Category Archives: LEDs

August 11, 2011 – Scott Zafiropoulo, VP of marketing at Ultratech, explains the company’s business and positioning strategies in an interview at SEMICON West 2011. With laser annealing tools (40nm and below), and lithography systems for advanced packaging and LED development (2-in. up to 8in.), the company’s markets are not in the same cyclicality of the industry, noted Zafiropoulo. "We are able to weather the storms a little better," he said, "and being in multiple markets has allowed the company to balance itself better." The company believes its strategy is paying off as evidenced by it revenue growth and acceptance of its technology on the part of leading-edge users.

Going forward, Zafiropoulo expressed confidence in the company’s ability to meet the challenge of 450mm wafer manufacturing — a mechanical task involving the scanning stage of litho equipment.

August 10, 2011 — SEMI released its China LED Fab Industry Report, summarizing China’s rapidly growing light-emitting diode (LED) industry: capital and equipment spending, fab capacity, sales rankings of Chinese LED manufacturers, etc. Subsidies for China fab projects are included, along with new LED fab projects, names of China’s sapphire wafer suppliers, and company profiles of China’s top LED manufacturers.   

China has develped government support infrastructure for LED manufacturing and consumption. China is the world’s leading consumer of solid state lighting and the leading producer of LCD TVs (the main driver for HB-LED consumption).

LED production investments have rapidly escalated in China. Last year, SEMI recorded explosive growth on equipment spending from LED fabs globally, jumping from $606 million in 2009 to $1.78 billion in 2010. Gallium nitride (GaN) epitaxial wafer production capacity in China will grow over 300% in just 2 years (2010-2012), hitting 1,282,000 wafers per month (2" equivalents). Regional equipment spending shows an aggressive investment trend from China. Propped up by subsidy programs from local governments in China, new LED fab projects have blossomed in the past two years in China.  China now accounts for almost 50% of overall equipment spending.

Metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) tool installations are growing from a cumulative total 323 tools in 2010 to over 1000 tools by the end 2012. 10 new sapphire substrate projects are beginning in China to catch up with the production rise and non-Chinese supplier bases.

LEDs could go from a $10 billion (2010) industry to over $100 billion worldwide by 2020.
 
The China LED Fab Industry Report covers LED wafer and sapphire substrate manufacturing projects, government incentive programs, MOCVD tool forecasts, and emerging China-based manufacturing. The report is prepared by SEMI China-based market analysts and is based on the SEMI Opto/LED Fab Watch and Forecast service that monitors LED capital spending at over 160 fabs worldwide, and other sources. Purchase the report at http://www.semi.org/node/38486

SEMI is a global industry association serving the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display and photovoltaic industries. For more information, visit www.semi.org.

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August 9, 2011 – Doug Anberg, VP of advanced stepper technology at Ultratech, discussed the physics behind cost-of-ownership (CoO) improvements in the company’s new Sapphire 100E HB-LED tool in a video interview at SEMICON West 2011. With a low NA, good DoF, and the resolution required for HBLED applications, the 1X projection lithography tool eliminates the consumable costs (for masks) associated with contact aligners because the masks don’t contact the wafer.

Anberg noted that the company is seeing good acceptance of the new tool for layers called patterned sapphire substrates (PSS), and for the pad layer associated with the current spreading finger area (see figure below). The current spreading finger area needs reduced feature sizes to achieve good CD control and good lithographic performance, said Anberg. These attributes are key to obtaining more light output from the LED, especially for high-power devices used in solid-state lighting applications.


Performance considerations for HB-LED applications. (Source: Ultratech)

August 5, 2011 – Rice University’s James Tour’s Lab has created thin films from graphene that eliminate expensive, brittle indium tin oxide (ITO) films for touchscreen displays, solar panels, and LED lights. The see-through graphene-hybrid film is flexible, allowing integration into body-wearable electronics or building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), among other commercial applications.

Rice University’s hybrid graphene/aluminum mesh material. (Credit: Yu Zhu, Rice University)

The Tour Lab’s thin film combines a single-layer sheet of highly conductive graphene with a fine grid of metal nanowire. The combination outperformed ITO and competing materials at the Lab, offering better transparency and lower electrical resistance. The hybrid works better than pure graphene, which interacts too much with its substrate, Tour said. The fine metal mesh maintains conductivity without blocking transparency, added postdoctoral researcher Yu Zhu. The gaps in the nanowires make them unsuitable stand-alone components in conductive electrodes. The researchers settled on a grid of 5um aluminum nanowires.

Standard roll-to-roll (R2R) and ink-jet printing could produce the metal grids on a commercial scale. Roll-to-roll graphene production is also becoming more readily available from nanomaterials manufacturing companies. Tour believes the ITO replacement can be scaled up immediately.

An electron microscope image of a hybrid electrode developed at Rice University shows solid connections after 500 bends. (Credit: Tour Lab, Rice University.)

In tests, the hybrid film’s conductivity decreased 20%-30% with the initial 50 bends, but after that the material stabilizes. "There were no significant variations up to 500 bending cycles," Zhu said. More rigorous bending test should be performed by commercial users, he added.

The film also proved environmentally stable. When the research paper was submitted in late 2010, test films had been exposed to the environment in the lab for six months without deterioration. After a year, they remain so.

Yu Zhu holds a sample of a transparent electrode that merges graphene and a fine aluminum grid. Clockwise from top right: James Tour, Zhu, Zheng Yan, and Zhengzong Sun. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow, Rice University.)

The Office of Naval Research Graphene MURI program, the Air Force Research Laboratory through the University Technology Corporation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the Lockheed Martin Corp./LANCER IV program supported the research.

The research was reported in the online edition of ACS Nano. James Tour is Rice’s T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science. Yu Zhu is lead author on the paper. Rice graduate students Zhengzong Sun and Zheng Yan and former postdoctoral researcher Zhong Jin are co-authors of the paper.

August 4, 2011 — Light emitting diodes (LEDs), silicon germanium (SiGe) semiconductors, and wafer-level packaging (WLP) bumps each present their own challenges to metrology systems, says Alon Kapel, Jordan Valley Semiconductor. He speaks with Debra Vogler at SEMICON West 2011.


LEDs are growing very fast, and the metal-organic MOCVD tool is the heart of the process, says Kapel. For about every 10 MOCVD tools, users need 1 metrology tool. Every MOCVD batch takes 12 hours, so measurement needs to be very fast, allowing the next substrate to begin processing.

Other areas where metrology is helping advance semiconductor technology include the move to triple-layer SiGe on the front-end, and wafer-level packaging on the back-end. Metrology tools must keep up with the pace of production and still offer the highest level of accuracy possible. (Last year Jordan Valley debuted the JVX7200 HRXRD/XRR for in-line SiGe process monitoring.) In wafer-level packaging, silver/tin bumps must be measured on-wafer and on-line.

Jordan Valley is collaborating on 450mm projects and participates in consortia, but Kapel noted that 450mm is a burden on vendors and the question still being asked is, "where

August 4, 2011 — Attolight AG is launching a quantitative cathodoluminescence system with nanoscale resolution and picosecond timing for research and product development in semiconductor, ceramics, advanced materials, geological, solar panel, and LED sectors.  

The cathodluminescence system runs the full spectrum from UV to IR while maintaining 10nm spatial resolution. It offers a 15K to 300K temperature range. Field of view (FOV) and collection efficiency are reportedly 100x better than other CL technologies.
 
The system is based on a newly designed scanning electron microscope (SEM) containing an embedded optical microscope, a 9-axis cryo nano-stage, and a fully integrated cathodoluminescence system. 

Available in two versions, the continuous wave CL 10-Infinity can be field-upgraded to the pico-second, time-resolved CL10-10. 

See the new system, and a paper on time-resolved spectroscopy at M&M, August 7-11, Nashville TN, Microscopy.org. Attolight Booth #1520.

Attolight is a spin-off from EPFL’s Institute of Quantum Electronics and Photonics in Lausanne, Switzerland. For further details, visit www.Attolight.com.

July 29, 2011 – Marketwire — Sapphire Materials Company (SMC), a subsidiary of Silicon Chemical Corporation (SCC), completed Phase I of its sapphire manufacturing business. The manufacturing green-light follows less than a year of research and design, retrofitting, and renovation at the former Saint Gobain/Union Carbide sapphire crystal growing facility in Washougal, WA.

Manufacturing equipment was sourced from suppliers and some methodologies were developed in-house by SMC.

All process utility and infrastructure requirements are in place for installation of crystal growing equipment to meet SMC plans to ramp capacity to over 100,000 KG by the 4th quarter of 2012. Phase II should be complete in September 2011. Initial shipments of sapphire product will begin this November.

The sapphire produced in Washougal will primarily serve LED manufacturing markets. The aim is lowest-cost production with high reliability and consistent product quality.

Sapphire Materials Company (SMC) is a subsidiary of Silicon Chemical Corporation (SCC), which provides silicon process technology, equipment, and professional services for the electronic and solar industries. Visit SMC at www.sapphirematerials.com

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July 27, 2011 — Solvay provided EUR10 million (USD15 million) to printed electronics company Plextronics, in a financing round to accelerate Plextronics’ technology development and product delivery. Solvay is Plextronics’ largest minority shareholder.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, Plextronics focuses on organic light emitting diodes (OLED) and organic solar photovoltaics (OPV) technology, specifically the conductive inks and process technologies that enable those and other similar applications. It was spun out of Carnegie Mellon University in 2002, based on the research of Dr. Richard McCullough. The company is ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 14001:2004 certified.

Printed electronics enable new form factors and cost structures for electronic devices.

Plextronics has achieved milestones in the last two years as an advanced ink provider for solution-processed OLED and OPV manufacturers, noted Andy Hannah, President and Chief Executive Officer of Plextronics, who called attention to the company’s OLED development for flat panel displays and lighting applications.

Léopold Demiddeleer, Head of Future Businesses & Corporate Platforms, a section of Solvay’s newly created Innovation Center, noted that OLED adoption is a sign that printed electronics are headed for mass markets.

PLEXTRONICS Inc. an international technology company that specializes in printed lighting, display, solar and other organic electronics. For more information about Plextronics, visit www.plextronics.com.

SOLVAY is an international industrial Group active in chemistry. Solvay is listed on the NYSE Euronext stock exchange in Brussels (NYSE Euronext: SOLB.BE – Bloomberg: SOLB.BB – Reuters: SOLBt.BR). Learn more at www.solvay.com.

Also read: Organic Electronics Workshop: OLEDs, OTFTs, OPV, and futile resistance by Michael A. Fury

July 27, 2011 – BUSINESS WIRE — Organic light emitting diode (OLED) lighting can be manufactured into aesthetically pleasing, unique products. However, the immature technology is costly today, and even with a price decline of more than an order of magnitude over the next 10 years, OLED lights will remain uncompetitive with other lighting options, Lux Research finds. OLED lighting will comprise a $58 million market in 2020.

Lux Research expects OLED lighting costs to drop from $18/lumen today to $0.71/lumen on glass and $0.18/lumen on flexible substrates by 2020 — not enough to encourage broad adoption. There is no "killer application" for OLED lighting that could catapult the LED technology to high-volume manufacturing, which would drop costs further, laments Jonathan Melnick, a Lux Research Analyst and lead author of "Finding the End of the Tunnel for OLED Lighting."

Lux Research considered potential applications for OLED lighting by market segment for the report: Designer lighting, luminaires, general illumination, wearable lighting, automotive, and aerospace. OLED form factors benefit designer lighting, where aesthetic imperatives can trump price. Commercial flexible panels, expected on the scene in 2015, will boost adoption in this market. The designer lighting market for OLEDs will reach $32 million in 2020.

Luminaires will be the second largest market, hitting $22 million in 2020. The cost of OLED lamps, which can reach to thousands of dollars each, will be prohibitive for many prospective customers.

Flexible OLED lighting will find its niche, beating out conventional glass panels. In 2020, of the $58 million OLED lighting market, Lux Research projects 63% will be flexible substrates.

The report, "Finding the End of the Tunnel for OLED Lighting," analyzes prospects for OLED lighting fixtures. Lux Research provides strategic advice and on-going intelligence for emerging technologies. Visit www.luxresearchinc.com for more information.

The situation is different for OLED displays.

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