These are optical and SEM images of the InAsyP1-y nanowire array.

A nanowire is a nanostructure with a diameter of the order of a nanometer (10-9 meters). Alternatively, nanowires can be defined as structures that have a thickness or diameter constrained to tens of nanometers or less and an unconstrained length. Technology related to nanowires has been selected as one of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2004 by MIT Technology Review.

High-aspect-ratio semiconductors have led to significant breakthroughs in conventional electrical, optical, and energy harvesting devices. Among such structures, III-V semiconductor nanowires offer unique properties arising from their high electron mobility and absorption coefficients, as well as their direct bandgaps.                                   

A common technique for creating a nanowire is Vapor-Liquid-Solid (VLS) synthesis. This process can produce crystalline nanowires of some semiconductor materials. However, metal catalysts, usually expensive noble metals, should be used for initiating the VLS mechanism. In addition, these metal catalysts are known to significantly degrade the quality of semiconductor nanowires by creating deep levels, thus limiting practical applications of nanowires into opto-electronic devices.

In this work, however, Prof. Choi’s group developed a novel technique of growing III-V semiconductor nanowires without metal catalysts or nano-patterning. Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD, AIXTRON A200) was used for the growth of the InAsyP1-y. 2 inch Si (111) wafer was cleaned with buffer oxide etch for 1 minute and deionized (DI) water for 2 seconds. Then, the wafer was immediately dipped in poly-L-lysine solution (Sigma-Aldrich inc.) for 3 minutes then rinsed in DI water for 10 seconds. The Si substrate was then loaded into the MOCVD reactor without any delay. The reactor pressure was lowered to 50 mbar with 15liter/min of hydrogen gas flow. Then the reactor was heated to growth temperatures (570 – 630 ℃), and stabilized for 10 minutes.

Kyoung Jin Choi, associate professor at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Korea, and Xiuling Li, Professor at University of Illinois, U.S.A. led the research and this description of the new research was published on the web on May 7 in ACS Nano. (Title: Wafer-Scale Production of Uniform InAsyP1-y Nanowire Array on Silicon for Heterogeneous Integration).

"If we develop new technology which manages the density of nanowire and bandgap energy with further study, it is also possible to produce high-efficiency and low-cost large scale solar cells," said Prof. Choi. "This technology will give us a chance to lead the research on the new renewable energy."