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Global demand for precursor, a material used in manufacturing of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), is set to more than double from 2012 to 2016, as the market for LED lighting booms, according to a new report entitled “Precursor for LED MOCVD–Market and Industry Analysis,” from Displaybank, now part of IHS.

The market for precursor used in the metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) manufacturing process for making LEDs will rise to 69 tons in 2016, up a notable 114 percent from 32 tons in 2012.

“The boom in the precursor market reflects the rising operating rate of MOCVD as the LED lighting market grows,” said Richard Son, senior LED analyst at IHS.

Precursor is a core material that ensures the optimal light efficiency for each LED epi layer. It is used in the MOCVD process, which is the most important process in manufacturing LED chips. Major precursors include trimethylgallium (TMGa), trimethylindium (TMIn), trimethyl aluminum (TMA), triethylgallium (TEGa) and C2Mg2. Among these, TMGa is the most widely used and commands about 94 percent of total demand.

Read more: Epi-wafer market to grow to $4 billion in 2020 as LED lighting zooms to $80 billion

Global shipments of MOCVD equipment are on the rise, with shipments expected to climb by 17 percent in 2013.

The largest buyers of MOCVD equipment—South Korea, Taiwan and China—account for about 80 percent of the global demand of precursors. China, which is generating the highest growth in installation of MOCVD equipment among the three countries, is expected to make up 45 percent of the global demand of precursors in 2016.

In the nascent stage of the LED market, Dow Chemical Co. was the unrivaled leader in the precursor market. However, with the recent growth in precursor demand, new players have been investing in R&D and manufacturing facilities while aggressively breaking into the market with low prices for similar-quality product. Such developments will intensify competition further among precursor makers.

An international team of researchers has described a new physical effect that could be used to develop more efficient magnetic chips for information processing. The quantum mechanical effect makes it easier to produce spin-polarized currents necessary for the switching of magnetically stored information. The research findings were published online on 28 July in the high-impact journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Random-access memory is the short-term memory in computers. It buffers the programs and files currently in use in electronic form, in numerous tiny capacitors. As capacitors discharge over time, they have to be recharged regularly to ensure that no data are lost. This costs time and energy, and an unplanned power failure can result in data being lost for good.

Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAMs), on the other hand, store information in tiny magnetic areas. This is a fast process that functions without a continuous power supply. In spite of this, MRAMs have yet to be implemented on a large scale, as their integration density is still too low, and they use too much energy, are difficult to produce, and cost too much.

Read more: MRAM: Disruptive technology for storage applications

One reason for this is that spin-polarized currents, or spin currents for short, are needed to switch the magnetic areas of the MRAMs. Spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons that gives materials their magnetic properties, and it can point in two directions. Spin currents are electric currents that possess only one of these two spin types. Similar to the way in which the Earth’s magnetic field affects the needle of a compass, a current of one of the spin types influences a magnetic layer and can cause it to flip.

To produce spin currents up to now, the desired spin type was filtered from normal electric current. This required special filter structures and high current densities. Thanks to the new effect identified by researchers from Jülich, Barcelona, Grenoble, and Zurich, magnetic information could now be switched more easily.

"We no longer need spin filters. Instead, we produce the spin current directly where it will be used. All that is needed is a layer stack made of cobalt and platinum," says Dr. Frank Freimuth from the Peter Grünberg Institute and the Institute for Advanced Simulation at Forschungszentrum Jülich. This reduces the amount of space required, makes the system more robust, and may simplify the production of magnetic chips.

An electric current, conducted through the stack at the interface, separates the spins in the platinum layer and transports only one spin type into the magnetic cobalt layer. This creates a torque in this layer that can reverse the magnetization. "Spin torques had already been observed in double layer systems in the past," says the physicist, who is part of the Young Investigators Group on Topical Nanoelectronics headed by Prof. Yuriy Mokrousov. "The fact that we have conclusively explained for the first time how they are created is a scientific breakthrough, because this will enable us to produce them selectively and investigate them in more detail."

Read more: New magnetic graphene may revolutionize electronics

The researchers identified two mechanisms that combine to produce the new effect, which they have dubbed ‘spin-orbit torque’: spin-orbit coupling and the exchange interaction. Spin-orbit coupling is a well-known relativistic quantum phenomenon and the reason why all electron spins of one type move from the platinum to the cobalt layer. Within the cobalt layer, the layer’s magnetic orientation then interacts with the spins via the exchange interaction.

The researchers tested their theory successfully in experiments. Their next step is to calculate the effect in other materials with stronger spin-torque coupling to find out whether the effect is even more apparent in other material combinations.

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased during the second quarter 2013 when compared to first quarter 2013 area shipments, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

Read more: Quarterly semiconductor sales increase 6%, outperforming industry forecast

Total silicon wafer area shipments were 2,390 million square inches during the most recent quarter, a 12.3 percent increase from the 2,128 million square inches shipped during the previous quarter. New quarterly total area shipments are 2.3 percent lower than second quarter 2012 shipments.

"Total quarterly silicon shipment volumes accelerated in the most recent quarter in contrast to the first quarter” said Byungseop (Brad) Hong, chairman of SEMI SMG and director of Global Marketing at LG Siltron. “As such, silicon shipment volumes for the first half of this year are trending at a slightly higher level than the first half of 2012.”

Quarterly Silicon Area Shipment Trends
Semiconductor Silicon Shipments* – Millions of Square Inches

 

Million of Square Inches

 

Q2 2012

Q1 2013

Q2 2013

TOTAL

2,447

2,128

2,390

*Shipments are for semiconductor applications only and do not include solar applications

 Silicon wafers are the fundamental building material for semiconductors, which in turn, are vital components of virtually all electronics goods, including computers, telecommunications products, and consumer electronics. The highly engineered thin round disks are produced in various diameters (from one inch to 12 inches) and serve as the substrate material on which most semiconductor devices or "chips" are fabricated.

All data cited in this release is inclusive of polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers, and non-polished silicon wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.

The Silicon Manufacturers Group acts as an independent special interest group within the SEMI structure and is open to SEMI members involved in manufacturing polycrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon or silicon wafers (e.g., as cut, polished, epi, etc.). The purpose of the group is to facilitate collective efforts on issues related to the silicon industry including the development of market information and statistics about the silicon industry and the semiconductor market.

SEMI is the global industry association serving the nano- and micro-electronic manufacturing supply chains.

PI (Physik Instrumente) L.P., a manufacturer of nanopositioning equipment — offers the LPS-45 series of piezo positioning stages manufactured by PI subsidiary PI miCos.

This low profile linear translation stage is driven by a PIshift inertia-type piezo motor. The closed-loop stage is equipped with a high precision optical linear encoder providing for nanometer-level repeatability. An open-loop version and vacuum compatible and non-magnetic versions are also offered.

The PIShift piezo inertia drive is very quiet, due to its high operating frequency of 20 kHz. It provides high holding forces of 10 N. The drive principle works similar to the classic tablecloth trick, a cyclical alternation of static and sliding friction between a moving runner and the drive element.

When at rest, the maximum clamping force is available, with no holding current and consequently no heat generation.

PI provides a large variety of nanopositioning stages, based on several piezo-motor techniques, as well as classical electromagnetic drives.

Despite the very low profile of only 0.8” (20 mm) and compact dimensions, the stage offers a standard travel range of 30 mm (1.2”) and can be scaled up for longer travels, if needed.

PI’s precision linear translation stages are of great value for precision alignment in photonics, semiconductor, bio/nanotech applications as well as in scientific research.

Peregrine Semiconductor Corporation, a fabless provider of high-performance radio frequency integrated circuits (RFICs), and LG Electronics today announced they have teamed up to develop the high-performance antenna tuning design solution in the LG Optimus G Pro smartphone that was recently introduced to the Korean market. The Optimus G Pro features a 5.5-inch full High Definition (HD) In-Plane Switching (IPS) display—the largest display available on a LG smartphone—and it is a mere 9.4 mm thick, meeting the growing demand for smartphones with large screens in a thin-and-slim form factor. Peregrine’s DuNE technology optimizes the performance of the main antenna by bringing the best of what its UltraCMOS and DuNE technologies offer—namely, optimized handset efficiency, data rate, call integrity, and battery life. By enabling one antenna to more efficiently cover multiple frequency bands, the DuNE-based tuning solution enables the Optimus G Pro to support a subset of the more than 40 frequency bands available with 4G LTE.

“Peregrine is thrilled to announce that we have teamed up with industry giant LG for their latest offering,” said Dylan Kelly, vice president of Peregrine’s Mobile Wireless Solutions business unit. “LG continues to develop innovative products for the premium LTE smartphone market, and the release of the Optimus G Pro in Korea is the latest example. Teaming up with LG further validates that Peregrine’s DuNE technology is ideal for 4G LTE smartphones.”

Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new flexible nano-scaffold for rechargeable lithium ion batteries that could help make cell phone and electric car batteries last longer.

The research, published in Advanced Materials ("Aligned Carbon Nanotube-Silicon Sheets: A Novel Nano-architecture for Flexible Lithium Ion Battery Electrodes"), shows the potential of manufactured sheets of aligned carbon nanotubes coated with silicon, a material with a much higher energy storage capacity than the graphite composites typically used in lithium ion batteries.

Read more: UC Riverside scientists discover new uses for carbon nanotubes

 “Putting silicon into batteries can produce a huge increase in capacity—10 times greater,” said Dr. Philip Bradford, assistant professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science at NC State. “But adding silicon can also create 10 times the problems.”

One significant challenge in using silicon is that it swells as lithium ion batteries discharge. As the batteries cycle, silicon can break off from the electrode and float around (known as pulverization) instead of staying in place, making batteries less stable.

When the silicon-coated carbon nanotubes were aligned in one direction like a layer of drinking straws laid end to end, the structure allowed for controlled expansion so that the silicon is less prone to pulverization, said Xiangwu Zhang, associate professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science at NC State.

 “There’s a huge demand for batteries for cell phones and electric vehicles, which need higher energy capacity for longer driving distances between charges,” Zhang said. “We believe this carbon nanotube scaffolding potentially has the ability to change the industry, although technical aspects will have to be worked out. The manufacturing process we’re using is scalable and could work well in commercial production.”

CORRECTION: The original version of this article stated that LSI Corp. reported shipments of 400,000 PCI Express SSDs from the start of the year through April. LSI actually posted 40,000 shipments during the period. A corrected version of the article is below. Solid State Technology regrets the error.

 

Solid-state drives (SSD) got a huge push in the first quarter from greatly expanded usage in ultrathin/Ultrabook PCs as well as in PC tablets, where shipment volume to those sectors tripled within a year’s time in a mighty display of growth, according to the latest Storage market tracker report from information and analytics provider IHS.

SSD shipments to ultrathins and Ultrabook PCs reached 5.9 million units from January to March this year, up more than threefold from 1.9 million units during the same three-month period in the first quarter of 2012. SSDs also made a sizable splash in the PC tablet sector, where shipments hit 1.6 million units, likewise surging by a factor of three from just 542,000 units.

SSD shipments were actually up in virtually every segment where the electronic disks with no moving mechanical parts are used. SSD deployment rose not only in the enterprise segment governing business, but also staged strong gains in the various non-enterprise fields covering desktop PCs, notebook PCs and the industrial market for applications such as aerospace, automotive and medical electronics.

Read more: Personal computer shipments post worst quarter on record

All told, SSD shipments in the first quarter amounted to 11.5 million units, up 92 percent from 6.0 million the same time a year ago, as shown in the attached Figure 1. The shipments include standalone SSDs as well as the NAND flash component used together with hard disk drives to form cache SSDs or hybrid drives.

“The SSD market enjoyed big results in the first quarter as both the consumer and enterprise markets ramped up their use of machines that made use of the drives,” said Fang Zhang, analyst for storage systems at IHS. “Most notably, SSD attach rates climbed in ultrathin/Ultrabook PCs where SSDs are the de facto storage medium, and also in PC tablets where productivity options differentiate them from media tablets.”

HDD market flourishes in enterprise but stumbles in client/consumer sector

Meanwhile, the hard disk drive (HDD) market enjoyed some success of its own via the enterprise segment. Shipments here amounted to 16.0 million units, up from 14.9 million in the first quarter of 2012.

Read more: Thin is in: Sales of slender hard disk drives soar as PCs slim down

HDD enterprise demand is expected to continue growing because of the exploding use of data among consumers, especially in music, video and social networking. Consumers’ needs, in turn, will necessitate cost-effective storage solutions on the part of data centers and cloud servers that store and serve up the data. HDDs are still considerably less expensive than solid-state drives, so their use remains assured despite uneven or dwindling market results at times.

The HDD market, however, is encountering challenges in the consumer PC segment. Total HDD consumer PC shipments fell to 93.3 million units in the first quarter, down from 105.3 million a year ago.

The HDD consumer PC space had worse results than either the HDD enterprise segment or the entire SSD consumer PC market, mainly because of poor sales of desktop and notebook PC on which the HDD market relies, weakened by intense competition from smartphones and tablets.

A promising application of HDDs, however, is in the video surveillance market, where hard drives will exceed other storage media, including SSDs and tape. Two types of HDDs are used at present for the video surveillance industry: dedicated DVR drives for traditional analog closed-circuit television (CCTV), and enterprise HDDs.

In all, HDD shipments in the first quarter amounted to 135.7 million units, down 7 percent from 145.5 million the same time a year ago.

SSD and HDD winners in Q1

Among companies, SSD manufacturers whose prospects have significantly improved given their stronger enterprise strategies include South Korea’s Samsung Electronics; California-based makers Intel, SanDisk and Seagate; and Hitachi Global Storage Technologies from Japan, a Western Digital company. Also staging a strong debut in the SSD space was LSI from Silicon Valley, which claimed shipments of 40,000 PCI Express SSDs from the start of the year through April.

Read more: Reinventing Intel

In the HDD market, Western Digital continued to hold the top spot for the fourth quarter in a row, beating rivals Seagate and Toshiba. Western Digital and Seagate are expected to continue battling for the top spot throughout the year, especially as the two adversaries release new HDD products, including large-capacity helium hard disks aimed at enterprise servers for data centers, which offer greater storage capabilities than current HDD technologies.

 

Colors are playing an increasingly important role in the automotive sector. Consumers can not only choose the exterior color of the vehicle, you can also tailor the interior lighting to the customer’s individual taste. Thanks to the very wide blue color range of the new RGB MultiLED from Osram Opto Semiconductors, lighting designers have a virtually unlimited choice of colors for ambient lighting, including customer-specific colors. Color design now covers cluster lighting to an increasing extent, notably in combined instruments such as speedometers and RPM indicators, in infotainment and GPS displays, as backlighting for switches and in accent, ambient and trim lighting. Vehicles are fast becoming objects of individual design.

The main feature of the new MultiLED from Osram is a very broad blue color range with a wavelength of 447 to 476nm and high brightness. Deep saturated blue tones can now be produced thanks to the use of three LED chips in red, green and blue (RGB). Other properties of the MultiLED, such as its integrated ESD (electrostatic discharge) protective diode (2 kilovolts), its improved corrosion resistance, and its longtime market availability, make these LEDs ideal for use in automobiles. The MultiLED was developed specifically for applications in the automotive sector and meets all the requirements of an automotive certified component.

OSRAM multi-chip LED

All shades of blue

The new MultiLED consists of a red chip, a green chip and a blue chip (RGB LED). At 370 millicandelas (mcd), the blue is much brighter than in other multi-chip LEDs on the market. This brightness is a significant advantage because the sensitivity of the human eye causes the color blue to be perceived as darker than it actually is.

Read more: LED revenues grow even as prices fall through 2016

"The new LED can offset this darker perception so that customer brightness requirements can be met for all color ranges," said David Rousseau, LED Product Marketing Manager at Osram Opto Semiconductors. "What’s more, a short-wave blue color has a pleasant saturated appearance. We have now succeeded in implementing this color range in an RGB LED version."

The three independently controllable LED chips in blue, red and green in the MultiLED are available in different brightness groups thanks to finely defined grouping (known as binning). They can be individually combined to produce a large color spectrum. All three chip colors are the product of leading-edge technology: blue and green in UX:3 technology, red in the latest thin-film technology. The light is extracted from the chip with very high efficiency, resulting in high luminous intensity. In the upper blue wavelength range, for example, a level of up to 560 millicandelas is achieved at an operating current of 20 mA. Luminous intensity in candelas (cd) corresponds to luminous flux in lumens (lm) emitted by a light source in a particular solid angle. The typical thermal resistance between the chip and the solder point is 127 K/W for blue and green, and 96 K/W for red.

 

In 2012, the IC industry saw a two percent decline, but Yole Développement’s research reveals the MEMS sector managed another 10 percent growth to become an $11B business. Analysts expect a 12-13 percent CAGR through 2018 to create a $22.5B MEMS market, growing to 23.5 billion units. We have identified a number of changes as old MEMS products mature and new ones emerge. Cell phone demand drove strong growth for MEMS devices. Inertial sensor maker InvenSense continued to prove the worth of its fabless model with a ~30 percent increase in sales. Triquint saw 27 percent growth as its BAW filters won more slots in smartphones.

Yole Développement’s report shows markets for inkjet heads and DLPs have matured, but we see huge growth on the horizon for combination inertial sensors and for MEMS timing devices. Combination inertial sensors are starting to see high volume adoption in both consumer and automotive markets, and will quickly account for a signifi cant part of inertial sensor sales. Yole Développement’s report identifies new innovative MEMS devices that continue to emerge. Yole expect to see a number of them start production, though not reach significant volumes for a few years. MEMS autofocus could come to market shortly. Big smartphone players are now looking at adding environmental sensors for heat and humidity, and MEMS devices could win those slots.

Consumer is still the leading MEMS application with increasing needs for sensory interface. Yole Développement’s report ranks the top MEMS suppliers. In 2012, for the fi rst time, the top two MEMS suppliers on our annual Top 30 MEMS companies ranking are suppliers of inertial sensors, rather than of inkjet heads or micro-mirror actuators that have long dominated the sector. STMicroelectronics is the first company to grow a $1 billion MEMS business, surpassing Texas Instruments. The second sensor supplier, Robert Bosch, has also pushed ahead of Texas Instruments and Hewlett Packard for the first time. The expanding demand for MEMS in both smartphones and automotive applications is creating a rising group of players, that can expect to see solid sales in their future.

Yole Développement’s report shows how the results of MEMS players top 30 and companies with the largest growth clarify just how much the smartphone market is driving MEMS demand. AAC Technologies had strong sales of MEMS microphones that propelled them to 90 percent growth and $65 million in MEMS revenues, putting them in the Top 30 for the first time. More microphones in more phones also helped propel sales to grow more than 20 percent at both Infineon and Knowles. Yole Développement’s analysis shows that very few MEMS players have more than one device in production. Only big manufacturers such as STMicroelectronics or Robert Bosch have different devices in production.

Although there are many MEMS devices that have been in development for many years now (auto focus, micro fuel cells), Yole Développement’s analysis shows that crossing the gap from development to industrialization is still challenging. Consumer and mobile applications are the fastest growing areas for MEMS, having a strong impact on many developments happening at the moment. The report shows that pressure sensors started to be produced in large volumes for cell phone applications in 2012 and MEMS microphones are still growing, boosted by the integration of multiple microphones in smartphones. It is interesting to note the market for standalone accelerometers is decreasing as mobile devices increasingly use combo sensors. There is high demand for compact devices, partially offset by the growth of 6-axis e-compass for low-end smartphones. Adoption of 6-axis IMUs is now strong and 9-axis combos should follow within a few years. This push from the consumer side drives MEMS players to adopt new strategies.

Zvi Or-Bach, President & CEO of MonolithIC 3D Inc. blogs about Samsung’s recent announcement on 3D vertical NAND.

Samsung announced today (Aug. 6, 2013) the mass production of the industry’s first three-dimensional (3D) Vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory, which breaks through the current scaling limit for existing NAND flash technology. Achieving gains in performance and area ratio, the new 3D V-NAND will be used for a wide range of consumer electronics and enterprise applications, including embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs).

According to Samsung, the new V-NAND offers a 128 gigabit (Gb) density in a single chip, utilizing the company’s proprietary vertical cell structure based on 3D Charge Trap Flash (CTF) technology and vertical interconnect process technology to link the 3D cell array. By applying both of these technologies, Samsung’s 3D V-NAND is able to provide over twice the scaling of 20nm-class planar NAND flash.

It’s worth mentioning to the point that while the volume production of TSV based 3D IC is keep being pushed out as discussed in a recent blog: EUV vs TSV: Which one will become production ready first?, this announcement indicates that monolithic 3D NAND is beating the forecast by a few years as illustrated by the following 2012 ITRS chart:

 

Clearly monolithic 3D is a promising alternative to dimension scaling, as one can read in the Samsung announcement. It also adheres very well to the low cost objective for mass production products.

Monolithic 3D technology provides multiple unique and powerful advantages as we present on our site under the tab: 3D-IC Edge. Under item 5 we present the unique advantage that was first introduced in 2007, when Toshiba unveiled its Bit Cost Scalable (BiCS) technology. The unique advantage of 3D NAND is the ability to pattern and process multiple layers simultaneously.

This advantage comes very naturally for regular layout fabrics such as memory, but it is also available for logic circuits. The driver for this advantage is the escalating costs of lithography in state of the art IC. The following charts illustrate the impact of dimensional scaling on lithography costs.

Currently critical lithography steps dominate the end device production costs as illustrated in the following chart:

Accordingly, if the critical lithography step could be used once for multiple layers rather than multiple times for each single layer, then the end device cost would roughly be reduced in proportion to the number of layers processed simultaneously. Multiple memory architectures that support such drastic cost reduction has been presented in various conferences and other forums. Few of those had been presented in our blog: The Flash Industry’s Direction, and MonolithIC 3D Inc.’s Solution…