May 22, 2012 — Indium Corporation acquired a manufacturing facility in Rome, NY, to expand its production capacities of indium-, gallium-, germanium-, and tin-based materials, as well as other compounds.
Growing sales to solar photovoltaic, flat panel display (FPD), semiconductor and packaging, optical fiber, and light-emitting diode (LED) manufacturers necessitated the expansion.
The new facility enables Indium
May 22, 2012 – ATR-Newswire — Quantum dots (QD) will grow to a $7480.25 million market by 2022, at a ten-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 55.2%, according to Electronics.ca Publications’ report, "Quantum Dots (QD) Market – Global Forecast & Analysis 2012 – 2022."
Quantum dots are advanced semiconductor nanoparticles that output power/light according to nanoparticle size, from 2 to 10nm, and input source. Quantum dots are produced in a variety of methods, such as advanced epitaxial growth in nanocrystals, ion implant, and advanced lithography patterning. Work is being done on continuous-flow microreactors for QD fab, transfer printing, "cooking," and other process technologies.
Quantum dots are primarily in research stages for most applications, with the exception of healthcare. Healthcare benefits from the high precision in tissue labeling, cancer therapy, tumor detection, etc. that QD-based devices can provide.
Other promising application areas include light-emitting diode (LED) products. LED lighting is growing and set to expand dramatically. QD lighting is highly efficient and cost-effective. QD Vision has collaborated with Nexxus Lighting to launch its first QD LED light. QD displays are a related application area. QD Vision recently sold unspecified "quantum dot electroluminescent devices" to the US Department of Defense.
Solar cells are also incorporating quantum dots to control cell efficiency. University of Toronto has achieved an efficiency of 4.2% conversion with solar cell based on colloidal QDs (CQD). Researchers are also working on QD-based paint that can be applied to panels or walls to capture solar energy.
The Americas hold a leadership position in the QD technology market; followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific and China (APAC). Other areas of activity include the Middle East and Africa.
Access the report at http://www.electronics.ca/publications/products/Quantum-Dots-%28QD%29-Market%3A-Global-Forecast-and-Analysis-2012%252d2017.html
May 22, 2012 — 3M’s Optical Systems Division made its flexible, optically clear 3M FTB3-50 and FTB3-125 films available commercially, to protect sensitive electronics displays from water vapor and oxygen. The films previously were sold under limited R&D agreements.
FTB3 (for flexible, transparent, barrier) film has application in a range of emerging display technologies. FTB3 consists of a base polyester layer (50-125µm thick) with a <2.0µm barrier coating made up of layers of polymer and oxide. It is available in rolls 300mm wide, with larger widths entering the market in Q2.
New technologies incorporating organic electronics or other sensitive components need protection from water vapor and oxygen, said Art Lathrop, marketing manager for 3M Optical Systems Division.
FTB3 is thinner, lighter, more flexible and more impact resistant than glass, 3M reports, which could enable new form factors. “It offers from two to three orders of magnitude better protection from water vapor than packaging grade barrier films, said Lathrop.
The film has a water vapor transfer rate of less than 1×10-3 grams per square meter per day at 20°C. It has an Ra of about 1nm.
“Unlike metal foils, the barrier layer in FTB3 doesn’t conduct electricity,” said Dr. Fred McCormick, senior research specialist within Optical Systems. This could be of interest to display makers requiring an insulating layer.
The film’s flexibility allows roll-to-roll processing of displays.
3M is now developing a range of barrier films using different substrates, additional film layers, and even higher barrier performance for applications ranging from solar panels to electrophoretic, electrochromic, and organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays.
3M makes a range of materials for displays. The company recently announced, with HP, the “first all-in-one zero client capable of being powered by Type 1 power-over-Ethernet (PoE, IEEE 802.3af),” using 3M’s Dual Brightness Enhancement Film for LED-backlit monitors.
3M is a diverse company creating products for consumer, electronics, and other markets. For more information, visit www.3M.com
May 21, 2012 — Paul Gray, DisplaySearch, recently blogged about the effect of organic light emitting diode (OLED) displays will have on the TV industry, in light of Sony and Panasonic’s possible collaboration on an OLED technology.
“Some of the messaging from industry seems to indicate a mindset that there is a technical fix for profitability,” Gray said in “Will OLED Revitalize the TV Industry?”, but points out that too many companies could pursue the OLED TV market, which would simply duplicate the profitability/scale issues seen in the liquid crystal display (LCD) TV sector. Consumers also may not be on board with a move to OLED.
OLED displays boast high contrast, vivid color, and thin form factor. However, in television applications LCDs combined with LED backlights can compete in these areas. Gray notes that direct LED backlighting have failed in the market. And few consumers have indicated a willingness to pay extra for a TV set that was 5mm-thick instead of 20mm.
The television industry learned from its push for 3D TVs that content and the consuming experience matter. Consumers’ purchasing behavior is driven by factors other than raw image quality.
Gray advises that TV makers “think deeply about how consumers are watching long-form video at home” before leaping to conclusions about OLED’s impact. “The industry need not take billion dollar technology bets to provide better products.”
Paul is director, European TV Research for DisplaySearch. Read his full blog at http://www.displaysearchblog.com/2012/05/will-oled-revitalize-the-tv-industry/
This article was originally published in the April/May 2012 issue of our sister publication LEDs Magazine and is republished here with permission.
May 21, 2012 — LED manufacturers must choose the appropriate materials and processes to fight low yields. This is especially true in wafer bonding for vertical LEDs.
LED manufacturers in different regions of the world are confronting similar challenges concerning wafer bonding, particularly in the processing of vertical light-emitting diode (VLED) chip architectures. VLEDs offer certain key advantages over their lateral LED counterparts, though the lateral approach is a simpler manufacturing. This article covers the differences — in terms of processing and the optimization of light output — between vertical and lateral LEDs.
Both LED designs begin with the epitaxial growth of gallium nitride (GaN) on a sapphire substrate, but that is the end of their similarities. In a lateral LED design, the sapphire remains a part of the GaN LED stack. Since sapphire is an insulator, both contacts to the LED diode structure must be formed at the topside of the LED die, taking up valuable device real estate.
A simple back-of-the-envelope calculation of surface loss for a 4” LED wafer, assuming 300 x 300µm die and 100 x 100µm wire-bonding pads, reveals that each diode contact, to p-doped and n-doped GaN, consumes about 10% of the wafer surface.
In contrast, VLEDs are formed by full-wafer deposition of a metal-film stack, followed by wafer bonding with a carrier substrate. Since one electrical contact is the bonding layer itself and hence buried inside the LED stack, VLEDs immediately save the aforementioned 10% of real estate. In addition, electrical injection is more efficient for VLEDs, where lateral LED have difficulties, especially with higher current density.
Optimizing light output
Optimizing the LED’s real estate and electrical efficiency is only one aspect of the process: getting the light output from the LED remains a challenge. In GaN-based LEDs, the crystal planes of the GaN lead to a concentrated light emission normal to the sapphire’s c-plane, i.e., normal to the LED surface. In lateral LED designs, photons also couple into the transparent sapphire wafer, so that light is also emitted from the LED’s sidewalls. Since losses are higher, efficiency is decreased.
To increase light output in VLEDs, a metallic mirror is deposited prior to the metal bonding layers. The mirror will redirect emitted light to the LED surface. Light extraction is further optimized by creating a resonant cavity, and with surface roughening. Light extraction efficiency improves and the light is well directed to the user.
Added complexity with wafer bonding
If the benefits are so profound, why don’t all manufacturers produce VLEDs? One reason is a complex patent situation. In addition, LED makers must thoroughly understand the wafer bonding step to achieve high process yield. In VLEDs, the bonding layer is multifunctional. As electrical contact to the p-GaN, the bonding layer needs high conductivity to reduce ohmic losses. As the heat transfer layer between the LED and the heat sink, the bonding layer needs to have high thermal conductivity.
From a material standpoint, many eutectic metal systems (e.g. gold/tin, Au/Sn) or diffusion solders (e.g. gold/indium, Au/In) fulfill these requirements. However, each presents different processing requirements. The metal system determines the bonding temperature. Because the sapphire substrate and the carrier substrates have quite different coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE), a metal system with low bonding temperature will keep strain at a more manageable level. The selection of these layers is beyond the scope of this article, but typically metal layers such as platinum, aluminum, and gold, or combinations of these materials, are used.
Next, adhesion and diffusion barriers have to be chosen to contain the diffusive metals from the injection contacts or mirror layer of the LED structure. The correct choices will result in a high-yield layer transfer process.
GaN-on-silicon: the rookie
The potential use of GaN-on-silicon in LED manufacturing is an exciting prospect that seems likely to come to fruition in the next several years. Announcements by Osram Opto Semiconductors, Samsung LED (now Samsung Electronics), and Bridgelux have indicated that companies are 2-3 years from entering mass production, with laboratory LED efficiencies comparable to LEDs on sapphire. With a silicon substrate, wafer bonding provides one of the enabling steps of transferring the LEDs after growth.
Conclusion
Wafer bonding is a sophisticated process that requires extensive knowledge of material science. However, given the right material selection and process expertise, it can prove enabling when bringing up stable, next-generation LED manufacturing processes.
Thomas Uhrmann, Ph.D., is Business Development Manager, EV Group (EVG). Learn more about the company at http://www.evgroup.com/en.
May 18, 2012 — China has designated light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as one of the 7th emerging industries to be fostered for next 5 years in the Twelfth Five-year Plan. China is accelerating standardization plans, encouraging local production, and subsidizing purchases of LED lighting. Displaybank provides an overview of the status of China’s LED plan.
Currently, the Chinese LED industry is on the stage of "Factory Building," slowly transitioning to the "Technology" stage. Once the industry establishes localized LED production from epi wafers to LED bulbs, and public and private distribution channels selling LEDs, it will then focus on research and development (R&D) of substrate materials, production processes and equipment, and phosphors.
At the end of the Twelfth Five-year Plan, China expects a localization of LED chips to 70% of total. Production of China-based LED chipmakers is expected to grow, beginning this year.
China is expected to be the largest LED consumer; however, companies will be wise to understand the Chinese government and its direction for LEDs before looking for a share of this market.
“China LED Industry Analysis – Policy/Standard/Certification Analysis and Corporate trend of China LED Industry” covers the Chinese government’s policy direction and intention and development of China-based LED makers. Access the report at http://www.displaybank.com/_eng/research/report_view.html?id=821&cate=1
May 18, 2012 — SEMICON West is less than 2 months away, July 10-12 in San Francisco, CA. Plan your attendee schedule now with highlights from the Extreme Electronics “show within a show;” 4 strong keynotes; sessions on device architecture and node shrink, lithography, 450mm wafers and more.
Attendee registration is $50 through June 2. On-site registration is $150.
Extreme Electronics
The Extreme Electronics events take place in the exhibit hall and comprise more than 25 free technical presentations on micro electro mechanical systems (MEMS), light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and printed/plastic electronics. These adjacent markets share “synergies” in manufacturing materials, equipment, and processes with semiconductor fab and assembly, which the Extreme Electronics sessions aim to maximize, SEMICON West organizers say. Each session begins at 10:30am.
Speakers in “Taking MEMS to the Next Level: Transitioning to a Profitable High-Volume Business,” July 10, will share practical solutions for scaling industry growth. In partnership with MEMS Industry Group (MIG), speakers come from Yole Développement, Hillcrest Labs, Coventor, Hanking Electronics, Micralyne, Applied Materials, Nikon, ScanNano, NIST and more.
“Enabling the Next-Generation of HB-LEDs,” July 11, will focus on the current state of some disruptive technologies for improving manufacturing yields, with speakers from Cree, Soraa, Everlight Electronics, EV Group, Canaccord Genuity, LayTec AG, Seoul Semiconductor, Lattice Power, Yole Développement, GT Advanced Technologies, and more.
In partnership with the FlexTech Alliance, “Practical Plastic Electronics: Bringing Disruptive Flexible and Organic Materials into Volume Electronics Manufacturing,” July 12, speakers will give progress reports on organic LED (OLED) displays and lighting, solid state batteries, and flexible mounting of rigid die. Look for speakers from IMEC, Panasonic, DisplaySearch, Imprint Energy, Applied Materials, and MC 10.
Keynotes
Shekhar Borkar, director of Extreme-scale Technologies at Intel Labs, will provide the technology keynote on Intel’s mid- and long-term development efforts in IC scaling, power reduction, and performance improvements, on July 10. That afternoon, Applied Materials’ Mark Pinto, EVP and GM, Energy and Environmental Solutions, will keynote. Applied Materials recently began a major restructuring of its EES business, which includes LED and solar photovoltaics manufacturing tools.
On July 11, keynote speakers include Ivo Bolsens, Ph.D., SVP and CTO, Xilinx and James G. Brown, president of global business development, First Solar. SEMI will also present an Executive Summit moderated by Jonathan Davis, SEMI, on the 11th.
TechXPOT sessions
Fully depleted transistor architectures on Tuesday, next-generation lithography on Wednesday, and the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) on Thusday. Learn more about these individual sessions in SEMICON West heralds 22nm, EUVL, 450mm, mobile electronics speakers
Best of West
SEMI will present Best of West awards for the best exhibitor product introduced since last year’s SEMICON West. Winners will be selected by an independent panel of highly qualified judges from academia and the industry. Entries are judged on their financial impact on the industry, engineering or scientific achievement, or societal impact and benefits. Have a product to submit for Best of West? Read more here — deadline is May 21.
For more information and to register, visit www.semiconwest.org.
Solid State Technology’s editors will be attending SEMICON West with you, sharing updates on the Website, in daily e-newsletters, and via twitter @solid_statetech and @PetesTweetsPW
with #semiconwest.
May 17, 2012 — Barclays Capital’s Asia IT analyst Jones Ku shares details of China’s State Council’s RMB26.5 billion (about US$4.2 billion) subsidy program for household electrical appliances. The program sets aside RMB2.2 billion to promote consumption of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and “other energy-saving light bulbs.”
The program will be in effect for one year. In addition to LED lighting, it covers energy-efficient vehicles, air conditioners, flat-panel display (FPD) television sets, refrigerators, and more.
There is currently no announcement on when the program will start, though Barclays expects it to be implemented in late June or early July. Ku says it is likely to be similar to the subsidies for energy-saving products that were trialed in Beijing from September 2011-February 2012 (10% of the selling price, with a cap of RMB400), but with the focus expanded to include more cities.
The LED lighting product subsidy has been rumored since November 2011, when China laid out its plans to phase out incandescent bulbs within 5 years. Expectations on the subsidy amount lowered over time (some early estimates were as high as RMB8 billion). The $348M LED subsidy sum discussed may be less than anticipated, though with no details on the per-product subsidies or the format of the cash deployment, estimating the likely impact to China LED demand is difficult. Certain municipal governments may match the subsidies of the central government, lowering the product cost further, Barclays noted in an earlier subsidy assessment.
Barclays looks at a scenario wherein the government subsidizes ~50% of LED bulb cost (similar to the programs deployed on the CFL bulb side several years ago). Assuming an average pre-subsidy price per LED bulb of ~$10, and assuming China accounts for ~20% of the worldwide bulb market, this subsidy would translate to ~69M bulbs or ~4% of China’s bulb demand.
For more information, see Barclays Capital’s report, "U.S. Display & Lighting: Lightfair Highlights Positive End Demand Trends, But Continued ASP Pressure" https://?live.barcap.com/go/publications/content?contentPubID=FC1821997)
May 16, 2012 — Dow Electronic Materials, a business unit of The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) made a bolt-on acquisition of Lightscape Materials Inc., a spin-off of research company SRI International.
Lightscape Materials offers intellectual property (IP) in specialty phosphor technology, which Dow will add to its light-emitting diode (LED) technologies portfolio. Lightscape co-founders Gerard Frederickson and Yongchi Tian will join Dow’s LED Technologies team.
Major Lightscape Materials’ investors included Wisepower and SRI International. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Phosphors are applied to or around LED chips for improved efficiency and color quality. They are implemented in display backlights and illumination LED fixtures. Also read: Phosphor trends for LED manufacturing
"The novel phosphor compositions developed by Lightscape Materials enable improved quality, reliability and output color of LED light-based systems," said Leo Linehan, global general manager for Dow Electronic Materials’ Growth Technologies business. The phosphors will enable LEDs to create a wide spectrum of white light, with the color tuned for the desired application.
Dow formed its LED Technologies business segment in October 2011. Its portfolio includes metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) precursors for LED manufacturing, photoresists and related ancillaries for lithographic processing, metallization processes for electroplating, and pads and slurries for chemical mechanical polishing/planarization (CMP). In March, Dow opened an R&D center in Seoul, South Korea, with a focus on organic LEDs (OLEDs).
Dow (NYSE: DOW) is a wide-ranging science and technology company offering specialty chemicals, advanced materials, agrosciences and plastics for electronics, water, energy, coatings and agriculture. Dow Electronic Materials is a global supplier of materials and technologies to the electronics industry, serving the semiconductor, interconnect, finishing, photovoltaic, display, LED and optics markets. Dow Electronic Materials has manufacturing and research facilities in the US, Europe, China, Taiwan, Japan and Korea.
More information about Dow can be found at http://www.dow.com.
Wisepower (KOSDAQ: 040670) is a diversified business in batteries, wireless charging solution and LED lighting. More information about Wisepower can be found at http://www.wisepower.co.kr.
SRI International, a nonprofit research and development organization, performs sponsored R&D for governments, businesses, and foundations.
May 16, 2012 — After a surge in 2010 and oversupply in 2011 that suppressed 2012 fab, light-emitting diode (LED) makers will see a leveling out of supply and demand into better equilibrium, according to the NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly LED Supply/Demand Market Forecast Report. Demand will shift from liquid crystal display (LCD)-backlit LEDs to LEDs for lighting.
LED makers faced challenges in 2011, after skyrocketing demand in 2010. In 2011, growth in demand from LCD TV backlights reversed course, due to a combination of slower growth in LED-backlit LCD TV sales and slower growth in chips-per-backlight, due to efficiency increases. The demand for LEDs in LCD backlights did grow slightly, as use in tablet PCs and strong penetration growth in LCD monitors made up for the drop in demand from TV. Growth was also modest in lighting, as the market penetration of LEDs only grew from 1.4% in 2010 to 1.9% in 2011.
At the same time, many new LED suppliers had entered the industry, and were rapidly ramping up production. Measured in standard units of 500µm2 chip size, supply grew by 41% in 2011, compared to only 10% growth in demand. This resulted in a significant oversupply.
“LEDs have been in surplus since the end of 2010, setting the stage for a decrease in LED prices and margins,” said Steven Sher, analyst, NPD DisplaySearch. “As a result of this surplus situation, there has been almost no investment in LED applications, nor any significant capacity increases in 2012. This is resulting in a halving of the supply/demand glut from 2011 to 2012.”
 |
| Figure. LED supply/demand for backlight and lighting applications. SOURCE: NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly LED Supply/Demand Market Forecast Report. |
Demand from LCD backlights will continue to dominate LED demand until 2013, when it will reach its peak. Due to the growing popularity of new, low-cost direct-LED backlight designs for LCD TVs, the demand for LEDs in backlights will continue to increase through 2013. While the number of LED packages per LCD backlight unit will peak in 2012, continued growth in penetration of LED backlights will lead to slight increase in LED demand in 2013.
By 2014, lighting will become the dominant source of demand for LEDs as price reductions and efficacy improvements drive increased adoption. The penetration of LEDs in lighting will reach 16.8% in 2015, according to the Quarterly LED Supply/Demand Market Forecast Report.
Spotlights and LED street lights will gain higher penetration in lighting due to government incentive programs, such as the 12th Five-Year Plan in China and the LED subsidy policy in Taiwan, as well as continued growth in commercial applications. LED bulbs and fluorescent tubes are growing in Japan due to government incentive programs and energy-saving consciousness, especially following the March 2011 earthquake.
The NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly LED Supply/Demand Market Forecast Report analyzes supply and demand on a quarterly basis for the entire LED industry. From chip prices to LED maker roadmaps, this report gives a clear outlook and reliable forecast of LED supply/demand, along with an analysis of the impacts on pricing. DisplaySearch provides market research and consulting on the display supply chain, as well as the emerging photovoltaic/solar cell industries. For more information on DisplaySearch analysts, reports and industry events, visit http://www.displaysearch.com/.