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Rapidly increasing customer demand for NexPlanar’s advanced semiconductor CMP pads has necessitated a significant capacity expansion in both the U.S. and Asia.

Since NexPlanar opened its Hillsboro, Oregon operation two years ago, production has doubled each year. In response to this growth, NexPlanar will open a second pad manufacturing plant in Hillsboro in early 2014. In addition, the company will open a pad finishing facility in Taiwan to complement the Hillsboro operation. The Taiwan facility, which will include a quality control and analysis lab, will open in late 2013.

To fund this expansion, NexPlanar recently completed a $10 million round of funding to expand capacity in these two locations. A new strategic investor led the investment round with full participation by all existing investors.

"Reducing defects and improving yields," commented Jim LaCasse, CEO and President of NexPlanar, "has become the key focus of our customers as they move to more advanced semiconductor processing nodes. NexPlanar’s pad technology enables significant defect reduction in the polish process. As the demand for our CMP pads increased and our technology gained global acceptance, we saw a dramatic need for expanding manufacturing capacity both at a new, second facility in Hillsboro and also in Taiwan, close to a large segment of our customer base."

Worldwide shipments of touch-screen panels are set to double from 2012 to 2016, reaching nearly 3 billion units as a wide variety of products beyond smartphones and tablets adopt the technology, particularly notebook PCs.

A total of 2.8 billion touch-screen panels will ship in 2016, up from 1.3 billion in 2012, according to the IHS DisplayBank “Touch Panel Issue and Cost/Industry Analysis Report,” from information and analytics provider IHS. Shipments this year will surge 34 percent to reach 1.8 billion units.

“Growth in the touchscreen market will be driven by increasing penetration in markets beyond the smartphone and tablet businesses,” said Duke Yi, senior manager for display components and materials research at IHS. “Demand so far has largely been limited to these two markets. However, touch-screen sales are increasing dramatically across a broad range of products, particularly notebook PCs.”

Yi addressed his remarks to a large audience at the SID/IHS Touch Gesture Motion Focus Conference here on Wednesday.

Yi presented 14 different products that all will see growth in penetration of touch-screen technology through the year 2016. In addition to smartphones, tablets, notebooks and PCs, Yi said opportunities exist in the markets for liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors, digital still cameras, portable navigation devices, portable media players, portable game devices, automobiles, ebook readers, camcorders, digital photo frames, and portable DVD players. While the size of these markets varies widely and some are quite small, their aggregate growth will propel the rapid expansion and massive volumes of the touch-screen market in the coming years.

Notebooks get touchy

“The notebook represents the key near-term growth generator for touch-screen displays,” Yi told the SID audience.

As IHS noted this week, global shipments of touch-screen-equipped notebook PCs will rise to 78 million units in 2016, up from just 4.6 million in 2012. By 2016, notebooks will account for 12.3 percent of global touch-screen shipments by area, up from less than 2 percent in 2012.

Prices for touch-enabled notebooks are declining, with a popular model from Asustek Computer Inc. falling to a $700 price in China, Yi noted. This is making the touch screens more affordable for mainstream consumer notebook PC buyers.

The form factor of notebooks is evolving to suit touch technology, with new alternatives to the traditional clamshell arising, including detachable, slide, foldable, flip and twist.

Touch leaders

Projected capacitive is expanding its dominance of the market with 96 percent of touch screens expected to use the technology in 2016, up from 79 percent in 2012.

Asustek of Taiwan took an early lead in the touch notebook market, taking the No. 1 rank in the first quarter.

Atmel Corp. of the United States was the top touch controller integrated circuit (IC) chip supplier in in the first quarter.

Among touch-screen panel suppliers in China and Taiwan, the dominant suppliers in 2012 were No. 1 TPK and No. 2 Wintek, which are far ahead of the other suppliers in terms of revenue. In Korea, Iljin Display was the top touch panel supplier.

The diffusion of roll-to-roll technologies is expected to have a marked effect in lowering the unit prices of flexible devices. Consequently, while consumption in terms of volume is forecast to rise very rapidly, revenues will increase somewhat more moderately. As a result, the total market for roll-to-roll flexible devices is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 16.1 percent from 2012 to 2017, reaching global revenues of nearly $22.7 billion by 2017.

The global market for flexible devices manufactured by roll-to-roll technologies increased from $8.5 billion in 2010 to nearly $10 billion in 2011, and was valued at nearly $10.8 billion in 2012, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.3 percent during the two-year period.

Circuit devices currently account for a nearly 96.9 percent share of all revenues in 2012. Sales within this segment are primarily associated with flexible printed circuits.

Displays and other optoelectronic devices account for a 2.5 percent share of the roll-to-roll flexible devices market, with total 2012 revenues of $264 million, while solar cells, sensors, and other emerging applications currently represent a combined share of only 0.7 percent of the total.

There are several reasons why flexible devices are gaining increasing importance. First, flexible devices are being created with the same functionalities as traditional (rigid) integrated circuits, yet are produced with low-cost materials and processes with the intent to make them commercially available at lower unit prices than their rigid counterparts.

Printed circuit boards include rigid and flexible circuits. In recent years, flexible circuits have gained increased market share driven by their growing use in popular consumer electronics such as tablet PCs, notebooks, cell phones, and other wireless devices. Flexible circuits are also gaining acceptance for the fabrication of RFIDs and smart cards.

Flexible circuits offer several advantages compared to rigid circuits, including reduced package dimensions, reduced weight, and optimization of component real estate. Flexible circuits currently represent approximately one-fifth of the entire PCB market, but are forecast to continue growing at a faster pace than the overall PCB market during the next five years, with a CAGR of 8.4 percent.

As the flexible printed circuit (FPC) market continues to expand, driven by mass-market applications, the need will grow for high-volume, automated processes that maintain consistent quality (i.e., roll-to-roll technologies) to satisfy the increasing demand for these products.

Photonics societies across the United States today announced the launch of the National Photonics Initiative. These societies, comprised of the IEEE Photonics Society, the Laser Institute of America, Optical Society of America, SPIE and the American Physical Society, intend for this initiative to be a collaborative alliance that will unite industry, academia and government experts to identify and advance areas of photonics critical to maintaining US competitiveness and national security.

“Life without photonics is almost unimaginable. From the moment you wake up to the alarm on your smartphone, to swiping your credit card to pay for coffee, to logging into your computer and connecting with the world through the Internet, photonics makes it possible,” said OSA CEO Elizabeth Rogan. “The NPI will work to advance photonics in the areas that are most critical to the US, like improving the economy, creating jobs, saving lives and sparking innovation for future generations.”

Photonics generates, controls and detects light to advance manufacturing, robotics, medical imaging, next-generation displays, defense technologies, biometric security, image processing, communications, astronomy and much more. Photonics forms the backbone of the Internet, guides energy exploration and keeps men and women in uniform safe with night vision and physiological feedback on the battlefield.

In 1998, the National Research Council released a report, “Harnessing Light,” which presented a comprehensive overview of the potential impact of photonics on major industry sectors. In response, several worldwide economies moved to advance their already strong photonics industries. The United States, however, did not develop a cohesive strategy. As a result, the US lost its competitive advantage in a number of cutting-edge technologies as well as thousands of US jobs and companies to overseas markets.

“The EU, Germany, Korea, Taiwan and China all recognize the importance of photonics, and have taken action,” said SPIE CEO Eugene Arthurs. “The US Department of Defense, for example, has long supported photonics, but more photonics research is needed to maintain our national security in the face of non-traditional threats. The time is now for the US to make the right investments in the crucial capabilities of the future.”

In 2012, the National Research Council released “Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for our Nation” that called for a national photonics initiative to regain US leadership in key photonic-driven fields. In response to that call, the NPI was established to raise awareness about photonics and the impact of photonics on our everyday lives; increase collaboration and coordination among US industry, government and academia to advance photonics-driven fields; and drive US funding and investment in areas of photonics critical to maintaining US competitiveness and national security.

“The NPI offers an opportunity for us to show how critical it is for federally funded research to flourish in this country,” said Kate Kirby, executive officer of APS. “So many of the technologies that we use have come from the results of basic research funded by the federal government.”

As part of the NPI effort, more than 100 experts from industry, academia and government collaborated to draft a white paper detailing recommendations to guide funding and investment in five key photonics-driven fields: advanced manufacturing, communications and information technology, defense and national security, health and medicine and energy. New opportunities in these fields such as 3-D printing, more efficient solar power, improved nuclear threat identification, more accurate cancer detection and the growth of Internet speeds and capacity, offer the potential for even greater societal impact in the next few decades.

“There are thousands of companies that have sprung up in the last decade or so that produce the photonics devices and systems that we all depend on now, but there’s plenty of room for growth,” said Richard Linke, executive director of the IEEE Photonics Society.

In order to capitalize on new opportunities and regain global leadership and economic prosperity, the white paper also provides key recommendations to the United States government that apply across all five of the fields:

  • Drive funding and investment in areas of photonics critical to maintaining US competitiveness and national security—advanced manufacturing, defense, energy, health and medicine, information technology and communications; 
  • Develop federal programs that encourage greater collaboration between US industry and academia to better support the research and development of next-generation photonics technologies;
  • Increase investment in education and job training programs to reduce the shortage of technically skilled workers needed to fill the growing number of photonics-based positions;
  • Expand federal investments supporting university and industry collaborative research to develop new manufacturing methods that incorporate photonics such as additive manufacturing and ultra-short-pulse laser material processing; and
  • Collaborate with US industry to review international trade practices impeding free trade, and the current US criteria restricting the sale of certain photonic technologies overseas.

The NPI maintains that fulfillment of these recommendations will position the United States as a global leader in photonics research and development, and will grow the US economy and add jobs at home.

“Our objective is to direct funding intelligently to research, implementation and education and training, with the ultimate goal of restoring US competitiveness, thereby improving our security, our economy and our quality of life,” said LIA Executive Director Peter Baker.

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this article, the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association was listed in the first paragraph among the societies launching this initiative. This information was incorrect. Solid State Technology apologizes for the error.

Researchers have created a new type of transparent electrode that might find uses in solar cells, flexible displays for computers and consumer electronics and future "optoelectronic" circuits for sensors and information processing.

The electrode is made of silver nanowires covered with a material called graphene, an extremely thin layer of carbon. The hybrid material shows promise as a possible replacement for indium tin oxide, or ITO, used in transparent electrodes for touch-screen monitors, cell-phone displays and flat-screen televisions. Industry is seeking alternatives to ITO because of drawbacks: It is relatively expensive due to limited abundance of indium, and it is inflexible and degrades over time, becoming brittle and hindering performance.

"If you try to bend ITO it cracks and then stops functioning properly," said Purdue University doctoral student Suprem Das.

The hybrid material could represent a step toward innovations, including flexible solar cells and color monitors, flexible "heads-up" displays in car windshields and information displays on eyeglasses and visors.

"The key innovation is a material that is transparent, yet electrically conductive and flexible," said David Janes, a professor of electrical and computer engineering.

Research findings were detailed in a paper appearing online in April in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.

The hybrid concept was proposed in earlier publications by Purdue researchers, including a 2011 paper in the journal Nano Letters. The concept represents a general approach that could apply to many other materials, said Alam, who co-authored the Nano Letters paper.

"This is a beautiful illustration of how theory enables a fundamental new way to engineer material at the nanoscale and tailor its properties," he said.

Such hybrid structures could enable researchers to overcome the "electron-transport bottleneck" of extremely thin films, referred to as two-dimensional materials.

Combining graphene and silver nanowires in a hybrid material overcomes drawbacks of each material individually: the graphene and nanowires conduct electricity with too much resistance to be practical for transparent electrodes. Sheets of graphene are made of individual segments called grains, and resistance increases at the boundaries between these grains. Silver nanowires, on the other hand, have high resistance because they are randomly oriented like a jumble of toothpicks facing in different directions. This random orientation makes for poor contact between nanowires, resulting in high resistance.

"So neither is good for conducting electricity, but when you combine them in a hybrid structure, they are," Janes said.

The graphene is draped over the silver nanowires.

"It’s like putting a sheet of cellophane over a bowl of noodles," Janes said. "The graphene wraps around the silver nanowires and stretches around them."

Findings show the material has a low "sheet resistance," or the electrical resistance in very thin layers of material, which is measured in units called "squares." At 22 ohms per square, it is five times better than ITO, which has a sheet resistance of 100 ohms per square.

Moreover, the hybrid structure was found to have little resistance change when bent, whereas ITO shows dramatic increases in resistance when bent.

"The generality of the theoretical concept underlying this experimental demonstration – namely ‘percolation-doping’ — suggests that it is likely to apply to a broad range of other 2-D nanocrystaline material, including graphene," Alam said.

A patent application has been filed by Purdue’s Office of Technology Commercialization.

Aledia today announced that solid-state lighting (SSL) industry veteran Dr. Bernhard Stapp has joined its board of directors.

Stapp brings more than a dozen years of executive experience in LED lighting technologies to Aledia, most recently in senior management positions at OSRAM.

As general manager and senior vice president of OSRAM AG’s SSL unit, Stapp was responsible for the company’s professional LED and OLED business. Earlier, as SSL vice president and general manager at OSRAM Opto Semiconductors, he launched and managed the general-lighting LED business and oversaw launch of the world’s first OLED lighting products. Prior to that, Stapp was vice president and CTO of the semiconductor company, where he oversaw global LED, laser and OLED R&D. Earlier in his career, he held a variety of management positions in Siemens AG’s Corporate Technology division.

“Aledia’s mission is to bring fundamental change to the world’s lighting markets by making LED technology substantially more affordable and more versatile, with better performance and fewer limitations,” said Giorgio Anania, Aledia’s co-founder, president and CEO. “Bernhard has been a key player at the heart of the global LED industry since its inception, and also has an outstanding technical background. His unique perspective on this industry’s future will be invaluable as Aledia moves into the next stage of its evolution.”

WireLED, Aledia’s 3D microwire GaN-on-silicon technology, was developed at the CEA-Leti nanotech research institute in Grenoble. It addresses the basic technical and economic challenges facing LED lighting by allowing production of LEDs on inexpensive industry-standard 200mm silicon wafers using standard semiconductor processes and tools.

Soitec announced the PV industry’s first four-junction solar cell device, which works under concentrated sunlight, achieving 43.6 percent efficiency as confirmed by the Fraunhofer ISE Calibration Laboratory. This measurement was achieved at a concentration level of 319 (319 suns). The new cell has demonstrated more than 43 percent energy-generating efficiency over a concentration range between 250 and 500.

Today’s triple-junction solar cells used in commercial concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) modules in real-world applications are approaching their physical limits in converting sunlight into renewable energy. The four- junction cell is designed to increase the conversion efficiency of commercial CPV systems to the highest level ever achieved by any photovoltaic technology. It uses two dual-junction sub cells grown on different III-V compound  materials, which allows optimal band-gap combinations tailored to capture a broader range of the solar spectrum. This maximizes energy-generating efficiency.

Soitec leveraged its proprietary semiconductor-bonding (Smart Stacking) and layer-transfer (Smart Cut) technologies, which have been used in volume production by the global semiconductor industry for decades, to successfully stack non-lattice-matched materials while also raising the possibility of re-using expensive materials.

The new cell was developed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) in Freiburg, Germany, and the Helmholtz-Zentrum für Materialien und Energie in Berlin, which developed and deposited III-V epitaxial layers on new base materials as well as fabricating and characterizing the device. CEA-Leti, France’s research institute for electronics and information technologies also actively participated in the project and contributed its expertise in mechanically strong, electrically conductive and optically transparent bonding interfaces as well as layer-transfer engineering of III-V compound materials.

“Boosting efficiency levels is a key step in outperforming the economics of conventional PV. This great achievement brings strong value to our solar division and validates our strategy and business model in the solar market,” said André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, CEO of Soitec. “Through our collaboration with the Fraunhofer and the Leti, two world-class R&D partners, our own leadership experience in materials and bonding technologies as well as our CPV commercial experience, we have been able to achieve this major advancement in a very short time. This represents a major proof-of-concept, on track to demonstrate a concentrated solar cell with 50% efficiency as soon as 2015.”

Driven by falling prices and a major initiative from Intel Corp., shipments of touch-enabled mobile PCs are expected to enjoy rapid growth in 2013 and the coming years, rising to about 25 percent of all notebooks by 2016.

Global shipments of touchscreen-equipped notebook PCs will rise to 78 million units in 2016, up from just 4.6 million in 2012, according to the Notebook Touch Panel Shipment Database from information and analytics provider IHS. By 2016, touch notebooks will represent 24.6 percent of all global PC notebook shipments, as presented in the figure below. This year is expected to represent a major threshold for market growth, with shipments expected to surge to 24 million, up more than 400 percent—the highest rate of growth the market is anticipated to achieve for the next four years.

touch notebook shipments

The year 2013 will be a banner year for touch notebooks because prices for low-end 14-inch capacitive touchscreen display panels fall to $35—down dramatically from $60 to $70 in 2012. The $35 price will help spur widespread market acceptance, enabling the production of more affordable touchscreen mobile PCs.

This pricing breakthrough, combined with Intel’s supply-chain muscle, will boost market growth this year and beyond.

“Touch displays are reinventing the PC market and there is a substantial growth opportunity in this area,” said Zane Ball, Intel vice president and general manager, Global Ecosystem Development. “At Intel, we have adopted a strategy that touch should be everywhere. We believe that as touch moves into the PC space, it will be a transformative product and will unlock new demand.”

Ball addressed his comments here Monday to a large audience at the Society for Information Display (SID) IHS/SID 2013 Business Conference.

Ball said that new mobile PC designs based on the company’s new Haswell processor are well underway in 2013. These designs combine touchscreen displays with innovative form factors.

In addition to Haswell, Intel is taking steps to ensure the stable supply of inexpensive touchscreens. The company also had to do some evangelizing to convince sometimes doubtful members of PC supply chain of the merits of touchscreen technology.

“We’re glad we’ve made this investment because now there’s little doubt there’s demand for touch in any number of PC form factors,” Ball said.

Ball noted that Intel’s touch ambitions are much larger than the mobile PC space. He outlined Intel’s vision for touch-enabled all-in-one PCs, including devices that are portable and battery powered.

Invensas Corporation, a subsidiary of Tessera Technologies, Inc., will showcase its latest mobility solution, an ultra-high bandwidth Bond Via Array (BVATM) Package-on-Package (PoP) product, at the upcoming IEEE Electronic Components & Technology Conference (ECTC) in Las Vegas, NV on May 28 – 31, 2013. The solution was brought to high volume market readiness in collaboration with Kulicke & Soffa Industries, Inc. (K&S), Universal Instruments Corporation, and Celestica Inc.

“The BVA platform provides smartphone and tablet makers with a roadmap to much higher bandwidth and lower power consumption, enabling high definition mobile gaming, multi-channel video, and a host of new data-rich applications on next generation mobile devices,” said Simon McElrea, president of Invensas Corporation. “With greater than 1,000 interconnects, twice that of the current competition, in a tiny 14x14mm package-on-package form factor, BVA is by far the mobile industry’s highest bandwidth solution.”

The technology, which relies on conventional manufacturing infrastructure, enables the interconnection of System on Chip (SOC), Central Processing Unit (CPU), and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) chips with their associated memory chips. It accommodates Double Data Rate 3/4 (DDR3/4 ) DRAM, Low Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR) and “Wide-IO” DRAM, as well as Flash and Multi Chip Package (MCP) memory. 512 bit memory bus width is supported which, at 800MHz operation, delivers an unprecedented 100GB/s bandwidth.

Invensas will display the technology at the 2013 ECTC in the Cosmopolitan Hotel, Las Vegas, NV, on May 28 – 31, 2013. In addition, Invensas will present a white paper “Package-on-Package with Very Fine Pitch Interconnects for High Bandwidth” on Thursday May 30, 2013 at 4:45pm PT.

“In the cloud computing era, AMOLED displays are most likely to have the greatest amount of influence on innovation in smart devices." Kinam Kim, CEO of Samsung Display, delivered this statement as part of a keynote speech on "Display and Innovation" to attendees at the Society for Information Display’s Display Week 2013 in the Vancouver Convention Centre today.

During the keynote speech, Kim said that the future of displays will change considerably, with special attention to be given for the virtually infinite number of imaging possibilities in AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode) display technology.

Kim emphasized that three evolving “environments” are likely to make displays the central focus of the increasingly pervasive use of electronic devices.

The first environment is the spread of cloud computing. In the cloud environment, the capability of electronic networked devices for data processing and storage will be extended infinitely, allowing users everywhere to easily enjoy content that only highly advanced devices can fully process today, including ultra HD (3840 x 2160) images and 3D games. Higher levels of display technology will be required to support our increasing reliance on the cloud.

The second environment is the accelerating evolution of high-speed networks. By 2015, the velocity of 4G LTE will rise to 3 gigabits per second (Gbps), so the transmission time for a two-hour UHD-resolution movie will be under 35 seconds.

“As image quality of video content improves, larger and even more vibrant displays will emerge as a key differentiating point in mobile devices,” said Kim.

The third environment is the spread of connectivity among electronic devices. As the use of Wi-Fi networks explodes, the N-Screen era is on its way. A massive network environment will be established by connecting not only smartphones and tablet PCs but also automobiles, home appliances and wearable computing devices. Due to this explosion in “data flow,” there will be a huge surge of interest in touch-enabled displays.

Kim said that the innovative advantages of AMOLED technology will allow consumers to realize more possibilities in electronic convenience than we might have ever imagined.

AMOLED TV presented at CES 2013
AMOLED displays can embody true colors closest to natural colors with their color space 1.4 times broader than that of LCD displays.

The first innovative advantage of AMOLED, according to Kim, is the superiority of its color. AMOLED displays can embody true colors closest to natural colors with their color space 1.4 times broader than that of LCD displays. By offering the world’s broadest color gamut – supporting nearly 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color space, AMOLED will expand the range of displays well suited to printed media, where specialized color is frequently required.

The second innovative advantage of AMOLED is its flexibility and transparency. AMOLED displays can maximize portability by making devices foldable and rollable, and they can also lead innovation in product designs with advantages in curved forms, transparent panels, and lighter weight than other display technologies.

The third innovative advantage of AMOLED displays will be their responsiveness to touch and sensors for detecting all five human senses. Using Samsung’s new Diamond Pixel technology, which has been optimized for the human retina, AMOLED displays can now depict natural colors and images with super high resolution.

Kim went on to say that display applications, with advantages of AMOLED technology, will rapidly spread throughout other business sectors like the automotive, publishing, bio-genetic and building industries.

In the automotive business, AMOLED displays will replace conventional glass and mirrors that have been used for digital mirrors and head-up displays. Capitalizing on their advantages with flexibility, durability and high resistance to temperature changes, AMOLED display panels also will be used for watch displays and for products in the fashion and health care market sectors. Further, in publication and building, AMOLED displays will set the trend for the building market sector with AMOLED architectural displays in and outside buildings being used as highly desirable decorative and information-delivering products.

Kim expressed confidence that "the display market is unlimited in the amount of growth that it can achieve, as technical innovation continues to accelerate.”