Category Archives: LEDs

(May 1, 2008) Bannockburn, IL. &#151 IPC &#151 and the Jisso International Council (JIC) are sponsoring a technical seminar, “Implementing Advanced Interconnect Technology Solutions,” May 21

May 1, 2008 – Three segments of thin-layer deposition will see their growth rates increase over the next six years, with the top two (CVD and ion implant) enjoying the best growth over the period, according to data from BCC Research.

All three market segments — chemical vapor deposition (CVD) ion implantation, and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) — are expected to grow roughly the same in 2008 (4.0% vs.4.5%). CVD is the biggest slice by far, seen increasing to $7.3B, vs. $2.75B for ion implant and $475.4M for MBE. Looking ahead, all three segments should see growth rates rise, led by CVD and ion implant at roughly 10%, with MBE at ~8%.

Note that ion-related materials are the least costly of these technologies, accounting for just 2.5% of that market slice from 2007 through 2013 (vs. ~9%-10% for MBE and CVD and MBE). Ion implant equipment, meanwhile, represents the biggest investment percentagewise over the other deposition areas (~83%-84%, vs. 75%-80% for MBE and CVD). The services component of total is biggest for MBE (~15%), vs. ~14% for ion implant and ~10% for CVD.

Pre-planning and coordinated response to disaster helps garment manufacturer speed return to productivity

The experience of White Knight Engineered Products (WKEP) in dealing with disaster is a textbook example of how proper upfront planning and an immediate and well-coordinated response can make the difference between an insurmountable situation and an orderly and rapid recovery. Just three weeks after a devastating fire destroyed the cleanroom garment company’s Childersburg, AL, manufacturing and distribution center, WKEP was back in production at a temporary facility. And, just a little more than 7 months later, the company’s employees were able to move back into their fully rebuilt, refurbished, and dramatically improved plant.

It was the afternoon of June 4, 2007, when an electrical short circuit spawned the fire between the roof of the building and the ceiling panels over the manufacturing floor. Jane Collier, WKEP Childersburg manufacturing manager, recalls, “Safety was our first concern, and thank goodness no one was injured. We had just practiced an evacuation drill the previous month, and it paid off, because it was a close call.”

Meanwhile, WKEP president Scott Banks was meeting with his management team at the company’s Charlotte, NC, offices when the call came in. “We received a call from Alabama saying that there had been a fire, but the scope and extent of the damage wasn’t immediately clear to our people on site.” By 5:00 p.m. that same day, however, Banks and his team were on site in Childersburg, and whatever early uncertainty existed quickly disappeared as it became clear that a major disaster had occurred, with most of the damage caused not by the fire itself but by the associated smoke and water. “In addition to the extensive heat damage to the building, we lost every bit of our inventory, both raw materials and finished product,” says Banks.

Not surprisingly, one of the first calls made on the day was to the company’s insurance carrier, Factory Mutual/FM Global Insurance (Johnston, RI). Banks was pleased with their responsiveness. “This is why you have insurance and the importance of a good carrier,” says Banks. “FM is used to dealing with big issues, and certainly, in our eyes, this was the biggest issue. Their number one concern was the same as ours: Get us back up and running as quickly as possible.”


Figure 1. Smoke and water damage after the fire at WKEP’s Childersburg facility prompted the company to redesign the entire building, not only considering further fire safety measures but other improvements for lean manufacturing. Photo courtesy of White Knight Engineered Products.
Click here to enlarge image

The first thing FM recommended was to immediately get a disaster-recovery company on scene to prevent and/or minimize any additional damage. Servpro Industries (Gallatin, TN) filled that bill, with a team immediately beginning the initial clean-up process–for example, getting the water out of the facility to prevent further damage. After that, the priority turned to getting the machinery out, cleaning it, and putting it into temporary storage trailers until a temporary facility could be located. A second company, Disaster Services, Inc. (Atlanta, GA), was also brought in to assist with the process.

Overall, Banks says that FM Global connected WKEP management with the people and expertise they needed to put together a roadmap to recovery and rebuilding. “They always proposed two to three options and were instrumental in helping us find the best solution.” For example, Banks points to the redesign of WKEP’s sprinkler system, which now includes sprinkler heads both between the roof and ceiling panels as well as below the ceiling. “As the previous fire started above the drop ceiling, we wanted to ensure that this type of disaster cannot occur again,” says Banks.

FM Global also connected the company with Gilbane Building Co. (Providence, RI) for initial advice on the rebuilding plan. But again, Banks points out that FM Global allowed them to decide themselves how to best meet their needs, and they eventually brought in their own primary contractor–BE&K of Birmingham, AL. Says Banks, “Yes, we relied on and benefited from Gilbane’s expertise, but at the same time, we also needed to stand on our own two feet, which is why we got BE&K involved. We focused on what we wanted the plant to do and turned to them for the best way to get there.”


Figure 2. WKEP’s managers and employees participated in the redesign with feedback on features from the lighting and layout on the manufacturing floor to areas such as the cafeteria. Photos courtesy of White Knight Engineered Products.
Click here to enlarge image

The end result was a complete renovation of the facility from floor to roof. As explained by Banks, the only thing that remains of the original building is its aluminum shell, some cinderblock walls, and the concrete floor. “We pulled out everything–all wood, insulation, every pipe and wire. We didn’t want to take any chance that there would be any residue of the fire. No odor or any kind of potential contaminant.”

As WKEP general manager Greg Winn notes, it was also at this stage that the company began to take advantage of this opportunity to rethink the entire layout of the building and optimize it for current environmental concerns, manufacturing requirements, and operating costs. “We had a clean slate and almost too many options, but ultimately, we were able to rebuild to better meet our customers’ demands as well as the realities of the global economy.”

One major accomplishment was the complete separation of the manufacturing floor from the distribution areas. In fact, this move was part of an overall focus on implementing modern lean manufacturing principles. Says Winn, “We took a hard look at our raw material and workflows, emphasizing our need for a highly flexible yet tightly controlled production environment.” WKEP’s Childersburg plant focuses on the manufacture of quick turnaround, short production runs of specialty, highly custom cleanroom and protective garments. These include special design, flame retardant, and ESD protective garments as well as more esoteric products such as wheelchair and equipment covers.

Winn says the focus on lean manufacturing principles led the team to many basic improvements in the plant’s layout that seem simple, like placing their laser cutter in close proximity to their plotter and having their QC department open directly onto the manufacturing floor. “The result is that we’ve reduced a lot of walking around, improved the efficiency of people, and provided a better working environment overall.”

In truth, however, WKEP was already well along in embracing lean manufacturing principles even before the fire. The company had applied for and received a grant from the State of Alabama for training on lean manufacturing concepts, and everyone in the building was taken through the 8 to 10 week training program. As noted by Collier, “This training provided us with a good streamlined framework from which to advance.” Wireless routers were connected through a new high-tech network, allowing warehouse data transfer throughout the facility for easy location of product and raw materials. Traditional phones were replaced with voice over IP (VoIP) technology, allowing for easy connections between WKEP’s other facilities.

A number of new physical improvements were also made to the facility. For example, a new sealant and floor finish was put over the raw concrete floor to help control particulate and other potential contaminants. And more efficient, brighter, and cost-effective lighting was installed throughout the manufacturing area. Winn notes that in addition to improving the working environment of personnel, this change also dramatically aids their overall quality control and inspection process.

Another extremely important factor in WKEP’s successful and rapid recovery operation can be traced directly to its early business history in the manufacture of medical devices. Now, although the company no longer manufactures these products and is therefore no longer audited by the FDA, it nevertheless still works to adhere to FDA GMP guidelines. As noted by Banks, adherence to the FDA’s GMP requirements offers many practical benefits to the cleanroom industry and contributed significantly to their being back on line quickly. “We maintain data to trace a garment back to its date and location of manufacture. Equally important, we back up and store quality, manufacturing, and specification data off site in the event of a situation like this, and it’s this infrastructure that allowed us to get back into production quickly.”

Finally, as observed by Banks, the only way they could approach a project and challenge of this scope with any hope of success was to subdivide tasks and responsibilities and to count on the dedication of their employees. Most of WKEP’s employees and managers have been with them for many of the 40 years that its Controlled Environments division has been supplying protective apparel for cleanrooms in the pharmaceutical, microelectronics, and automotive industries. “All of our people stepped up to participate in their own areas of responsibility, whether it was the warehouse, manufacturing, IT, and even how to best decorate our offices and cafeteria for our employees. Our vendors also met our needs as quickly as possible and our customers stuck with us through this crisis. In an economy where the trend is to close domestic textile plants, we’re proud that we were able to rebuild and re-establish this facility.”

April 24, 2008 — API Nanotronics, Corp. (OTCBB: APIO), supplier of electronic components and nanotechnology research and development to the defense and communications sectors, says its board of directors has appointed Stephen B. Pudles to serve as the company’s CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Pudles succeeds Phillip DeZwirek who will continue to serve as chairman of the board and chairman of the executive committee.

Mr. Pudles brings more than 25 years of electronics industry experience to API Nanotronics. He previously served in several executive and leadership roles at Nu Visions Manufacturing, LLC, including president and CEO, where led the company from $10 million in revenue to over $100 million in a six-year period.

Pudles also served in a variety of other executive and operational positions for a number of electronic manufacturing services companies and began his career as a manufacturing engineer and operations project leader at ITT Defense Communications Division and as an industrial engineer at McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. He holds a Bachelors of Engineering and a Masters of Science in Management from Stevens Institute of Technology. Pudles was recently elected secretary and treasurer of the IPC, an electronics industry global trade association, where he has served on their board of directors for the past 8 years.

Phillip DeZwirek, Chairman of API Nanotronics Inc., said, “[Pudles’] vast operational and leadership experience is ideally suited as API continues to capitalize on its leadership position in the defense and communications electronics and nanotechnology industry.”

According to Pudles, API Nanotronics “has an unparalled technological and scientific position and an impressive roster of long standing blue-chip customers. The industry is taking notice of API’s leading position and I look forward to building on this momentum to further establish the company as a forward-looking leader in our industry.”

April 23, 2008 — PowerMetal Technologies Inc., supplier of nanotechnology enhanced materials to the sporting goods and consumer products industries, announced that PGA Tour professional Trevor Immelman won the 2008 Masters using its EPIC shaft, a golf shaft designed in conjunction with Grafalloy to enable golfers to hit longer and straighter golf shots thanks to its proprietary nanofuse construction.

“Key to Immelman’s convincing wire-to-wire victory was his long and straight drives at a golf course known for its stingy scoring conditions,” the company says. “Wielding EPIC golf shafts in his driver, fairway wood and hybrid, the South African drove the ball beautifully, he led in driving accuracy with a tournament-best 85% of fairways hit. He also finished fourth in driving distance with a blistering 287 yards off the tee.”

“The greatest strength of the week for him was his driving,” said CBS commentator Jim Nantz as Immelman was walking up the famed 18th. Fellow CBS commentator and Masters Champion Nick Faldo added, “His cumulative of driving distance and accuracy, he will beat everybody by miles and that has been his absolute number one club this week.”

“We are delighted that our technology and product was the key to winning on golf’s biggest stage,” said Edward Hughes, Founder, President & CEO of PowerMetal Technologies. “PowerMetal’s nanotechnology powers not only golfers but also is used by the world’s top players in squash and racquetball. It is very exciting to see players win using our nanotechnology at Majors in golf and at World Championships in racquet sports.”

The EPIC Shaft was first introduced to the golf world at the beginning of 2007 and Golfweek magazine has called it “the next big thing.” According to PowerMetal, what makes the EPIC’s performance so powerful is its proprietary and patented nanofuse technology, combining the benefits of steel with the lightweight and feel advantages of graphite. In a case of good timing, PowerMetal’s patent on the Epic shaft was approved and issued by the US patent Office two days before the Masters tournament started.

PowerMetal has several key nanotechnology platforms that it is using to create both sporting goods and consumer products. Its nanofusing on composite platforms such as the Epic Shaft and HEAD Metallix racquets has received industry praise, and its nanofusing on aluminum for golf heads and baseball bats will result in several products new products in 2008. In a recently announced strategic alliance with DuPont, its nanofusing on polymers hold promise in the both the sporting goods and consumer products markets. At grain sizes of 20 nanometers (1000 times smaller than the grain size of typical metallic structures), the nano-crystalline metal is much stronger and harder than conventional metals.

See past report on PowerMetal.

April 23, 2008 — NIL Technology has added what it calls a “high-accuracy but low-cost photonic stamp in silicon” to the company’s product line incorporating photonic crystal structures. The stamps are designed to help create future photonic devices.

Photonic crystals will comprise the building blocks for next-generation photonic devices, says NIL Technology. The new photonic stamp is an attempt to contribute to these further developments within devices based on especially active optical components and integrated optics as high brightness LEDs and solid state lighting, besides bio-medical applications employing photonic crystal structures.

The new photonic stamp features pillar arrays with structure sizes from 125-275nm and pitches ranging from 200-500nm in silicon. The stamp boasts a very large imprinting (active) area of 4 cm2 making it ideal for pre-production. Based on a fabrication technique using electron beam lithography (EBL), the stamps will be sold at EUR 9900. Anti-sticking coating and dicing of the stamps are optional extra features.

“This new stamp is our latest response to the increasing inquiries we get from R&D institutions and companies working within the scientific area of display, lighting and optics. We definitely see an upward going trend and feel compelled to contribute with high quality stamps at a low cost facilitating the efforts of our customers in their pursuit of realizing pioneering end-products enabled by nanoimprint lithography,” says company CEO Theodor Nielsen.

The announcement follows NIL Technology’s introduction just a few months ago of new standard stamps for affordable nanoimprint lithography.

April 22, 2008 — “This is very significant for Lockheed Martin and we think we will reap benefits across the business,” said Sharon Smith, director of Advanced Technology at Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT), in announcing her company’s new collaboration with Rice University for nanotechnology research. The strategic partnership, funded with $3 million over three years (but “looking to expand,” according to Smith), aims to research and develop new nanotechnologies and nano-based solutions for a wide range of applications in electronics, energy, and security.

The Lockheed Martin Advanced Nanotechnology Center of Excellence at Rice University, or LANCER, will pair researchers from Lockheed Martin with Rice experts in carbon nanotechnology, photonics, plasmonics, and more. Rice University is widely recognized for many important contributions to nanotechnology. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin has a history of proactively engaging partners in nanotech R&D.

LANCER, a “virtual” organization, will launch in June 2008 at Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology. There will be a faculty director, but no new building and no dedicated space, Smalley Institute director Wade Adams told Small Times. Adams added that Rice has 130 faculty members working on nanotechnology.

The center’s founding team is now evaluating proposals for various sized projects. LANCER officials expect to fund up to a half-dozen projects per year; priority will be given to those that can either be brought to market quickly or dramatically improve upon existing technology. The kinds of technologies discussed include:
— nanomaterials that could double the efficiency of Lithium-ion batteries
— airport scanners that can “see” through the soles of shoes
— solar energy collectors that are twice as efficient as today’s best
— nanomaterials that can extract energy from waste heat
— “neuromorphic” computers that are structured like mammalian brains
— stealthy materials that are stronger and lighter than existing products
— space-based sensors that can closely monitor climate change

LANCER grew out of a series of technology exchange events between the Smalley Institute and Lockheed Martin scientists in recent years, led by Rice faculty and designed to keep Lockheed Martin researchers apprised of the latest nanotechnology discoveries.

“LANCER formed from the bottom-up, and that sets it apart from other ambitious university-industry research partnerships,” said Adams, director of Rice’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, in a statement. “The folks in the labs are the ones who came to us and said, ‘Make it easier for us to work together.'”

When Lockheed Martin researchers visited Rice in March, for instance, the Smalley Institute and the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship sponsored a round-robin session that initiated dozens of conversations between Lockheed Martin project managers and Rice faculty on promising areas of collaborative research. LANCER officials are evaluating a number of specific proposals that grew out of those meetings.

“Nanotechnology promises to impact everything from the clothes people wear to the energy they consume, and it will also revolutionize the systems and services Lockheed Martin delivers to its government customers,” said Smith in a statement. “We are excited to partner with Rice, a recognized leader in nanotechnology research, to collaborate on those breakthroughs leading us to next generation products and services for our nation.”

More than a quarter of the science and engineering faculty hired at Rice in the past two decades are nanotechnology experts who are affiliated with the Smalley Institute, which is named for Rice chemist and nanotechnology pioneer Richard Smalley.

April 21, 2008 – A $40M VC investment in a US-based LED epitaxy technology is generating rumors that TSMC is making a push into this market segment, points out a report in the Taiwan Economic News.

Earlier this month BridgeLux said it completed a $40M Series D round of financing, including $30M in private equity and ~$10M in bank credit, with funds to be used for “aggressive” product development, market expansion, and R&D. The company touts its capabilities in GaN epitaxy growth, device structures, and chip designs, targeting the high-power LED industry. Company founder/CTO Heng Liu introduced the industry’s first GaN MOCVD reactor, and most of its executives come from top two LED chipmakers Lumileds and Cree, the Taiwan paper notes.

A new investor participating in BridgeLux’s funding round was VentureTech Alliance, which the Taiwan paper notes is mostly owned by TSMC (its founder is former TSMC marketing SVP Ron Norris), and that connection “has sent shock waves through the global LED industry” — since it gives the world’s No.1 silicon foundry an inroad into the estimated ~$11.4B LED industry which boasts 20% CAGR through 2012, according to Strategies Unlimited.

To back up those fears, the Taiwan paper cited “insiders” claiming that TSMC has brought retired MOCVD tools back online, presumably being prepped for use in LED epitaxy wafer manufacturing. The company also has applied for a 1.2-hectare chunk of land in the Hsinchu Science Park, which could be reserved for a new LED business. Furthermore sidling up to BridgeLux would ease TSMC’s entrance into this market segment amid a tangle of patents by LED firms including Lumileds, Osram, and Nichia, the report notes.