As technology continues to scale to finer dimensions, large caches are being integrated into microprocessor die. This chart shows the general trend of large cache integration.
Subcommittee chair Stefan Rusu of Intel in Santa Clara, CA will present on trends in high-performance digital. The relentless march of process technology, he says, brings more integration and performance. IBM’s System z processor leads the charge at ISSCC 2013, clocking in at 5.7GHz and with 2.75B transistors. Read more.
The prime application for thin-film-transistors are backplanes for active-matrix displays, including in particular flexible displays. They are well-suited for integration with temperature or chemical sensors and more. Hoi-Jun Yoo of KAIST in South Korea presents.
Technology directions in the field of large-area and low-temperature electronics focuses on lowering the cost-per-unit- area, instead of increasing the number of functions-per-unit-area that is accomplished in crystalline Si technology, according to the well-known Moore’s law. Subcommittee chair Hoi-Jun Yoo will present on the trends of these large-area flexible electronics. Read more.
November 29, 2012 – The market for materials used in printed electronics manufacturing will nearly double over the next five years as new materials are brought forth that are printing process-compatible and are sufficiently low-cost to support low-cost volume production of printed electronic devices, according to a Lux Research report.
"Much of the promise of printed electronics lies in the potential to manufacture devices through low-cost, high-throughput manufacturing," said Jonathan Melnick, Lux Research analyst and lead author of the report, "Inking Money: The prospects for materials in printed electronics." To do that, though, will require creation and implementation of various materials that offer good enough performance and are compatible with printing processes — without becoming too costly themselves."
Examining a range of materials with a breadth of complexity, performance, and cost — focusing on conductive inks and pastes, new transparent conductive films, and semiconductor inks — Lux offers the following observations:
Rising silver cost will have less impact on emerging silver paste and ink alternatives prices. (Source: Lux Research)
EV Group has completed its expanded cleanroom IV facility at its corporate headquarters in Austria, which doubled its cleanroom space for process development and pilot production services.
As part of the company’s long-term growth strategy to address high-volume tool orders and speed time to market, EV Group, a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment, also increased the size of its application labs, added new R&D facilities for internal tool development and testing, and opened a new customer and employee training center.
The customer and employee training center provides several new rooms for instructional training courses, as well as a large number of manual and automated EVG tools for training.
While manufacturing and product development are centralized at EV Group’s corporate headquarters, technology and process development teams in Austria work closely with the company’s subsidiaries in Tempe, AZ; Albany, NY; Yokohama and Fukuoka, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; and Chung-Li, Taiwan, where additional, state-of-the-art application labs and cleanroom facilities are available.
Earlier this year, the addition of an ultra-modern manufacturing facility that doubled the production floor space marked the completion of the first phase of EVG’s long term expansion plans. Already positively contributing to EVG’s growth from the beginning of 2012, the company increased its order intake in FY12 (ended September 30) by 5 percent over fiscal 2011, and increased its revenue by 20 percent within the same period.
November 27, 2012 – LEDs have struggled to gain a foothold in the marketplace for indoor lighting applications, but technology improvements and supportive legislation are gathering momentum to help push LED adoption for residential buildings — the largest lighting application sector.
Global sales of LEDs for lighting applications totaled $3.57B in 2011, and should surge to $23.24B by 2018, calculates Frost & Sullivan. Behind that swell is "legislation that will essentially phase out incandescent lighting and other inefficient lighting technologies," as well as declining prices for LEDs that will boost demand and penetration of LED technology across multiple lighting applications, explains Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Hammam Ahmed.
The European Union has been an early adopter of legislation supporting a shift away from both manufacturing and sales of incandescent lighting; this legislation, though coming in multiple phases, has been echoed with similar policies sprouting up and implemented in various other countries (US, Switzerland, Canada, Australia). In Asia, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Korea are adopting LED-supportive legislation including financial incentives for both consumers and manufacturers.
Total global LED lighting market (2011), percent LED revenue by region (left)
and application (right). All figures are rounded. (Source: Frost & Sullivan)
Key factors limiting LED penetration into general lighting applications are pricing and technology improvements, but sharp and continued price declines should speed up the tipping point of price parity with other lighting technologies by the end of this decade, Frost & Sullivan says.
On the other side of that coin, manufacturers continue to improve lumens/dollar by pushing R&D and improvements in brightness, design, and quality of components, Hammam notes — though he admits "it remains to be seen how customers receive these new product developments." Additionally, those same relentless price declines are forcing manufacturers to come up with sustainable, long-term growth plans. "Participants from Eastern Asia, who have the ability to compete on prices, need to address quality issues to expand into the more developed markets of North America and Europe," he noted, while current market leaders "need to offer high-quality products and explore avenues for reducing cost of production."
November 23, 2012 – Growth in the industrial electronics semiconductor market is set to fall short of previous expectations in 2012 as the business is buffeted by weakening global economic conditions, with the LED market the sole bright spot, says IHS iSuppli in an updated report.
In general, revenue for industrial semiconductors — used in a wide array of application markets from home automation to aeronautics and military purposes — is projected to rise just 3% in 2012 to $31.4 billion — that’s less than half than the 7.7% growth forecast back in July. It’s also a meager expansion compared with 2011’s solid 9% increase and the exuberant 35% surge in 2010 immediately after the recession. For the next four years, revenue is set to rise in a range from 7-12% each year, reaching $44.8B by 2016.
Worldwide industrial electronics semiconductor revenue, in US $B. (Source: IHS iSuppli)
"Economic headwinds" started intensifying in 2Q12 and undercut chip revenue forecasts, affecting top semiconductor suppliers and OEMs of industrial electronics, explained Jacobo Carrasco-Heres, industrial electronics analyst at IHS. "And when hoped-for growth did not pan out as expected, and sales eventually came out lower, the market was downgraded to reflect the changed circumstances."
One segment that seems to have remained untouched this year is the robust LED market, thanks to the LED lighting boom that has taken hold in many parts of the world, noted Robbie Galoso, principal analyst for electronics at IHS. Philips enjoyed a 37% climb in LED sales in 2Q12 vs. a year-ago, and other LED lamp suppliers like Cree, LG Innotek, and Samsung LED also enjoyed solid 2Q results.
Industrial semiconductors are used in energy generation and distribution; military and civil aerospace; building and home control; medical electronics; manufacturing and process automation; and the test and measurement segment.
Rolla, MO-based Brewer Science introduced a line of conductive CNT ink materials that are surfactant free, require no additional rinse steps, and are compatible with a broad range of printed electronic substrates. Cure temperatures for desired conductivity results are between 115°C and 130°C. Inks with high concentrations of CNTs in low-viscosity solutions are available in aqueous and solvent-based systems, giving them broad compatibility and enabling the design of inks for a broad set of application technologies such as sensors, displays, and packaging integration. Formulations are available for Optomec’s Aerosol Jet® technology systems, Fujifilm Dimatix’s materials printer DMP-2800, spray coating, and drawdown bar coating.
These CNT inks have achieved sheet resistance of 300 ohm/sq for 85%T (optical transmission) at 550 nm for transparent conductive applications. For conductive trace applications, sheet resistance of 1 ohm/sq and conductivity of 75,000 siemens/meter have been achieved. Films produced with these inks on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) have demonstrated both high adhesion and mechanical flexibility. Both adhesion and conductivity remain stable after repeated folding of the CNT-coated PET.
“This robust performance will enable flexible printed electronic device applications,” “These solutions contain no surfactants and require no additional post-process rinsing, which will speed commercial adoption by eliminating the cost of the extra rinse process steps and preventing generation of a CNT-contaminated waste stream,” said Jim Lamb, Director of Brewer Science’s Printed Electronics Technology Center. “Although we designed these materials for plastic printed electronics applications, they are also compatible with a wide range of substrates such as paper, glass, silicon, and metal.”
Materials are developed by Brewer Science’s Printed Electronics Technology Center as part of its CNT materials, applications, and device prototyping services at the Jordan Valley Innovation Center in Springfield, Missouri. “Brewer Science is focused on bringing the unique properties of CNTs for commercial electronics applications to customers in the next three to five years,” added Lamb.
November 12, 2012 – Wide bandgap semiconductor materials such as gallium nitride can significantly outperform traditional silicon-based devices in power electronics and light-emitting diodes (LEDs). On the other hand, they’re also vastly more expensive ($1900 for a 2-in. bulk GaN substrate, vs. $25-$50 for a 6-in. Si substrate), and silicon has the advantage of being easily integrated into volume manufacturing. So where’s the midpoint where GaN’s capabilities and extra costs align to make it the technology of choice, and for which application?
"The future of bulk GaN is going to come down to how it faces off against silicon substrates," stated Pallavi Madakasira, Lux Research analyst and the lead author of a new report which breaks down the manufacturing costs for ammonothermal and hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) processes for making bulk GaN, as well as for GaN epitaxy on both silicon and GaN substrates, and determined where the price/performance trade-off will land. "Bulk GaN wins in laser diodes and it can become relevant in LEDs and power electronics by boosting yield and performance."
Among the report’s findings:
— HVPE is the cheaper alternative. Costs for ammonothermal substrates (2-in.) will fall by more than 60% to $730/substrate in 2020. That’s a steeper curve and to half the anticipated cost of 4-in. HVPE substrates, which are seen falling 40% to $1340/substrate — but HVPE’s larger size from which more chips can be yielded makes it the more economical choice, Lux says. (It’s a mantra that has always driven, and continues to drive, cost reduction efforts in semiconductor manufacturing.)
— Performance boost is key. Bulk GaN can overcome high cost by boosting performance — lumen (lm) output in LEDs, or volt-amp (V-A) capacity in power electronics — by allowing the use of smaller dies and providing higher yields. In LEDs, GaN can match silicon with a 380% relative performance — an ambitious but realistic goal. For power electronics, performance at 360% of devices on silicon makes bulk GaN a winner.
— New materials are on the horizon. Emerging materials such as aluminum nitride (AlN) are ideally suited to very low wavelength, ultraviolet LED, green laser diode, and high-switching-frequency power electronics applications, and can be an effective alternative to bulk GaN.
GaN-on-silicon as a substrate will continue to proliferate as the low-cost option for wafers. Bulk GaN (GaN-on-GaN), while costing more, can be competitive at the device level under certain conditions, such as laser diodes. In other applications such as LEDs and power electronics, though, "it must race to become relevant" by proving it can make devices cost-competitive through higher yields and performance.
Substrate and epitaxy cost breakdownfor GaN-on-silicon and GaN-on-bulk GaN. (Source: Lux Research)
by Paula Doe, SEMI Emerging Markets
Materials experts from across the supply chain who gathered at the Strategic Materials Conference 2012 in San Jose in October discussed key materials needs for micromanufacturing outside the CMOS mainstream, as OLEDs and GaN-on-silicon power semiconductors come to market, and alternatives like graphene, CNTs, and self-assembling polymers get closer to commercial application.
Large OLED displays are coming, and counting on materials breakthroughs
OLED adoption in larger displays is surely coming, driven by business necessity, argued James Dietz of Plextronics. Most of the major display makers are seeing operating losses from their LCD business, and OLEDs look like the best option for higher-value, differentiated products to improve margins. The OLED displays look significantly better, and they may potentially open new markets for lighter or flexible or more rugged displays, or for dual-view products. OLEDs’ ultra-fast switching speeds could allow different viewers with different glasses to watch different programs at the same time on the same screen. Moreover, though OLEDs are more expensive now, the variable costs for a 55-in. OLED TV made on an 8G line will be quite comparable to those for a similar LCD. And the OLED costs have far more potential to come down further, by developments like simplifying the layer stack and introducing wet processes that use lower cost equipment with higher utilization of the expensive materials.
But the nature of the market also means new challenges for suppliers. Anxious to avoid another experience like the commoditization of the LCD sector, display makers intend to keep their processes and complex OLEDs materials stacks to themselves this time, which makes process integration of different materials and equipment difficult. The device makers are investing in developing their own materials, making exclusive contracts with equipment and materials suppliers, and doing their own process integration. Integration is also being driven by some materials suppliers like DuPont Displays. But the familiar semiconductor model of the material and tool supplier working together to deliver a process to the customer is not the rule. "We see a gradual transition from all vapor to more solution layers," says Dietz. "OLEDs will enter the TV market in the next three years, and will have solution process steps by 2015."
The 55-in. OLED TVs announced for 2012 now look more likely to come out in only very small volume — a few thousand units in 2012 — and initial prices of ~$9000 will limit sales. But OLED TVs will start to see real growth by 2014-2015, helping to push OLED displays to a $25 billion market by 2017, reports Jennifer Colegrove, VP of emerging display technology at NPD DisplaySearch. She says ten new AMOLED fabs are planned to be built or updated in the next three years. OLED materials, now about a ~$350 million market (include the OLED organic materials but not substrates), should grow at close to the same 40% CAGR of the overall market, to reach $1-2 billion in 2014. But breakthroughs are still needed in oxide and amorphous silicon backplanes, color patterning technology, lifetime of blue materials, encapsulation materials, reduction of materials usage, and of course integration, uniformity and yields of all these things.
OLED display revenues will grow to about $35B in 2019, up from $4B in 2011, with CAGR ~40%. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch, Q3’12 Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report)
Solution processing is critically important to bringing down the cost of large screen OLEDs, argued John Richard, president, DuPont Displays, as the current production methods which rely on thermal evaporation with fine metal masks are proving costly to scale to 8G substrates. "We developed an alternative process using soluable materials to bring down cost," he notes. Wet processes reduce capital needs and cut material waste to reduce costs significantly, but still need ever better lifetimes and efficiencies of the OLED materials, particularly for blue. A major Asian display maker has licensed the DuPont technology, and plans to scale it up to 8G. The process uses largely pre-existing tools to slot coat the hole injection and transport layers, and pattern the surface with wetting and non-wetting lanes, before nozzle printing stripes of red, green and blue emitters using custom tool developed with Dai Nippon Screen.
The rest of the stack — the electron transfer layer, the electron injection layer, and the metal cathode — is then deposited by thermal evaporation. Richard says coating and printing processes can use significantly less material than vapor deposition, as it avoids losses in the chamber, on the mask, and during alignment and idling. DuPont reports printed blue emitter lifetime is up to 30,000 hours — or 8 hours a day of video for 15 years — before degrading to half brightness. Next issues include optimizing the cost of synthesis and starting materials, and reducing operating voltage for better device efficiency.
Graphene and carbon nanotubes get closer to commercial applications
Next-generation energy storage presents materials opportunities as well. One key enabler for improving both supercapacitors and batteries could be graphene, especially with better sources for consistent quality material at reasonable cost. Bor Jang, CEO of Angstron Materials, reported that his company has engaged a contract manufacturer in Asia to start volume production of as much as 30 tons of graphene next year, using Angstron’s technology that claims good control of structure and properties. "That will bring down costs by an order of magnitude," says Jang. First application will likely be performance enhancers for lithium-ion battery electrode materials, and then for improved electrodes for supercapacitors. Angstron has announced demonstration of a graphene-based supercapacitor with energy density comparable to a nickel hydride battery.
"We think supercapacitors is a market to invest in," said Chris Erickson, general partner at Pangaea Ventures, a somewhat unusual venture fund that invests particularly in materials and green technologies. "We think it will reach $1 billion in the near future." Erickson is also enthusiastic about the potential for dynamic window glazing using vapor-deposited coatings and ITO to adjust to control the shading on windows, for dramatic energy savings of up to 30% in energy consumption in a building, according to NREL — and buildings reportedly use 49% of total energy in the US.
Nantero reported major progress from its long effort in controlled processing and performance for its carbon nanotube thin film, targeting low-cost, low-power non-volatile memory. CTO and co-founder Thomas Reuckes said the company is now lithographically patterning films of its spin-coated aqueous solution of carbon nanotubes, as roughness, adhesion and defectivity are now suitable for semiconductor processing. Metal impurities are down to <1ppb in liquid form, wafer-level trace metals to <1E11 atoms/cm2 . Reuckes reported production of working and yielding 4Mbit CNT memory arrays, and showed results of reliability data. The company just announced a joint development program with imec to manufacture, test, and characterize the CNT memory arrays in imec’s facilities for applications in next generation <20nm memories.
GaN for power semiconductors needs higher purities than LED market
Power semiconductors made on GaN on silicon are being released to the market now, and, given time, could potentially address some 90% of the what IMS Research projects will be a $25 billion (silicon-based) power semiconductor market for MOSFET and IBGTs by 2016, suggested Tim McDonald, VP for emerging technologies at International Rectifier Corp. GaN theoretically offers much better specific on-resistance to breakdown voltage tradeoff than Si or SiC. The key to wide adoption is for GaN on Si based solutions to achieve 2-4× performance/cost compared to silicon.
To achieve the necessary low costs, IR uses compositionally graded layers of AlyGaxN grown on the silicon to ease the thermal and lattice mismatch of the GaN film to the silicon wafer. IR claims 80% yields, with warp and bow controlled enough to run on a standard 150mm CMOS line. GaN on silicon is moving more quickly to market for power semiconductors than for LEDs, as it brings better performance, not just potentially lower prices. It also helps that threading defects do not have the same impact on performance–plus IR has been developing the technology for six or seven years already.
The power market needs higher purity materials and cleaner tools for better yields on its larger die, compared to the LED market. It also prefers larger diameter wafers for lower costs. Demand for gas sources and MOCVD tools should scale with volume, and the tools need to be optimized for larger wafers and become more automated, with perhaps some 2,000-3,000 tools needed for the whole market over the next two decades. Packaging may move from wire bonding to soldered or sintered contacts, and will adopt other means of reducing stray packaging-related inductance and resistance.
The LED market will see only a few more years of significant growth, argued Jamie Fox, lighting and LEDs manager for IMS Research-IHS. Revenues from displays including TVs are leveling off from their fast ramp, as the markets mature, and as LEDs get both brighter and cheaper, driving down both units needed and cost per unit. The LED lighting market will continue its fast climb to near ~$6 billion over the next several years, but then as more lamp sockets are replaced by the longer lasting LEDs (and CFLs), there will be less need for replacements, and the market will slow. Slower adoption near term, however, would mean less saturation later.
Cree’s Mike Watson, senior director of marketing and product applications, countered by pointing out the potential for innovation that solid state technology brings to lighting, noting how digital technology has transformed markets like telephones and cameras into new industries for digital communications and digital imaging. "Semiconductor technology keeps changing industries by innovation," he noted. "Why do we keep thinking of it as just replacement?
Directed self-assembly for higher resolution lines and holes
Another of the more innovative materials alternatives on the CMOS side is directed self-assembly for next-generation patterning, which seems to be making rapid progress. AZ Electronic Materials CTO Ralph Dammel reported that block copolymers, with similar molecules together in blocks instead of randomly dispersed, tended to arrange themselves with the similar chain sections together, conveniently lining up into cylinders that look similar to lithographic contact holes, or into lines similar to lithographic lines and spaces. Wafer surface patterning with topography or chemicals can control the placement of these self-assembled patterns, on top of standard 193nm immersion lithography. Work with IBM Almaden suggests the process can provide better CD uniformity for quadruple patterning at lower cost than the spacer pitch division process. Other work shrinks contact holes, while improving the CD variation compared to the resist prepatterns. The company is now providing large-scale samples for in-fab process learning, with implementation perhaps as early as 2014, though design for self-assembly needs further development work.
November 5, 2012 – In early January of this year, both Samsung and LG showed off 55-in. versions of their organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Commercial volumes were expected on shelves by the time of the 2012 Summer Olympics (which didn’t happen); they were again showed this fall at IFA in Germany.
Unfortunately, still struggling with low manufacturing yields and high prices, the two giants recently admitted the delivery of those technologies will be pushed out into 2013. NPD DisplaySearch now projects only 500 OLED TVs will ship in 2012.
Still, one must crawl before taking first steps and eventually running with the pack. Actually getting products out into the market is an important move, even as LCD TVs continue to get bigger and with higher resolutions. "4K × 2K LCD TVs have has become a focus and are currently available, and OLED TV needs to demonstrate its technical superiority," points out David Hsieh, VP at NPD DisplaySearch. "If we do see OLED TVs hit the market within 2012, the shipments will be used primarily for retail demonstrations in developed regions like North America and Europe."
OLED TV technology still has to overcome a number of obstacles, explained by the research firm:
NPD DisplaySearch is still bullish on OLED’s longer-term competitiveness, though, expecting that suppliers in Taiwan, China, and Japan will indeed pick up the mantle of AMOLED TV panel production. The firm projects over one million unit shipments in 2014, and a 3% market penetration by 2016.
Forecasted shipments (in millions) and penetration rates for OLED TVs. (Source: NPD DisplaySearch)