Category Archives: LEDs

December 23, 2004 – A group of South Korean semiconductor and flat-panel display manufacturers have banded together in a consortium to better manage and defend intellectual property rights.

The consortium consists of Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics, LG Philips LCD, Hynix, DongbuAnam Semiconductor Co., MagnaChip Semiconductor Inc., and 23 smaller companies. The group aims to foster collaboration among domestic manufacturers and research institutes concerning patent-related issues, including licensing and shared ownership, and set R&D agendas for driving key technologies.

Half of the costs for consortium projects would be funded by the government, according to an official with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy, quoted by local news sources. The government recently offered similar funding support for a domestic LED display consortium.

December 21, 2004 – Researchers at SEMATECH North have reached a milestone in reducing deposition tool-generated defects in mask blanks used for extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL). They have deposited EUV multilayers with as few as one defect/mask at 80nm resolution, which translates into 0.005 defects/square centimeter.

Technologists from SEMATECH, Veeco Instruments Inc., and Asahi Glass achieved an extremely low level of added defects in recent work with Veeco’s NEXUS system, an ion beam deposition (IBD) low defect density (LDD) tool for deposition of critical films.

Following a two-year effort to improve tool hardware, process parameters and handling protocols, the technologists deposited EUV multilayers with as few as one defect/mask at 80nm resolution, which translates into 0.005 defects/square centimeter. A state-of-the-art laser-based defect detection system was used to identify the defects.

“This is good news for the semiconductor industry, because mask blank defect reduction is a critical challenge for bringing EUVL technology into commercial fabs,” said David Krick, program manager for SEMATECH North’s Mask Blank Development Center (MBDC). “To put this achievement into perspective, imagine that a mask blank was expanded to the size of North Dakota. A single, 80 nm defect on that blank would be roughly the size of a basketball.”

Giang Dao, SEMATECH lithography director, called the milestone “technical payback” for the investment in SEMATECH North, a joint five-year program between SEMATECH and the University at Albany-State University of New York. SEMATECH North is located at Albany NanoTech, a global center for nanoelectronics research and development and home to the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University at Albany.

“Without the vision and support of New York’s public and academic leaders for SEMATECH North’s EUVL program, accomplishments such as this would not be possible,” Dao said.

For years, SEMATECH has led industry efforts to reduce defectivity in EUV mask blanks in order to have those devices available for commercial use before the end of the decade. The recent defectivity accomplishment is seen as an encouraging trend in the MBDC’s ultimate goal, which is to enable mask blank suppliers to develop processes that result in defect-free mask blanks, measured at 25nm resolution, by 2009.

Dec. 21, 2004 — Cymbet Corp., an Elk River, Minn.-based developer of thin film battery systems, announced it closed on a $16.5 million second round of funding. The company said it will use the proceeds for product development and marketing purposes.

The round was led by The IGNITE Group and Bekaert Group, and included new investors Dow Venture Capital and Intel Capital as well as individual investors. Existing investors Millennium Materials Technologies and Helmet Business Mentors Oy also participated.

The company’s thin film battery system is intended for use in ICs and new products for medical, sensor, RFID, communications and portable electronic devices. The company says its batteries can be integrated directly within ICs or built into the electronics they power.

Cymbet was founded in 2000 and previously raised $4.5 million in first round financing. It currently employs 20 people and plans to add 10 employees in the coming year.

Click here to enlarge image

Dec. 13, 2004 – Throughout much of the 20th century, Dortmund was Germany’s steel city. In its heyday, the major steelmaker ThyssenKrupp employed more than 40,000 locally, and its factories dotted the landscape. The other leading industries, coal and beer, employed another 40,000 combined.

Today, ThyssenKrupp employs fewer than 1,000 in the area, and most foundries sit vacant or have been demolished. The other industries have waned as well. But rising on the site of one former blast furnace is a decidedly different kind of factory: one that hopes to produce microsystems companies and the jobs that come with it.

Click here to enlarge image

MST.factory Dortmund, expected to open in spring 2005, will be a 21,000-square-foot center serving as an incubator for startups, joint ventures, and research and development groups. Services will include prototyping and development work, as well as consulting and training. The center also will rent space for offices, laboratories and clean rooms.

MST.factory hasn’t waited for a permanent home to set up shop. A temporary facility operates nearby in the Dortmund Technology Park, and has signed up a half-dozen companies. The new center is part of a larger effort by 2010 to create 70,000 jobs in the area, a quarter of which city and regional officials envision coming in the microsystems sector. More than 135 acres of brownfield land have been set aside for settling MEMS-related companies.

It might seem like a lofty goal for the west German town steeped in mature industries, but the area has been working to redevelop itself since the late 1980s and early ’90s.

Among the early arrivals on the micro side was STEAG microParts, which was formed in 1990. With more than 300 employees, it now is one of the largest companies in Dortmund. The former STEAG AG subsidiary was acquired Oct. 1 by German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim, which helped to develop and sell Respimat, microParts’ metered-dose inhaler. It plans to keep its staff and facility in Dortmund.

Other independent efforts that helped to form a microsystems foundation included research at both the Dortmund Technology Center and University of Dortmund. Work at the university led to the 1988 launch of HL Planartechnik, which makes MEMS-based sensors for automotive, medical, consumer and industrial applications.

“The steel industry knew conditions wouldn’t last forever,” said Hans-Rudolf Folle,  MST.factory’s chief executive and a former ThyssenKrupp official in Dortmund.

“Steel companies started to diversify, and I had the opportunity to do that. I was asked to create companies in telecom and mobile communications. I wrote papers for getting the MEMS industry to Dortmund.

“We said, ‘We switched off the lights of the steel business in Dortmund. We want to create other jobs.'”

Efforts by Folle and others lured about a dozen small- to medium-size microsystems firms, but the campaign intensified in 1999, when ThyssenKrupp and the city hired global business consultants McKinsey & Co.  to conduct a survey.

The resulting document identified three sectors worth further development: microsystems, information technology and logistics. To keep the momentum going, government and industry leaders created the Dortmund Project, whose goals include supporting the startups and attracting investors from inside and outside Germany.

Dortmund now has 26 microsystems firms, and, just as importantly, a cooperative spirit among many of its players, according to Christine Neuy, chief executive of the Dortmund-based trade group IVAM Microtechnology Network. 

Several of the companies located in Dortmund’s tech center, for instance, work together and even exchange employees. She said companies in Dortmund’s microsystems cluster typically come in two flavors: old-line firms that have diversified into small tech, and startups. Marketing and distribution is not a problem for the former category, but they often need help learning about new applications.

For the latter group, it’s reversed. IVAM itself reflects the city’s effort to link both locally and globally. While the publicly and privately funded association was created by seven Dortmund companies as a meeting point and business development platform, it has included foreign firms from the start. It now has more than 130 members from 11 nations.

“The federal state said we can’t stop at the borderlines,” Neuy said. “We can have a more neutral position being international. It’s useful for the federal state we have this global mission.” Neuy and Folle were part of a German contingent that visited Pittsburgh in September to attend METRIC, a two-day annual meeting of the MEMS Industry Group. 

Folle said he frequently takes such trips to recruit academic and industrial collaborators. While he said efforts to rebuild Dortmund have been successful so far, he knows that hurdles remain. He has met with German tax consultants to find ways to ease what he considers a regulatory burden on startups.

He also tries to entice Germany’s individual and institutional investors who are traditionally reluctant to invest in early-stage firms. “We need to create a VC-business angel culture,” said Folle, whose has worked for academia, industry and government. “That’s another part of my job.”

Click here to enlarge image

Nov. 22, 2004 – “It’s been a good month,” said an understated Seth Coe-Sullivan by cell phone. He was heading to the Cleveland airport in late October after his new company had just received the top prize in a nanotechnology business idea competition. A few weeks earlier, he had taken top honors in the Nikon International Small World Competition.

Although his entry into the microscopic photography contest was a more individual, creative quest than the bare-knuckle business plan for Cambridge, Mass.-based QD Vision Inc.,  both zoom in on his passion for quantum dots, or semiconducting nanocrystals.

Click here to enlarge image

“They’re materials I handle on a daily basis. So to some degree, (the entries are) related,” said Coe-Sullivan, whose work as a graduate research assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is providing the building blocks for QD Vision. He is also the spinout’s acting chief technology and chief executive officer.

Winning the International Business Idea Competition netted the firm $50,000 in cash, business plan writing assistance and additional advisory services. The competition’s organizers include representatives from Case Western Reserve University, Purdue University and Nano-Network, an Ohio-based consortium of scientists, entrepreneurs and supporting agencies.

He said venture capitalists serving as judges provided further help refining QD’s plan to commercialize quantum dots for hand-held flat-panel displays.

Three winners and five runners-up were chosen among 25 teams selected to participate in a semifinal round of judging. They were among entries from 14 states and four countries.

As for Nikon? Well, it was no less competitive. He was the top entrant in a field of 20 selections, which were chosen out of 1,200 from around the globe. A Nikon executive said in a written release that the winning photomicrographs, set to tour science and art museums beginning in January, “demonstrate scientific curiosity blended with extraordinary artistic sensibility.”

Coe-Sullivan, who captured quantum dots deposited on silicon, might add “happy accident” to the list: “Basically the picture I took was a failed experiment. Something completely different happened. It looked good, so I took a picture of it.”

The 2004 gallery of winning images can be viewed at the Nikon site. Calendars for 2005 featuring Coe-Sullivan’s work and other images are also available through the site.

Nov. 19, 2004 – Nanoscale technologies could boost products such as light-emitting diodes, flat-panel displays and solar cells, and garner billions of dollars in the process. But the challenge comes in identifying early market opportunities and gauging the investment to fit them, according to a new report. “Nanophotonics: Assessment of Technologies and Market Opportunities,” a new report from Strategies Unlimited Inc., said both LEDs and flat-panel markets offer high growth potential.

Nanomaterials could help lower the manufacturing costs of solar cells to make them competitive with other energy sources. However, nanoscale solutions and the applications are wide-ranging, multidisciplinary and early-stage.

The report also found that likely winners in the nano realm are material companies, such as Corning and DuPont, which are diversified across applications. Other well-positioned players are system vendors, such as Lockheed Martin, Samsung and Applied Biosystems, which incorporate nanotech to serve core customers.

Worldwide demand for chip manufacturing equipment continued to slow down in October, and capacity utilization rates are inching toward slipping below the 80% mark, according to VLSI Research.

Worldwide equipment billings decreased by 16.5% in October to $3.99 billion, although still on pace for 34.6% year-on-year growth, according to VLSIh. Sales of equipment for wafer processing, test, and service and spares fell 12%-17% from September, but were up 27%-41% from a year ago. Assembly, meanwhile, displayed the sharpest sequential slide (-21%) and weakest year-on-year growth (6%). Equipment bookings in October were $3.26 billion, down 9.5% from September and off a fraction from October 2003.

The equipment book-to-bill ratio for October rebounded slightly to 0.82, up from September’s three-year low of 0.75 (revised downward from VLSI’s previous estimates), but well off from 1.11 in October 2003. A B:B ratio of 0.82 means that $82 worth of new orders was received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

October’s IC orders (a three-month average) were $14.21 billion, down about 2% from September (which was raised nearly 7% from earlier projections) and 4% from October 2003. Billings of $15.16 billion were down 16% month-on-month, but up 18% year-on-year. The IC B:B ratio of 0.89 compared with 0.94 in September and 1.13 a year ago.

Worldwide utilization rates continued to slide in October, with frontend, test, and assembly ranging between 81%?88%. By regional consumption, Korea led the pack of gainers including North America, Taiwan, and Europe, while China, Japan, and rest-of-world regions saw a dropoff from the prior month.

For November, VLSI claims equipment bookings will increase slightly to $3.30 billion, with billings rising to $4.01 billion for a B:B ratio of 0.82. IC orders and sales for November are expected to be $15.30 billion and $15.63 billion, respectively, resulting in a B:B of 0.94. VLSI also projects November capacity utilization on the frontend to dip below 80% for the first time in 19 months.

Nov. 16, 2004 – Zyomyx Inc. (News, Web) tapped its chief technology officer to take over as chief executive as it scales back its business. Peter Wagner, a founder who has led the firm’s technology efforts since 1998, succeeds Robert Monaghan as CEO. Wagner co-founded the Hayward, Calif.-based biochip developer to commercialize protein analysis tools.

The restructuring has included layoffs and an auction of production and research equipment. The company said in a news release this week that it’s focusing on development and marketing partnerships to leverage its existing technological assets and intellectual property.

Nov. 15, 2004 — The third annual Best of Small Tech Awards is Small Times Magazine’s ultimate annual performance review of the people, products and companies in micro and nanotechnology.

After rigorous evaluation by nearly 30 industry leaders and experts, Small Times editors present 31 winners and runners-up who represent the best work and biggest successes in the categories of product, company business leader, researcher, innovator, advocate and lifetime achievement. Awards are based on accomplishments between Sept. 1, 2003 and Oct. 1, 2004. More details can be found in the November/December issue.

Best of Small Tech Award: Product

The product award winner this year goes to a tool that will help other companies make their products. Imago Scientific Corp.’s Local Electrode Atom Probe (LEAP) Microscope visualizes individual atomic structures in three dimensions — at a speed of a million atoms per minute.

Runners-up: FEI Company’s NanoLab DualBeam system, PPG Industries’ CeramiClear clear coat finish, Samsung’s Silver Nano coating for appliances, and Wilson Sporting Goods’ nCode nano-enhanced tennis rackets.

Best of Small Tech Award: Company

Molecular Imprints Inc.’s nanoimprint tools are touted as being able to help create integrated circuits with nanoscale features faster and cheaper than currently possible. The company has attracted millions in financial support from many leaders in the semiconductor field, has sold equipment to several of them and has secured public and private funding to develop the supporting systems to break into chip manufacturing.

Runners-up: Catalytic Solutions Inc., Cavendish Kinetics Ltd., Glimmerglass Networks and MEMS Technology Bhd.

Best of Small Tech Award: Business Leader

The business leader succeeded in taking his nanotechnology company public without a mention of nanotech. Immunicon CEO Edward Erickson focused on cancer diagnostics, built a product based on its magnetic nanoparticles and connected with powerful partners. As a result, Immunicon’s IPO was over subscribed and has stayed comfortably above its opening price.

Runners-up: Howard Berke, Konarka Technologies; Randy Levine, ZettaCore Inc.; Norman Schumaker, Molecular Imprints Inc.; and Donn Tice, Nano-Tex.

Best of Small Tech Award: Researcher

The researcher award winner David Liu is putting DNA to work to make new chemicals and chemical reactions at Harvard University. He has co-founded Ensemble Discovery Corp. to commercialize his DNA-based chemistry for pharmaceutical uses.

Runners-up: Hermann Gaub, University of Munich; Naomi Halas, Rice University; John Rogers, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and Jennifer West, Rice University.

Best of Small Tech Awards: Innovator

Stanford University’s Calvin Quate captured top honors this year as the Best of Small Tech Innovator for his work with MEMS techniques that could eventually provide microscopes that are faster and capable of imaging larger areas. Quate was co-developer of the atomic force microscope, a critical tool for small tech.

Runners-up: Mark Miles, Iridigm Display Corp.;  Thomas Rueckes, Nantero Inc.; Andrew Turberfield, University of Oxford; and Cees van Rijn, Aquamarijn Micro Filtration BV.

Best of Small Tech Awards: Advocate

As the director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, advocate award winner Clayton Teague has earned a solid reputation of staking out nanotechnology’s middle ground. And during this tumultuous year, Teague has served as the voice of reason on controversial nanotech subjects.

Runners-up: Joe Brown, SUSS MicroTec; Roy Doumani, California NanoSystems Institute; LaMar Hill, Albany NanoTech; and Sean Murdock, NanoBusiness Alliance.

Best of Small Tech Awards: Lifetime Achievement

Go to the movies, turn on a TV or head to your neighborhood bar and you may be watching our lifetime achievement award winner’s accomplishments. Texas Instruments inventor and Emmy winner Larry Hornbeck’s digital micromirror device led to the creation of TI’s Digital Light Processing (DLP) system. The DLP system makes high quality images for projection onto cinema screens, televisions, home theater systems and business projectors.

Nov. 11, 2004 – Austin, Texas-based Introgen Therapeutics Inc. said animal trials of its nanoparticle-based therapy have shown significant suppression of tumor growth and prolonged survival of mice with lung cancer, according to a news release.

University of Texas medical researchers found that direct injection of INGN 401, a nanoparticle formulation of the tumor suppressor gene FUS1, not only suppressed tumor growth but also led to tumor regression in some animals. Trial data also showed that the therapy inhibited the spread of cancer and extended the life of treated mice by nearly 70 percent, the release said.

Data from the animal studies appears in the current issue of Cancer Gene Therapy. INGN 401 has begun human trials in patients with lung cancer and initial survival results are encouraging, the release said.