Category Archives: LEDs

Akustica hires CFO


June 10, 2004

June 10, 2004 —Akustica Inc. has hired Steve Harrell as its chief financial officer.

Harrell joins the Pittsburgh-based developer of acoustic system-on-chip products from Texas Instruments’ Semiconductor Industry Group, where he most recently served as director of finance and business operations for the Digital Signal Processor division. He also served as a financial consultant with KPMG International.

Akustica also hired Steve Kornachuk as vice president of engineering. He had led product-engineering efforts at SiberCore Technologies.

June 9, 2004 – Elpida Memory Inc. plans to spend between 450-500 billion yen ($4.1-$4.5 billion) over three years to construct what would be the world’s largest DRAM facility, according to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

The plant, to be constructed at the site of its subsidiary in Hiroshima, Japan, would produce 10,000 90nm 300mm wafers/month by 3Q05, with eventual output of 60,000 wafers/month. Elpida also plans to boost production at its existing Hiroshima facility by 25% to 28,000 wafers/month by the end of the fiscal year in March 2005. About 60 billion yen ($545 million) would be spent on the infrastructure, cleanroom, and related facilities, with the rest used for new equipment, according to Reuters.

The impetus for the investment is twofold, according to CEO Yukio Sakamoto: the expansion at the existing Hiroshima facility “is for us to make enough profit for survival,” while the new giant fab “is for us to grow drastically in this market.” Elpida, which currently holds about 4% of the global DRAM market, would leapfrog to more than 30% when the new plant comes online; Samsung led the market in 2003 with just under 29% share.

The new plant would surpass the current largest DRAM facility, owned by Infineon Technologies AG and Nanya Technology Corp. in northern Taiwan, which has been online since March with production to ramp to 50,000 300mm wafers/month by the end of 2005.

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NEW YORK, June 9, 2004 – You don’t have to be a professional futurist to see that the days of conventional film are numbered. Sales of digital cameras now outpace those of film. Digital cameras are increasingly cheaper, easier to use and often take better pictures. They are even being built into cell phones.

Nice for consumers, but nothing short of scary for a company that generates enormous revenues from film sales.

Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE: EK) has been feeling the pinch. In the last year, it reduced its work force, cut its dividend from $1.80 to 50 cents and announced a new business model that executives characterized as a “fundamental change” in the company.

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By 2006, the company expects revenues from digital initiatives to outpace those derived from traditional film products. Various forms of small tech are among the lynchpins Kodak will use to shift itself over to the digital age.

Truth be told, said Vicki Barbur, technology director for Kodak’s Growth Initiatives division, “we have really been practicing nanotechnology for more than a hundred years.” While that’s true — nanoparticles are used in conventional films — it’s the new applications of nanotechnology and even MEMS that Kodak is counting on to facilitate its transition to new markets.

The products are already there.

Kodak’s Ultima line of inkjet printer paper is comprised of nine layers, including coatings, resins and the paper itself. The top layer includes a proprietary ceramic nanoparticle designed to improve density and gloss.

The company has also developed pigment nanoparticles as small as 10 nanometers that it says are less likely to clog inkjet nozzle heads. And it is using polymeric nanoparticles to immobilize ink on inkjet and instant photo papers.

It sounds simple, but getting all of those layers of different chemicals and materials to quickly attach to film or paper while keeping them separate is both a science and an art.

“If you’re producing multilayers, you’re trying to put them all down together,” said Barbur. “They would all mix. You’ve got to have the experience to differentiate the layers.”

Nor are nanomaterials the only form of small tech in which Kodak is engaged. Part of its recently announced strategy includes a foray into MEMS inkjet printer nozzles. And Kodak has taken a lead role in commercializing active matrix color organic light emitting diodes, or OLEDs, for displays. It claims its EasyShare LS633 camera was the first consumer electronics product on the market to feature such a display.

Kodak appears to be shifting gears effectively. It posted first quarter earnings of $28 million, or 10 cents a share in April, beating analyst estimates and dramatically outstripping its year-earlier earnings of $12 million. But outsiders and Kodak executives alike agree there is still a lot of transition work to do as film continues its downward spiral.

“In the past they’ve dabbled in things and announced how it’s going to save the company,” said Nathen Fox, president of Atomic-Scale Design,  a California nanomaterials company.

Fox previously worked for Imagica Corp., a Japanese maker of digital film scanners. “But even at best, all of the research and all of the marketing and product development that went into their digital film post-production and color-management processes can’t make up for the volume that film brings.”

It’s a reality of which Kodak was aware long before it announced its new strategy last year, said Jim Stoffel, the company’s chief technology officer. He joined the company six years ago as one of the “change guys.”

According to Stoffel, the strategy is to take advantage of Kodak’s core competencies in materials science, image science and coatings, while simultaneously supporting its brand. Prescription: complete solutions, not just for consumers, but also in the other major markets the company serves, such as commercial printing and medical imaging where customers are accustomed to Kodak providing a wide variety of products.

And then there is that elusive opportunity that nobody sees yet. Kodak Ventures makes investments designed to give the company access to new materials or process technologies. Last year, it took a strategic stake in Nanosys, a leading California nanotech startup commercializing inorganic semiconductor nanocrystals that recently filed to go public.

Kodak also provides its manufacturing capabilities to others through a manufacturing services business unit.

In the end, Stoffel admits, the transition is going to take a long time. “Very often we confuse a clear vision with a short distance,” he said. “This vision is clear but the pathway requires us to take many baby steps along the way.”

June 2, 2004 – April proved true to its historical roots as a strong month for the industry, as worldwide chip sales continued to venture into territory not seen in four years, according to the latest data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

Worldwide chip sales (a three-month moving average) rose 4.1% to $16.94 billion in April, the highest monthly level since January 2000, up from $15.55 billion in March and $12.40 billion in April 2003. Year-on-year, sales growth topped 30% (now at 36.6%) for the third month running. Actual April sales were $15.82 billion, compared with $19.23 billion in March and $11.24 billion a year ago.

Strong sales of cell phones were credited with an increase in digital-signal processors (up 6.8% during the month), application-specific standard products (8.8%), and flash memory devices (3.2%). PC sales growth, and an increasing amount of memory in each system, drove a 10.3% increase in DRAM sales. Image-sensing devices were up 7.6% thanks to sales of digital cameras and camera phones.

Geographically, sales increased sequentially by 4.1% overall, led by the Asia-Pacific region at 6.7%. Year-on-year, every region showed growth of at least 26%, paced again by the Asia-Pacific (52%).

“Continued strong overall economic growth in the United States and China helped propel chip sales upward,” stated SIA president George Scalise. He reiterated the SIA’s projection of continued strong growth through the rest of the year, and the likelihood that it will “significantly surpass last fall’s forecast of 19% growth.”

BY FRANK GRANO

The electronics industry is making steady progress toward developing lead-free assembly processes to meet the EU's Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which calls for the elimination of lead and other hazardous substances from new electrical and electronic equipment by July 2006. To date, industry efforts have concentrated on finding a lead-free replacement for the commonly used tin-lead (SnPb) solder and proving the replacement's reliability. The current lead-free solder targeted by most of the industry is the tin-silver-copper (Sn-Ag-Cu) alloy, which has a 34° to 36°C higher melting point than lead-based solders.

If all development activities were completed tomorrow and the electronics assembly industry declared itself ready for RoHS, could the switch be made overnight by simply changing the assembly process and the materials used? Unfortunately, the answer is no. There remain many issues that the industry must address. Achieving global compliance with the RoHS directive will require significant infrastructure changes.

At the product level, the electronics industry must develop standards to determine compliance with RoHS and related chemical restriction requirements. The U.S. electronics industry has formed a working group to define a “best management” standard to demonstrate compliance. Currently, this work is led by a multi-industry trade coalition and organized by the Electronics Industry Alliance (EIA) and the American Electronics Association (AEA).

At a more basic level, however, industry must define the assembly process, determine component specifications and develop acceptance criteria to implement new lead-free manufacturing and repair processes. With the RoHS implementation date only two years away, industry must act quickly to develop and validate standards for lead-free processes and products.

In the familiar world of SnPb-based soldering, standards exist for virtually every aspect of the assembly process and for the materials and components used. These standards cover acceptance criteria for finished products and a number of other aspects to ensure that assembly materials and components are compatible with the assembly process. There are currently more than 100 IPC and JEDEC standards that provide well-defined parameters for assembly materials, components, solderability, cleanliness, fabrication, assembly and more.

Lacking new process and materials standards, how can an assembler ensure that the products being manufactured are acceptable and, more importantly, reliable? Very simply put, unless the assembler already has experience with the process, it can't be done. Standards are the backbone for industry testing and acceptance criteria, but since the current standards bodies and most of the electronics assembly industry don't have the expertise in lead-free soldering, how will the job get done? It will only happen if companies with lead-free experience provide expertise to the groups developing the new standards. This is presently limited to a few OEMS and the EMS community, so participation from all companies is imperative.

The National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI), an industry-led consortium, has organized a project team to focus industry efforts on development of materials and process standards for lead-free assembly. NEMI is calling on the resources of its broad-based membership, along with other industry leaders with lead-free experience, to define specifications that will lead to rapid development of IPC and JEDEC standards. The goal is to develop specifications and criteria based on a cross section of industry expertise.

The first step is to define the conditions that will exist when assembling a board with a lead-free soldering process. This definition must cover all aspects of assembly — SMT, rework, wave solder, manual rework, etc. It also must include the soldering temperatures for all component types, covering soldering joints, package materials and PCAs.

Based on this definition, it will be possible to identify and prioritize the industry standards that must be revised, or define new standards. There may need to be a new type of standard that actually defines the soldering criteria for assembling a board using a lead-free process. Such a standard cover the entire assembly process and would go a long way toward assisting manufacturers new to the process in getting started.

Given the timeframe, industry must focus on a core group of standards. NEMI has identified two key standards: IPC-610 (workmanship standards) and J-STD-020 (MSL document). Initial efforts are focusing on these two standards, then the group will identify additional specifications to be updated.

To date, the industry push is to develop soldering processes. It is now time for companies experienced in lead-free processes to address the additional needs of the assembly community, which includes standards that can be used on a day-to-day basis on the factory floor and throughout the supply chain.

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FRANK GRANO, principal process engineer, may be contacted at Sanmina-SCI, 13000 South Memorial Parkway, Huntsville, AL 35807; (256) 882-4903; e-mail: [email protected]. Grano also chairs NEMI's RoHS Assembly Process Specifications Project.

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WASHINGTON, D.C., May 26, 2004 – Congress can sometimes react before it thinks. A good example is its passage of a 1996 law aimed at trying to protect kids from porn on the Web by outlawing any material accessible to children deemed to be “indecent” or “patently offensive.” The Supreme Court struck down the law a year later as illegal censorship.

When scientific research or new technologies spark controversy or concern, lawmakers tend to want to react with new rules and regulations. Yet, it seems lawmakers may have learned something from their early attempts to regulate the Internet.

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When it comes to health or environmental concerns over nanotechnology, key lawmakers are advocating research and study before Congress or federal agencies react with new regulations.

The release in March of a controversial study by Southern Methodist University lecturer Eva Oberdorster that found fish exposed to buckyballs suffered brain damage generated much debate within nanotech circles about how the study was conducted, its potentially disturbing results and the media coverage it generated. But the study appears to have stirred little concern on Capitol Hill.

During an April 2 speech at a National Nanotechnology Initiative conference, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chief sponsor of a nanotechnology research authorization bill last year, said he would like to see further study into the potential health and environmental effects of nanomaterials before lawmakers react with new laws.

Wyden pointed to the bill’s creation of a nanotech “preparedness center,” which would examine environmental, health and societal issues related to nanotechnology as a way to help policymakers sift through some of the concerns.

“We’re not ready yet to put in place a battery of new regulations in nanotech,” Wyden said.

Sen. George Allen, R-Va., who worked closely with Wyden on the nanotech bill, said during a speech at the conference that researchers and supporters of nanotech need to do a better job of making sure “your advances are understood and judged based on their actual applications and merits, rather than disregarded due to unfounded fears and misguided perceptions.”

Allen also announced that he was forming a Congressional Nanotechnology Caucus to help promote and educate other lawmakers and constituents about nanotech.

One House staffer who has worked closely on nanotech issues said that there had been little discussion or concern raised about Oberdorster’s study on the Hill. While lawmakers want to ensure that health, environmental and societal concerns are given adequate consideration, the aide said, it had “not been proven” that current rules and regulations can’t be molded to cover new issues raised by nanotech.

The aide added that those who are involved with crafting the nanotech bill are glad to see that research into the health and environmental effects of nanotechnology is moving forward.

This research and other health and environmental questions were the focus of the most recent meeting of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST), a board of business and academic representatives that advises the White House on science and technology issues.

Charles Auer, director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, told PCAST during the March 30 meeting that the EPA is in the process of identifying which regulations might apply to nanomaterials.

Auer said that the office is trying to determine whether nanomaterials might fall under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which regulates production and distribution of commercial and industrial chemicals.

The EPA is also sponsoring a $4-million research project that will examine the impact of manufactured nanomaterials on human health and the environment. Several other federal studies examining health and environmental issues related to nanotech have been launched in the last year.

One of those studies is a $3-million multi-year project led by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences that will examine the potential toxic and carcinogenic effects of inhalation exposure to nanomaterials.

Public-private partnership

Far from wanting to impose any new restrictions on nanotech research, Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., is looking for new ways for Congress to assist the burgeoning industry in bringing research to the marketplace.

Honda is crafting a bill that would establish a public-private partnership to address what he sees as the funding gap between nanotechnology research and commercialization. The legislation is expected to call for the creation of a nanomanufacturing corporation within the Department of Commerce that would oversee this partnership.

The proposed bill also would authorize $750 million for this partnership and would be complemented by a $250-million investment from the private sector, according to Honda’s spokesman.

Honda has not said when he would introduce the bill. But in an election year, Congress has few days left to take up legislation outside of must-pass bills such as annual appropriations legislation that funds the federal government.

May 19, 2004 — Harald Eggers, the CEO of Infineon AG’s memory products business group, will step down “of his own request” effective June 1, the company said. He will continue to head various corporate projects until the end of December, after which point he will work as a consultant “at the company’s disposal.”

Thomas Seifert, head of the company’s wireline communications business group, will step in to lead the memory unit, while Peter Gruber, wireline group CFO, will take his place until a successor can be appointed. Seifert has led Infineon’s wireline group since 2002, through phases of restructuring and the sale of Infineon’s optical fiber components business to Finisar. Prior to joining that group he headed up the White Oak Semiconductor facility, Infineon’s JV with Motorola in Richmond, VA.

The executive shuffle has given new life to rumors that the German chipmaker wants to exit the DRAM business. A recent Dow Jones story cited industry sources as suggesting Infineon is looking to spin off its DRAM business either as a joint venture or a related business. An Infineon spokesman, however, said that Eggers’ exit is unrelated to any memory-business plans, and that DRAM “will remain a core business.”

May 18, 2004 — Sumitomo Corp. has agreed to purchase $160 million of Cree Inc.’s light emitting diode (LED) products during Cree’s fiscal year ending June 2005, subject to end customer demand and other terms and conditions.

As part of the agreement, Cree and Sumitomo also announced the extension of the current distributorship relationship through Cree’s fiscal year ending June 2007. Both companies anticipate that the purchases will cover Cree’s full line of LED products representing its standard brightness, mid-brightness and high brightness devices, including MegaBright(R), XBright(R) and XThin(TM) LEDs.

Chuck Swoboda, Cree’s president and CEO stated, “This new agreement is the largest purchase commitment in Cree’s history and highlights the strength of our partnership with Sumitomo and our Japanese customers. We believe the growth in Japan is representative of the strong worldwide demand for our LEDs. New products are driving end customer demand and helping us expand our relationships with the major LED packagers.”

Koichiro Kusano, General Manager of Sumitomo’s Electronic Materials & Equipment Division stated, “We expect shipments to Japanese customers during the twelve months ending June 2004 to exceed our contract commitment, and end customer demand continues to grow. The technology being delivered by Cree, combined with the strong market demand for high brightness blue, green and white LEDs in Japan, continues to be a winning formula for success in the market.”

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NEW YORK, May 17, 2004 — It looks a bit like an oversized Etch-a-Sketch, but the wireless, electronic-ink signs that Xerox subsidiary Gyricon LLC displayed at the corporation’s Park Avenue offices last week are the most commercial example of small tech springing from the “The Document Company.”

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Tom Kavassalis, chief strategy officer for the Xerox Innovation Group, said that another example of commercial innovation is a process for making microspheres for printing toner out of nanoscale particles. Other areas in development include inkjet-printable plastic electronic circuitry and a microfluidic delivery device called MEMSJet for applications such as precise metering of drugs or deposition of chemicals.

Xerox has had a star-crossed history in innovation, observed venture capitalist Howard Anderson, founder of YankeeTek Ventures and a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Business. The 1990 book Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer,” by Douglas K. Smith and Robert C. Alexander, documented how the Xerox PARC research center invented Ethernet, the windows computer interface, the laser printer and other key computing technologies, yet the company failed to reap the rewards for almost all of these except for laser printing.

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For Xerox to succeed this time around, Anderson believes, “it needs a group like Motorola Ventures that can act with the speed of a VC-backed company and finance projects in ways to give inventors real equity interest” and focus commercialization.

Kavassalis said that Xerox will license IP that falls outside the needs of its products. Anderson said that the best licensing strategy is at IBM, where the company makes $500 million a year because licensing revenue flows to the bottom line of the operating groups that secure them, rather than to corporate coffers. That approach, he noted, offers the kind of structural incentive Xerox could use.

Today, Gyricon, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., is the literal poster child for Xerox’s small tech commercial activity. The company was spun off in 2000 to commercialize its SmartPaper technology developed at Xerox PARC. Now, it is announcing a new product line of its small tech signs and software aimed at the huge retail store market.

As Chief Executive Bryan Lubel explained, the company is already selling its $1,295 SyncroSign message board, which displays simple black-and-white text and graphics. Both the message board and the new retail sign systems are based on two-color microbeads the size of grains of sand. Each bead has a black hemisphere and a white one, with one side positively charged and the other negatively.

The beads are embedded in a sheet-like elastomer material (that can be produced in a roll-to-roll process much like paper), and can rotate in response to an electric current to form messages by showing either their dark or light sides.

Kavassalis said that at night, the system can switch over from displaying price to directing store employees on where to restock inventory. “This is more than a signage solution, ” he said. “This is really about streamlining workflow.”

While Lubel noted that retailers are conservative about implementing new technology (and want a return on investment in about 12 months), he reported that several department store chains are testing the systems and he expects they’ll move toward limited in-store field tests later this year. Depending on the number of signs a store might buy, he said a few hundred Gyricon signs and the software to control them would cost around $100,000.

To put that cost in perspective, he described another target market: automobile factories. One major automaker, said Lubel, “prints two million 8-by-11 pieces of paper a day, at three cents each” to track a car as it moves through the assembly line. A Gyricon device could be attached to the car and synchronized with the plant’s computers to display each feature or option that needs to be added as the vehicle moves down the line.

Finally, Lubel said, the company is working to improve brightness and whiteness of signs. Full-color models aren’t yet feasible.

In a related area, Xerox’s Beng Ong has developed a new organic molecule that could make the production of plastic circuitry with inkjets nearly as cheap as printing newsprint. Moreover, it could be a good complementary technology to Gyricon’s.

Ong, a research manager at Xerox Research Centre of Canada, said that his team had developed a molecule for semiconductor ink that could be applied in air, rather than the high vacuum that other organic semiconductors, such as pentacene, require.

The printable plastic electronics could be used to produce the backplane, or driver electronics, for displays such as Gyricon signs or OLED screens.

Xerox is working with Motorola and Dow Chemical on the project, which is supported by a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Company file: Gyricon LLC.
(last updated May 17, 2004)

Company
Gyricon LLC

Headquarters
6190 Jackson Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48103

History
Gyricon is a Xerox subsidiary that was spun off from its parent company in 2000 for the purpose of commercializing Xerox PARC’s SmartPaper technology.

Industries potentially served
Communications: Displays/Visual Tracking Tools

Small tech-related products and services
Gyricon has developed a line of small tech-based wireless sign displays and accompanying software. To develop the products’ SmartPaper technology, Gyricon used microbeads that are embedded in elastomer and can respond to an electrical charge by showing either a black or white hemisphere, enabling a text display that can be adjusted via wireless connection.

The displays, dubbed SyncroSigns, offer long-lasting battery-based power, reducing the high-labor costs usually associated with managing paper signs in retail, educational, hotel and convention environments. Gyricon is not yet offering color models and is focusing on enhancing the clarity of its black-and-white merchandiser and message board versions. Existing clients include Wagner Zip-Change.

Management
Hervé Gallaire: chairman of the board
Bryan Lubel: chief executive officer
Howard Dennis: vice president and CFO
Robert A. Sprague: vice president and CTO

Selected competitors
E Ink
MagInk Display Technologies Inc.
Philips

Barriers to market
Xerox has a history of developing revolutionary technologies but failing to commercialize them quickly. The company will need to take steps to ensure that this is not the case with its SmartPaper-based product line. Once the product is rolled out to retailers, Gyricon will need to focus on offering a 1-year return on investment (ROI).

Relevant patents
Animated sign assembly

Contact
URL: www.gyricon.com
Phone: 734-822-7600
Fax: 734-222-8231
E-mail: [email protected]

— Research by Gretchen McNeely

May 14, 2004 – Scientists from Japan have succeeded in running magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) with one-hundredth of the amount of current needed for current prototype MRAMS, seen as a key step toward commercializing the technology.

Unlike DRAM and SRAM, MRAM uses magnetism to store data, eliminating the need for constant electric power. The team cut back on the electricity by inserting a layer of ruthenium in between one of the two ferromagnetic cell wafers.

The accomplishment, led by Prof. Koichiro Inomata of Tohoku U., was published in the May 10 issue of Nature Materials.