Category Archives: LEDs


The UPF OptoCooler is well suited for opto-electronics applications. (Photo: Nextreme)

January 24, 2008 — Nextreme Thermal Solutions, which develops microscale thermal and power management products for the electronics industry, has announced a new thermoelectric module.

The company’s Ultra-High Packing Fraction (UPF) OptoCooler addresses the latest cooling and temperature control requirements for optoelectronics, electronics, medical, military and aerospace applications, the company said. It has been optimized for laser diode, LED and advanced sensor products.

The module was developed in response to market demand for microscale cooling solutions that improve the performance of electronics without sacrificing efficiency, the company said.

With Nextreme’s thin-film thermal bump technology at its core, the OptoCooler can be integrated directly into electronic and optoelectronic packaging to deliver more than 45°C of cooling for a wide variety of thermal management applications.

by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor, Solid State Technology

Last week hundreds of microelectronics industry executives gathered at ISS and SMC, absorbing the conventional forecasts for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials. But on the technology side, SMC showed truly amazing perspective on new electronic materials markets of gigantic scales like photovoltaics, high-efficiency lighting, and advanced 3D and WLP packages.

…Click here to read the full text…

by Bob Haavind, Editorial Director, Solid State Technology

What makes a process tool or material stock attractive to investors? Will private funds take over some equipment companies? How will the chip industry deal with exponentially rising design costs?

These were some of the tough questions dealt with by an all-star investment analyst panel at the 2008 Industry Strategy Symposium in Half Moon Bay, CA, moderated by Jim Bagley, Lam Research chairman, an executive with a stellar record for growth both at Lam and before that at Applied Materials. The focus was on what’s hot and what’s not, and after a sobering look at how the chipmakers need to develop new business models by Steve Newberry, Lam Research President and CEO (see “Wall Street wary of equipment stocks, but there are some bright spots” — WaferNEWS, V15n3, Jan. 22, 2008), the panel went at it.

Jay Deahna, JP Morgan, described a generally negative investment climate for equipment stocks, with recession fears and projections that chipmakers’ capital spending might go down 10%-12% this year. Equipment stocks are definitely not hot, he said, if there is margin compression, management turmoil, financial restatements, or problems of merger integration, and if their shares have been lagging.

By contrast, there are a few hotter stocks with share gains, product momentum, and above-average growth prospects with rising margins. He also suggested that investors like pure-plays, companies with clean, easy-to-understand stories and financials, stable management, predictability, and a high-impact PR message.

Some of the biggest players, like AMAT and NVLS, have bogged down, he suggested, while a few smaller companies were making gains (see Fig. 1).

Mark FitzGerald, managing director and senior financial analyst, Banc of America Securities, painted a somewhat gloomy picture of what he sees ahead. At each node as the industry progresses to 45nm, 32nm, and 22nm, he expects to see fewer chip designs. Historical returns have been steadily declining in the industry, and he does not see any major end-product drivers ahead that will induce consumers to pay price premiums. Meanwhile, he commented, post-2000 for both logic and foundries, there has been no recovery in equipment buying. He expects TSMC to be stuck at 65nm for some time, and he feels there will be little pickup in equipment buying until 2009.

Even further out, FitzGerald doesn’t see the industry going beyond 22nm with any momentum. Moore’s Law may be running into some technology red brick walls in ten years, but financial walls will hit first in about five years, he asserted, citing 5%-10% growth going forward, and declining even further over the next ten years. As a result, he believes it makes good sense for process toolmakers to explore allied markets, especially in LEDs and solar.

Brett Hodess, deputy director, equity analysis, Merrill Lynch, sees this as a tough year for equipment, down about -13% with a downside of -20%, and he is not even sure that 2009 will be a recovery year. While there has been less volatility in equipment buying, it is a result of offsetting cycles, with memory up while logic and foundries are down (see Fig. 2). If the waves start to coincide, he suggests, there could either be a huge upturn or a horrible downturn.

Hodess pointed out that while there has been 17% more wafer output from foundries, there has been no growth in their capital spending. Even with 85%-90% capacity utilization, they are not driven to expand capacity as in the past, he said — in fact, as they go to 24hr manufacturing and push beyond 100% utilization, he sees the potential for foundries to raise output 20% just with the equipment they now have.

He sees overcapacity in the memory sector due to large recent growth in capex spending, but he doesn’t believe that this will lead to merger and acquisition activity. Instead he sees some memory makers dropping product lines, or selling off parts of their capacity.

While small cap stocks have outperformed the large caps recently, Hodess believes this will reverse going forward because of the trouble smaller companies will have in getting financing. While wafer frontend equipment makers have kept their cash flows up even in downturns, he doesn’t see this as particularly attractive to large institutional investors in EBITDA terms, because the stocks are not swinging as they did under older evaluation methods.

Countering the generally dreary forward outlook, JPMorgan’s Deahna said that the secular growth rate for equipment should follow unit growth rather than revenues, and there has been 12%-13% unit growth, especially with the rapidly growing demand for memory. Thus, he sees a continuing need for maintaining traditional capital intensity.

“We will have cycles,” he said, “but the equipment industry is not a disaster.”

The group was asked about the potential for private equity to move into the equipment sector, and the consensus was that this is unlikely. “Private equity doesn’t like anything big sold in small quantities,” commented Deahna of JPMorgan, so equipment companies are not attractive. BofA’s FitzGerald suggested that private equity looks for stable free cash flow, which ruled out most equipment firms.

Hodess added that while some of the bigger firms have achieved fairly steady free cash flows, they have pretty solid management already, so private investors would find it hard to come up with ways to increase cash flows to make resale attractive, especially in such a complex marketplace. Novellus, for example, could project an 18% rate of return for the next three years, Stephen O’Rourke of Deutsche Bank commented, “but how could private investors position a highly technical product portfolio?” He agreed that such a buyout was unlikely.

While manufacturing costs have been rising, FitzGerald said that the cost of design is rising even faster. This must be dealt with jointly, he believes, by the EDA community and the toolmakers. It was suggested that chipmakers might buy EDA companies, but Hodess disagreed. He felt that joining with chip companies would limit EDA market opportunities, so he believes they will remain independent industries.

Moderator Bagley started the “hot vs. cold” discussion by suggesting that what’s hot is bad clothes, bad hair, and bad morals. What’s not is people working hard to add value to the country. This industry falls into the latter category, and it appears some creative innovation will be needed to get things sparking upward again. — B.H.

January 23, 2008 — Nanochip Inc., a developer of advanced MEMS silicon data storage chips, has completed a $14 million financing round, the company announced.

In conjunction with Intel Capital and JK&B Capital, both investors in earlier rounds, this round was led by an additional investment company. The financing round will allow Nanochip to complete development of its first prototypes later this year to support design verification testing and limited customer sampling in 2009, the company said.

Nanochip is developing a new class of ultra-high-capacity storage chips enabling the storage of tens of gigabytes (GB) of data per chip, or the equivalent of many high-definition feature-length videos. By coupling MEMS with nanoprobe array technology that far exceeds the expected limits of conventional lithography used in present semiconductor memory, these new chips are designed to meet the growing demand for cost-effective, removable and rewritable data storage for use in a wide range of computing, server and consumer electronics products.

Nanochip said its first products are expected to exceed 100 GB per chip set, reaching terabytes (TB) in the future, and at a substantially lower cost compared with flash memory solutions.

Thermoelectric Platform


January 22, 2008

The ultra-high packing fraction (UPF) OptoCooler module addresses the latest cooling and temperature control requirements for optoelectronics, electronics, medical, military and aerospace applications. The new module has been optimized for laser diode, LED and advanced sensor products. The UPF OptoCooler removes a maximum of 420 mW of heat at 25°C ambient in an active footprint of only 0.55 mm2. As a result, the module can pump a heat density up to 78 W/cm2. At 85°C, these values increase to 610 mW and 112 W/cm2, respectively. With Nextreme’s thin-film thermal bump technology at its core, the OptoCooler can be integrated directly into electronic and optoelectronic packaging to deliver more than 45°C of cooling for a wide variety of thermal management applications. Nextreme, Durham, NC, www.nextreme.com.

by Dr. Paula Doe, Contributing Editor, Solid-State Technology

Revealing the first details on its CIGS technology, Honda Soltec Co. Ltd. says it’s averaging 11.1% efficiency from its new solar module line. Other leading Japanese photovoltaic suppliers also described technologies for improved efficiencies now starting to move into production, reports SST partner Nikkei Microdevices, from the 17th International Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference in Fukuoka, Japan, in December.

Honda’s solar subsidiary said the key to its relatively high-efficiency volume CIGS thin-film production (see Fig. 1, below) is increasing the selenization temperature to more than 500°C for better crystal quality. This requires low-alkali, high-temperature glass, though it lacks the sodium that typically aids in crystallization. But, it turns out that the auto paint guns in Honda’s new plant are being used to spray a sodium solution on the glass, to add back the Na to enhance the crystallization process. Honda also bypasses Cd issues by replacing the usual CdS buffer layer with InS. The company notes best results from its pilot line are 12.2% efficiency.

The company developed its own PV technology in-house, initially aiming primarily to be able to efficiently generate the energy for making hydrogen to power its fuel cell vehicles, and to power its own factories. In fact, the solar cells have been installed at Honda’s demonstration hydrogen refueling station Los Angeles, and at some of its factories. Residential solar modules also are being marketed in Japan from its new plant in Kumamoto, slated to ramp production to 27.5MW by this spring.

Honda’s CIGS process relies on high temperature selenization, a sodium spray coat, and a buffer of InS. (Source: Honda Soltec, Nikkei Microdevices)

Mitsubishi Electric Corp., meanwhile, reported increasing its polycrystalline silicon cell efficiency to 18% with a cluster of innovations moving into production. It roughs up the surface to cut reflectivity and increase absorption of light by reactive ion etching through a quick and cheap mask layer of a coating of 3μm silica particles in solution that self assemble into the texture pattern. The company also terminates the dangling silicon bonds with hydrogen, and uses an undisclosed new circuit material and modified screens to reduce the size of the circuit lines on the cell surface, reportedly cutting metallization time about in half and reducing shading loss by 40%.

Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd. reported its cells made with its heterojunction with intrinsic thin layer technology (HIT) are now up to 19.7% efficiency in production, and 22.3% in the lab, and said it has developed a 20%-efficient version using 70μm thin wafers. These cells, made with a low-temperature 200°C process, coat a crystalline silicon wafer with thin amorphous silicon layers on both sides, which reportedly improves boundary characteristics and reduces power losses by forming impurity-free i-type silicon layers between the crystalline base and the n- and p-type amorphous silicon layers, while allowing use of thinner wafers. Sanyo said it plans to increase its production from the current 260MW to 650MW by 2010.

The company also noted progress on its thin-film deposition technology, claiming its localized plasma confinement CVD method was now depositing multicrystalline silicon film on 550mm x 650mm substrates at 2nm/sec, with +/-3.3% uniformity. Key was miniaturizing the pyramidal nozzles to create a uniform plasma. Though the company did not disclose efficiencies on the larger substrates, it has previously reported efficiencies of 7.6% in polysilicon films made by the process on smaller substrates.

Sharp Corp. showed off a 1cm2 organic cell rated at 3.8% efficiency by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). Some other organic photovoltaics have reached 5% or so, but only over areas of <e;0.2cm2. The researchers used P3HT (poly (3-hexylthiophone) ) for the p-type semiconductor, PCBH ( [6,6]-phenyl C61 butyric acid methyl ester) for the n-type. Key to the improved performance, they said, was improving the alignment of the P3HT polymer chains.

Sanyo also released the first details of its work on organic solar cells, where it is getting 3.6% efficiencies using small molecules and fullerenes, albeit on tiny 0.033cm2 samples. Though much work on organic photovoltaics has focused on polymers that presumably could be very cheaply applied by wet coating, the Sanyo researchers argued that work in OLED displays had convinced them that small molecules will be the more effective material. It’s using its OLED material DBP (tetra- phenyldibenzoperiflanthene) for the p-type semiconductor and C60 for the n-type.

Sharp claimed a major improvement in a concentrating solar cell system as well, with 40% efficiency in a 1000x concentration system, using a 4.5mm2 InGaPAS heterojunction cell. It said 40% efficiency has previously been reported only up to 200x concentration.

Separately, Tokyo Electron chairman Tetsuro Higashi told Nikkei Microdevices that his company planned to enter the solar equipment business with a thin-film deposition system, rather than the turnkey lines currently supplied by most equipment makers. “The technology is changing so fast now that one really needs to work with the users to understand the product to improve the process,” he said. “We’ll work closely with users to move gradually into the market.” Higashi told NMD that the company “decided to focus first on strengthening our core business before investing in solar, “seeing an opportunity to grow the semiconductor business to catch up with AMAT.” — P.D.

PV suppliers planned capacity update

(Source: Nikkei Microdevices)

Jan. 17, 2008 – Combining two methods for making solar cell materials appears to yield better results than either one alone, according to researchers from the U. of California/Santa Cruz, China, and Mexico who say their nanocomposite thin film doped with nitrogen and sensitized with quantum dots performs “better than predicted.”

The work combines two methods used to engineer solar cell materials: doping thin films of metal oxide nanoparticles (e.g. titanium dioxide, with other elements e.g. nitrogen); and quantum dots, which inject electrons into a metal oxide film to increase its solar energy conversion. Both doping and quantum dot sensitization extend visible light absorption of the metal oxide materials.

The group, led by U.CA/SC prof. Jin Zhang, prepared films with thicknesses of 150-1110nm, with titanium dioxide particles (average size 100nm), doped the lattice with nitrogen atoms, and chemically linked CdSe quantum dots for sensitization. The resulting hybrid material offered nitrogen doping to absorb a broad range of light energy (including energy from the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum), while the quantum dots enhanced visible light absorption and boosted the material’s photocurrent and power conversion.

“We initially thought that the best we might do is get results as good as the sum of the two, and maybe if we didn’t make this right, we’d get something worse,” said Zhang, in a statement. “But surprisingly, these materials were much better.” In fact, the nanocomposite achieved an “incident photon to current conversion efficiency” (IPCE) as much as 3x greater than the sum of the IPCE for materials developed separately with either method (doped with nitrogen or embedded with CdSe quantum dots). Zhang explained that it may be easier for the charge to “hop around” in the nanocomposite material, with the quantum dot sensitizing and the nitrogen doping at the same time.

Next up in the work is optimizing parameters with three materials “that we can play with to make the energy levels just right,” Zhang stated. “What we’re doing is essentially ‘band-gap engineering.’ We’re manipulating the energy levels of the nanocomposite material so the electrons can work more efficiently for electricity generation,” he said. “If our model is correct, we’re making a good case for this kind of strategy.”

The work is being funded by the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation of China, and the U. of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-MEXUS).

ATMI acquires LEVTECH


January 17, 2008

January 15, 2008 — /DANBURY, CT/ — ATMI, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATMI) today announced it has acquired LevTech, Inc., a market-leading provider of disposable mixing technologies to the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, in a $27 million cash transaction. Based in Lexington, KY, LevTech will be combined with ATMI’s existing LifeSciences business focused on single-use bioprocess containers and processes for the biopharmaceutical industry.

“The addition of LevTech’s innovative products, intellectual property, and market share puts ATMI’s LifeSciences business in a preeminent position for single-use manufacturing applications in the biopharmaceutical market,” says Doug Neugold, ATMI CEO. “This transaction is indicative of our intent to focus on providing process efficiency solutions to this market as another source of significant growth for ATMI.”

“ATMI’s experience in single-use flexible process containers is unparalleled,” says Mario Philips, general manager of ATMI LifeSciences. “We’ve supplied the semiconductor industry with ultra-high purity single-use containers since 1987, and, since 1999, growing customer demand has led us to extend our expertise to the biopharmaceutical industry. This acquisition supports our strategy to become the global leader in comprehensive disposable systems for the biopharmaceutical industry with a broad range of proprietary disposable storage, mixing, and bioreactor technologies.”

“LevTech has successfully developed proprietary mixing technologies to enable critical processes in the fast-emerging single-use biopharmaceutical manufacturing market,” says Jeffery Craig, LevTech chairman. “We have secured a leading global position by providing our customers with validated and sustainable cost, capacity, contamination, and time-to-market advantages. Combining LevTech’s patent-protected biomanufacturing products with ATMI’s ultra-clean technology experience, single-use container manufacturing capacity, and global infrastructure will create what we believe will be the worldwide market leader in the single-use bioprocessing arena.”

“We expect this deal to be accretive by late 2008 as expected revenue growth and operating synergies offset anticipated intangible asset amortization and lower interest income,” says Tim Carlson, ATMI chief financial officer. “We expect slight near-term EPS dilution of $0.01 – $0.02 per quarter as we integrate the acquisition during the year.”

About LevTech

LevTech, Inc., formed in 2000, is an established leader in the fast-growing disposable mixing technologies for the biopharmaceutical industry. Its products deliver up to a twenty-to-one economic benefit for its customers. Privately held, LevTech is based in Lexington, KY.

Visit www.levtech.net

About ATMI

ATMI strives to be the source of process efficiency for its global customers, with a strong history of providing specialty materials and high-purity materials handling and delivery solutions to the worldwide semiconductor and display industries that do just this. For more information, please visit atmi.com.

ATMI recently established a product line under an ATMI LifeSciences banner focused on biopharmaceutical applications with flexible, film-based packaging products ranging from single-use mixing and storage vessels to ultraclean sterile containers. ATMI LifeSciences is a source of process efficiency to its biopharmaceutical customers, providing single-use smart processing and packaging technology solutions that maximize product integrity while optimizing manufacturing cost.

Visit www.atmi-lifesciences.com

PTC selected the V93000 Pin Scale solution for its single, scalable platform and strong installed base in outsourced semiconductor assembly and test companies (OSATs), as well as for Verigy’s reputation and heritage in semiconductor test.

(January 15, 2008) CAMBRIDGE, MA — Engineers at MIT are developing a tiny sensor that could be used to detect minute quantities of hazardous gases — including toxic industrial chemicals and chemical warfare agents — much more quickly than current devices, says the MIT news office. The researchers have taken the common techniques of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and shrunk the sensors to fit in a device the size of a computer mouse. Eventually, the team, led by MIT Professor Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande, plans to build a detector about the size of a matchbox.

January 13, 2008 — Engineers at MIT are developing a tiny sensor that could be used to detect minute quantities of hazardous gases, including toxic industrial chemicals and chemical warfare agents, much more quickly than current devices.

The researchers have taken the common techniques of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry and shrunk them to fit in a device the size of a computer mouse. Eventually, the team, led by MIT Professor Akintunde Ibitayo Akinwande, plans to build a detector about the size of a matchbox.

“Everything we’re doing has been done on a macro scale. We are just scaling it down,” said Akinwande, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science and member of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL).

Akinwande and MIT research scientist Luis Velasquez-Garcia plan to present their work at the MEMS 2008 conference Jan. 13-17 in Arizona. In December, they presented at the International Electronic Devices Meeting.

Scaling down gas detectors makes them much easier to use in a real-world environment, where they could be dispersed in a building or outdoor area. Making the devices small also reduces the amount of power they consume and enhances their sensitivity to trace amounts of gases, Akinwande said.

He is leading an international team that includes scientists from the University of Cambridge, the University of Texas at Dallas, Clean Earth Technology and Raytheon, as well as MIT.

Their detector uses gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to identify gas molecules by their telltale electronic signatures. Current versions of portable GC-MS machines, which take about 15 minutes to produce results, are around 40,000 cubic centimeters, about the size of a full paper grocery bag, and use 10,000 joules of energy.

The new, smaller version consumes about four joules and produces results in about four seconds.

The device, which the researchers plan to have completed within two years, could be used to help protect water supplies or for medical diagnostics, as well as to detect hazardous gases in the air.

The analyzer works by breaking gas molecules into ionized fragments, which can be detected by their specific charge (ratio of charge to molecular weight).

Gas molecules are broken apart either by stripping electrons off the molecules, or by bombarding them with electrons stripped from carbon nanotubes. The fragments are then sent through a long, narrow electric field. At the end of the field, the ions’ charges are converted to voltage and measured by an electrometer, yielding the molecules’ distinctive electronic signature.

Shrinking the device greatly reduces the energy needed to power it, in part because much of the energy is dedicated to creating a vacuum in the chamber where the electric field is located.

Another advantage of the small size is that smaller systems can be precisely built using microfabrication. Also, batch-fabrication will allow the detectors to be produced inexpensively.

The research, which started three years ago, is funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass.