Category Archives: LEDs

April 22, 2005 — Litrex Corp., a Pleasanton, Calif., developer of inkjet systems for manufacturing next generation electronics and displays, announced it had shipped its 50th inkjet printer, a Generation 2, to an institute for developing a variety of LCD manufacturing applications.

The company’s inkjet printers are for precisely depositing an array of high-value materials, including electronic polymers, nano-metals, and biomaterials. The company says currently 25 companies worldwide are using them for materials deposition in industries such as OLED, organic semiconductors, and LCD manufacturing.

One of Litrex’s parent companies, Cambridge Display Technology (Nasdaq:OLED) develops light emitting polymers (P-OLEDs). Litrex’s other owner is ULVAC, Inc. (TOKYO:6728) of Japan, a leader in vacuum deposition for displays.

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April 20, 2005 — Oregon’s nanotechnology initiative appears to be holding steady even if one of its leading industrial supporters has faced a bumpy start this year. Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), one of the state’s signature research centers, is on the docket for more state and federal funding, and continues to win the support of its business and political leaders.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski encourages the state to create a climate for innovation, including scientific research. He advocates joint efforts between universities, federal labs and industry, hoping to speed transfer of technology to business applications.

The state also has an advocate in Washington, D.C. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, introduced a bill that led to the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. The act, signed in late 2003, authorized nearly $3.7 billion for nanotechnology over fours years.

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One of Kulongoski’s favorite projects is ONAMI, based in Corvallis, which the governor cited as an example of “collaborative partnerships that work.” ONAMI’s function is to put a roof over research currently going on at Oregon State University, University of Oregon and Portland State University, as well as projects undertaken by private industry. The partnership includes Battelle, which manages Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Wash.

“There is $7 million for ONAMI in the governor’s budget, and no matching is required,” said Robert D. “Skip” Rung, executive director of ONAMI. The state Legislature is currently considering that request in the 2005-2007 biennium budget.

Other state government funds so far have gone primarily to construction and engineering education. The governor’s recommended budget for the coming two years also asks for $21.7 million to engineering education and research, with the lion’s share going to OSU, and the rest to seven other universities.

Some of those dollars are expected to stick to micro and nanotechnology projects as well, but activation of ONAMI has been slower than expected and rumored cutbacks at Hewlett-Packard Co, the institute’s chief private sector sponsor, have created some uncertainty.

HP’s printer division in Corvallis has contributed a large part of one of the buildings on its local campus at no charge to the institute. The division may be a target for layoffs this year, with estimates ranging from 5 percent to 20 percent of HP’s 4,300 workforce. Reports of possible cuts overlapped with the announcement in early February that HP’s chief executive, Carleton Fiorina, had abruptly stepped down.

Rung and HP spokesman Brigida Bergkamp downplayed the rumors. “I have no non-public information on what HP might do. But it will not have any effect on ONAMI,” Rung said in an e-mail. He added that HP is not cutting back on its support of the institute.

Bergkamp said the company collaborates with ONAMI on research and development projects, but they are two separate, independent entities. “Nanotech is a vibrant part of HP’s business,” she said. “We’re committed to a presence in Corvallis. We will continue to adjust our workforce according to business and customer needs and to reflect patterns in the marketplace, and this includes hiring.”

HP is not ONAMI’s sole industrial partner. Hillsboro, Ore.-based FEI Co. and Portland-based Electro Scientific Industries have worked to support ONAMI. FEI (Nasdaq: FEIC) makes tools for nanotechnology researchers and manufacturers. ESI (Nasdaq:ESIO) specializes in production laser systems for microengineering applications.

Oregon is wooing additional business partners as well. At a 2004 meeting of leaders in venture capital and engineering firms, Rung joined three executives on a panel about fostering innovation and technology projects in Oregon. Michael Baker, chief executive at Home Dialysis Plus, and Chuck May, senior director of operations at LSI Logic, both of Portland, and Thomas Rueckes, chief scientific officer at Nantero Inc. of Boston, discussed how to translate micro and nano research into companies and jobs.

In another example of collaboration, the Oregon Business Plan, a group of high-tech CEOs and state government finance officials, tries to spur economic development in the state, incorporating the governor’s goals to support signature research centers and commercialize research.

To that end, they are attempting to raise $10 million in state and private funding to keep ONAMI going. That sum should support basic operations and attract at least $60 million to $80 million in federal research project grants.

They hope state spending will be matched by federal and private funds. In 2004, nearly $20 million worth of federal research and development products were awarded to the institute.

The group also wants to identify markets for at least two technology-based industry clusters that can convert university research into new products and businesses.

Meanwhile, ONAMI recently brought in Dennis Stiles, PNNL’s program manager in Corvallis, and John Carruthers, PSU physics professor, as new co-directors of the institute. They join current directors from University of Oregon and Oregon State University.

Carruthers was previously director of components research at Intel Corp. and will head a new effort in nanoscale metrology in downtown Portland, where an advanced transmission electron microscope and nanotube and nanowire fabrication facilities already exist. Stiles will be the first of up to 20 PNNL staff in Corvallis at OSU’s Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, an ONAMI partner located on the OSU campus.

The traditional three leaders – TSMC, UMC, and Chartered – continued to dominate the pure-play IC foundry market in 2004, according to a new ranking by IC Insights. But a wider look at the top foundries shows that hungry Chinese foundries are staking their claim in the industry, led by up-and-coming SMIC, which more than doubled its sales in 2004 to nearly $1.0 billion.

TSMC dwarfed all other foundries with 2004 sales of $7.65 billion, nearly doubling No. #2 UMC and 7x that of Chartered. Taiwanese foundry Vanguard posted 66% growth in 2004 to take the No. #5 spot between SMIC and South Korea’s DongbuAnam. Both Malaysia (Silterra, 1st Silicon) and the US (Jazz Semiconductor, PolarFab) placed a pair of entries in the top 18, while Europe held a single spot with X-Fab.

Comparing sales and net income from 2000 and 2004 for the top three foundries, TSMC showed healthy double-digit gains in both categories, while UMC and Chartered struggled. IC Insights also noted an interesting statistic: Net income as a percentage of sales was better for all three foundries in 2000 than in 2004, but far more so for UMC and Chartered – perhaps indicating that the real impact of increasing competition from China is not reduced sales levels, but pricing pressure.

Most notable in this list of top pure-play foundries is the emergence of China as a chip manufacturing power. In 2002, four Chinese fabs posted sales of $320 million for a collective 4% share of the market. Two years later in 2004, six Chinese fabs – SMIC, HHNEC, ASMC, Grace, HeJian, and CSMC – pumped out total sales of more than $1.9 billion, and gobbled up more than 12% of the market. This emergence clearly has had an affect on the leaders. TSMC and UMC still commanded more than two-thirds of the market in 2004 (69%) – but that’s down from 75% in 2003 and 81% in 2002. TSMC alone lost 5% marketshare in 2004 despite a 31% increase in sales.

April 19, 2005 – Raytheon Co.’s Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) has been awarded a three-year, $26.9 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract with a potential award value of $59.4 million if all program options are exercised. The program will optimize and refine the use of gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors for use in military and civilian systems. Raytheon is the prime contractor, having teamed with Cree Inc. on this leading edge technology.

“Teaming with Cree is all about speed — combining the capabilities of the scientists at both companies will make this technology available to the warfighter much sooner,” said Joe Smolko, Raytheon program manager for the WBGS-RF (Wide Bandgap Semiconductors for Radio Frequency) applications program.

GaN is capable of providing 10 times the output power of similarly sized GaAs components. It enables systems solutions that are smaller, lighter, more efficient and more cost effective than can be realized with current technology and is the enabling building block for Raytheon’s high-power and wideband strategy.

The Raytheon portion of the work will be conducted at Raytheon RF Components in Andover, Mass., while Cree’s portion of the work will be conducted in Durham, NC and its Santa Barbara Technology Center in CA.

April 19, 2005 – Intematix Corp. (Moraga, Calif.) announced the completion of an agreement related to white LED technology with LumiMicro of Suwon Gyunggi-do, Korea.

LumiMicro, a developer of light emitting diodes for backlighting, camera flashes, and emerging architectural solutions, will use the Intematix phosphor in its core and emerging businesses.

The first members of the Intematix phosphor family, the White Lightning Y450 and Y460 were announced last month.

April 13, 2005 – Golden Gate Capital has acquired TDK Semiconductor Corp. for an undisclosed sum from TDK U.S.A. Corp., a subsidiary of Japan-based TDK Corp. and regional headquarters for TDK’s operations in the Americas, said the Asia Pulse Pte Ltd.

The acquired company will continue to be led by the current management team and its headquarters and operations will remain based in Irvine, CA. The acquired company will continue to be called TDK Semiconductor Corp. for a short transition period until a new name has been established.

“We are excited to partner with management in acquiring TDK Semiconductor Corporation,” stated David Dominik, managing director of Golden Gate Capital. “We are impressed with the management team, outstanding products and opportunity to build a world class semiconductor corporation.”

“The sale of TDK Semiconductor Corporation will allow us to focus more on the core businesses of TDK and better ensure that the long term objectives of the company are achieved,” said Francis J. Sweeney, Jr., president of TDK U.S.A. Corp.

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April 12, 2005 — Ecology Coatings of Akron, Ohio, announced a licensing deal Monday with DuPont Performance Coatings allowing DuPont to manufacture and sell Ecology Coating’s products for use in North American automotive applications. Ecology Coatings also announced the formal launch of its licensing program.

Terms of the DuPont agreement were not disclosed, but Rich Stromback, Ecology Coating’s chief executive officer, said DuPont licensed the technology to use in automotive applications where coatings must adhere to both metal and plastic while simultaneously withstanding abrasion and corrosion.

“The coatings industry has been overlooked,” he said. “Incorporating (nanomaterials) is tougher than people thought.”

Ecology’s technology combines the company’s core ultraviolet-curable coating technology — what it calls “liquid 100 percent solids” — with nanoparticles that act as a sort of smart filler, lowering the coating’s viscosity, adding to its durability and increasing its transparency.

Stromback said that his company’s technology is intended to compete with conventional coatings technology that can require heating a part in order to cure the coating. Ecology’s ultraviolet curing, he says, also makes it appropriate for medical, electronics and display applications.

The company’s business model is to focus on the technology and partner with leading firms to address individual markets. In addition to the DuPont agreement, Stromback says Ecology Coatings also has a licensee that uses its technology in surgical medical devices. He said the terms of the agreement prohibit him from naming the licensee.

Sally Judith Weine Ramsey, Ecology’s chief chemist, said flexibility would also become an issue for protective coatings as the market for organic light emitting diode (OLED) and other next-generation display technologies matures. “We’ve seen the coating being the bottleneck,” she said of the sector. Stromback said Ecology is in discussions with the holders of the key OLED intellectual property and leading manufacturers of OLED devices.

– David Forman

April 8, 2005 — Applied MicroStructures Inc. of San Jose, Calif., a provider of tools and technologies for vapor deposition of molecular-level films, announced the closure of its Series B financing round with an investment of $8.5 million.

California-based Sierra Ventures led the round, with existing investors Compass Technology Partners and Horizon Ventures also participating.

The company also announced that Sierra Ventures Partner Ben Yu will join its board of directors.

April 5, 2005 – Worldwide microchip sales of $18.1 billion in February were 2% below the revised January sales of $18.4 billion but 15.8% higher than February 2004 sales of $15.6 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported today. SIA noted that February is normally one of the weaker months for microchip sales.

The group also reported that the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization revised upward the three-month rolling average number previously reported for January. Data released last month indicated a slight sequential decline in sales. The revised data indicate that January sales were essentially flat with December sales.

“Worldwide sales of semiconductors have been stronger than expected during first two months of 2005,” said SIA president George Scalise. “Flat sales in January followed by a modest sequential decline in February are actually encouraging signs given that these two months are normally slow periods for the industry. Despite record gasoline prices, retail sales have continued to grow.”

Scalise noted that consumer spending patterns have become increasingly important to the worldwide semiconductor industry. The SIA estimates that half of all semiconductor consumption in 2004 was driven by purchases of products by individuals.

“The semiconductor content of a vast array of products purchased by individual consumers – from automobiles to personal communications devices and home entertainment systems – has risen dramatically in recent years. As a result, our industry is paying closer attention to indicators of consumer confidence. At this time, those indicators appear to be positive.”

“Sales of personal computers and wireless handsets have increased from the same period of 2004,” Scalise continued. “Relatively strong sales of PCs and cell phones have led to year-on-year sales growth for microprocessors (up 11% from February 2004), DRAMs (up 36%), and application-specific circuits for wireless applications (up 53%).”

Scalise said excess inventories are no longer a factor in industry sales. “According to iSuppli, excess inventories have continued to decline from $1.6 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2004 and will be at $0.7 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2005.

“The overall health of the global semiconductor industry remains strong. If the current trends continue, our forecast for flat industry sales for 2005 could prove to have been overly cautious,” Scalise concluded.

Davis has over 30 years of operational experience in the high-growth technology arena, leading the Broadband Connectivity Group (BCG) at ADC Telecommunications to a 36% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 1992 to 2000, delivering over 100% of the company’s operating profit. He led the BCG to identify, acquire, and successfully integrate seven entities that provided ADC with differentiable enabling technologies. Among the acquisitions were two chip-making operations dedicated to fabricating optical networking devices.

(April 4, 2005) San Jose, Calif. &#8212 Normally a weak month for microchip sales, worldwide sales of $18.1 billion in February were 2% below the revised January sales of $18.4 billion, but were 15.8% higher than February 2004 sales of $15.6 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).