Category Archives: Semiconductors

(Reuters) – SunEdison Inc said it would spin off its semiconductor business in an initial public offering and use the proceeds to build solar farms.

Shares of the company, formerly known as MEMC Electronic Materials, jumped 23 percent in morning trade on Thursday, their steepest rise in one year. SunEdison said it plans to sell a minority stake in the newly formed SunEdison Semiconductor to the public in the offering, which is scheduled for early 2014. A SunEdison spokeswoman declined to comment on what the IPO might raise, but re-iterated the company’s commitment to its solar business, which designs, installs and maintains solar power plants.

"We’ve been very clear that we see solar as a strong growth opportunity," said Dawn Brister.

"SunEdison is justified in narrowing its focus to the solar industry given the strong spurt in demand, particularly in terms of installed capacity," RBC Capital Markets analyst Mahesh Sanganeria said.

Several solar companies, such as SunPower Corp and First Solar Inc, have moved into the higher margin business of developing solar farms as solar panel prices continue to remain weak.

Global installations are expected grow at a double-digit rate to 35 gigawatt (GW) in 2013, according to business information provider IHS.

SunEdison ended the second quarter with a project pipeline of 2.9 GW, up 218 megawatt from the first quarter. The company, which changed its name from MEMC Electronic Materials in May, reports results under two units: semiconductor materials and solar energy.

The semiconductor materials business, which makes wafers used in chips for computers, mobile phones and cars, accounted for a third of second-quarter revenue of $401 million. SunEdison earlier this month reported a wider-than-expected quarterly loss and said its semiconductor business would remain weak due to a slump in the wafer market.

A bulk of the company’s revenue comes from its solar energy business, SunEdison expects to file a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the third quarter of 2013, the company said on Thursday.

(Reporting by Swetha Gopinath in Bangalore; Editing by Kirti Pandey and Saumyadeb Chakrabarty

One of the most promising types of solar cells has a few drawbacks. A scientist at Michigan Technological University may have overcome one of them.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are thin, flexible, easy to make and very good at turning sunshine into electricity. However, a key ingredient is one of the most expensive metals on the planet: platinum. While only small amounts are needed, at $1,500 an ounce, the cost of the silvery metal is still significant.

Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Carroll McArthur Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, has developed a new, inexpensive material that could replace the platinum in solar cells without degrading their efficiency: 3D graphene.

Read more: Graphene nanoscrolls are formed by decoration of magnetic nanoparticles

Regular graphene is a famously two-dimensional form of carbon just a molecule or so thick. Hu and his team invented a novel approach to synthesize a unique 3D version with a honeycomb-like structure. To do so, they combined lithium oxide with carbon monoxide in a chemical reaction that forms lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) and the honeycomb graphene. The Li2CO3 helps shape the graphene sheets and isolates them from each other, preventing the formation of garden-variety graphite.  Furthermore, the Li2CO3 particles can be easily removed from 3D honeycomb-structured graphene by an acid.

The researchers determined that the 3D honeycomb graphene had excellent conductivity and high catalytic activity, raising the possibility that it could be used for energy storage and conversion. So they replaced the platinum counter electrode in a dye-sensitized solar cell with one made of the 3D honeycomb graphene. Then they put the solar cell in the sunshine and measured its output.

The cell with the 3D graphene counter electrode converted 7.8 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity, nearly as much as the conventional solar cell using costly platinum (8 percent).

Synthesizing the 3D honeycomb graphene is neither expensive nor difficult, said Hu, and making it into a counter electrode posed no special challenges.

The research has been funded by the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund (PRF-51799-ND10) and the National Science Foundation (NSF-CBET-0931587). The article describing the work, “3D Honeycomb-Like Structured Graphene and Its High Efficiency as a Counter-Electrode Catalyst for Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells,” coauthored by Hu, Michigan Tech graduate student Hui Wang, Franklin Tao of the University of Notre Dame, Dario J. Stacchiola of Brookhaven National Laboratory and Kai Sun of the University of Michigan, was published online July 29 in the journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.

Printed electronics refers to a process in which printing technology is used to produce various kinds of electronics goods, such as electronic circuits, sensors and devices. Printed electronics is emerging as a technology that will replace traditional photolithography, which requires costly materials, complex processes and expensive equipment, for the production of simple circuits or electronics components. In addition, printing technology allows patterning a desired substance on a specific location without complex processes. 

According to the “Emerging Displays Report – Printed Electronics Technology – 2013” report, published by IHS, the applied market for printed electronics is forecast to gradually grow after 2015. The total applied market created by printed electronics technology is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47 percent to $24.3 billion by 2020 from $3.3 billion in 2013.

The global printed electronics market is expected to grow in sync with the opening of the flexible display market. Currently, the technology is commercially applied to touch panel sensors and FPCBs, which have relatively low entry barriers. With partial application to RFIDs, smart tags, LCDs and OLEDs, the technology will gradually expand its application to the fabrication of flexible displays and thin film photovoltaics.

The ability to control nanoscale imperfections in superconducting wires results in materials with unparalleled and customized performance, according to a new study from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Applications for superconducting wires, which carry electricity without resistance when cooled to a critical temperature, include underground transmission cables, transformers and large-scale motors and generators. But these applications require wires to operate under different temperature and magnetic field regimes. 

This figure shows the critical current, Ic, and engineering critical current density, JE, in a superconducting wire as a function of applied magnetic field orientation at 65 Kelvin and 3 Tesla. The top curve shows results from a newly published ORNL study. The other two curves are from previously reported record values. A minimum JE of 43.7 kiloamperes/cm2 (assuming a 50 micron thick stabilizer layer) and a minimum Ic of 455 Amperes/cm was obtained for all applied field orientations. This is the highest reported performance for a superconductor wire or a film on a technical substrate.

A team led by ORNL’s Amit Goyal demonstrated that superconducting wires can be tuned to match different operating conditions by introducing small amounts of non-superconducting material that influences how the overall material behaves. Manipulating these nanoscale columns — also known as defects — allows researchers to exert control over the forces that regulate the wires’ superconducting performance. The team’s findings are published in Nature Publishing Group’s Scientific Reports.

“Not only can we introduce these nanocolumn defects within the superconductor and get enhanced performance, but we can optimize the performance for different application regimes by modifying the defect spacing and density,” Goyal said.

A wire sample grown with this process exhibited unprecedented performance in terms of engineering critical current density, which measures the amount of current the wire can carry per unit cross-sectional area. This metric more accurately reflects the real-world capabilities of the material because it takes into account the wire’s non-superconducting components such as the substrate and the buffer and stabilizer layers, Goyal said.

“We report a record performance at 65 Kelvin and 3 Tesla, where most rotating machinery applications like motors and generators are slated to operate,” he said.

The paper reports a minimum engineering critical current density at all applied magnetic field orientations of 43.7 kiloamperes/cm2, which is more than twice the performance level needed for most applications. This metric assumes the presence of a 50-micron-thick copper stabilizer layer required in applications.

Generating defects in the superconductor is accomplished through an ORNL-developed self-assembly process, which enables researchers to design a material that automatically develops the desired nanoscale microstructure during growth.

The mechanism behind this process, which adds very little to the production cost, was the subject of a recently published study by a team led by Goyal in Advanced Functional Materials.

“When you’re making the wires, you can dial-in the properties because the defects self-assemble,” Goyal said. “You change the composition of the superconductor when you’re depositing the tape.”

Goyal, who has collaborated with multiple superconducting technology companies, hopes the private sector will incorporate the team’s findings to improve upon existing products and generate new applications.

The study is published as “Engineering nanocolumnar defect configurations for optimized vortex pinning in high temperature superconducting nanocomposite wires.” Co-authors are ORNL’s Sung Hun Wee and Claudia Cantoni and the University of Tennessee’s Yuri Zuev.

The research was sponsored by DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. The research was supported by ORNL’s Shared Research Equipment (ShaRE) User Program, which is sponsored by DOE’s Office of Science.

 

New research shows that a class of materials being eyed for the next generation of computers behaves asymmetrically at the sub-atomic level. This research is a key step toward understanding the topological insulators that may have the potential to be the building blocks of a super-fast quantum computer that could run on almost no electricity.

Scientists from the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory contributed first-principles calculations and co-authored the paper “Mapping the Orbital Wavefunction of the Surface States in 3-D Topological Insulators,” which appears in the current issue of Nature Physics. A topological insulator is a material that behaves as an insulator in its interior but whose surface contains conducting states.

In the paper, researchers explain how the materials act differently above and below the Dirac point and how the orbital and spin texture of topological insulator states switched exactly at the Dirac point. The Dirac point refers to the place where two conical forms – one representing energy, the other momentum – come together at a point. In the case of topological insulators, the orbital and spin textures of the sub-atomic particles switch precisely at the Dirac point. The phenomenon occurs because of the relationship between electrons and their holes in a semiconductor.

This research is a key step toward understanding the topological insulators like bismuth selenide (Bi2Se3), bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3), antimony telluride (Sb2Te3), and mercury telluride (HgTe) that may have the potential to be the building blocks of a quantum computer, a machine with the potential of loading the information from a data center into the space of a laptop and processing data much faster than today’s best supercomputers.

“The energy efficiency should be much better,” said NREL Scientist Jun-Wei Luo, one of the co-authors. Instead of being confined to the on-and-off switches of the binary code, a quantum computer will act more like the human brain, seeing something but imagining much more, he said. “This is entirely different technology.”

Topological Insulators are of great interest currently for their potential to use their exotic properties to transmit information on electron spins with virtually no expenditure of electricity, said Luo. NREL’s Xiuwen Zhang is another co-author as are scientists from University of Colorado, Rutgers University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Colorado School of Mines. Luo and Zhang work in NREL’s Center for Inverse Design, one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers established around the nation by the Energy Department’s Office of Science in 2009 to accelerate basic research on energy.

The finding of orbital texture switch at Dirac point implies the novel backwards spin texture — right-handed instead of left-handed, in the short-hand of physicists — comes from the coupling of spin texture to the orbital texture for the conserved quantity is total angular momentum of the wave function, not spin. The new findings, supported partly by observations taken at the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, were surprising and bolster the potential of the topological insulators.

“In this paper, we computed and measured the profile of the topological states and found that the orbital texture of topological states switches from tangential to radial across the Dirac point,” Zhang said. Equally surprising, they found that phenomenon wasn’t a function of a unique material, but was common to all topological insulators.

The topological insulators probably won’t be practical for solar cells, because at the surface they contain no band gap. A band gap – the gap between when a material is in a conducting state and an inert state – is essential for solar cells to free photons and have them turn into energy carrying electrons.

But the topological insulators could be very useful for other kinds of electronics-spintronics. The electrons of topological insulators will self-polarize at opposite device edges. “We usually drive the electron in a particular direction to spatially separate the spin-up and spin-down electrons, but this exotic property suggests that electrons as a group don’t have to move,” Luo said. “The initial idea is we don’t need any current to polarize the electron spins. We may be able to develop a spin quantum computer and spin quantum computations.”

In theory, an entire data center could operate with virtually no electricity. “That’s probably more in theory than reality,” Luo said, noting that other components of the center likely would still need electricity. “But it would be far more energy efficient.” And the steep drop in electricity would also mean a steep drop in the number of coolers and fans needed to cool things down.

Luo cautioned that this is still basic science. The findings may have limited application to renewable energy, but Luo noted that another of NREL’s key missions is energy efficiency.

NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for the Energy Department by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

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Researchers at Umeå University, together with researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University, show in a new study how nitrogen-doped graphene can be rolled into perfect Archimedean nano scrolls by adhering magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles on the surface of the graphene sheets. The new material may have very good properties for application as electrodes in for example Li-ion batteries.

Read more: Graphene sees explosive demand in a variety of industries

Graphene is one of the most interesting materials for future applications in everything from high performance electronics, optical components to flexible and strong materials. Ordinary graphene consists of carbon sheets that are single or few atomic layers thick.

graphene nanoscrolls

In the study the researchers have modified the graphene by replacing some of the carbon atoms by nitrogen atoms. By this method they obtain anchoring sites for the iron oxide nanoparticles that are decorated onto the graphene sheets in a solution process. In the decoration process one can control the type of iron oxide nanoparticles that are formed on the graphene surface, so that they either form so called hematite (the reddish form of iron oxide that often is found in nature) or maghemite, a less stable and more magnetic form of iron oxide.

“Interestingly we observed that when the graphene is decorated by maghemite, the graphene sheets spontaneously start to roll into perfect Archimedean nano scrolls, while when decorated by the less magnetic hematite nanoparticles the graphene remain as open sheets, says Thomas Wågberg, Senior lecturer at the Department of Physics at Umeå University.

The nanoscrolls can be visualized as traditional “Swiss rolls” where the sponge-cake represents the graphene, and the creamy filling is the iron oxide nanoparticles. The graphene nanoscrolls are however around one million times thinner.

The results that now have been published in Nature Communications are conceptually interesting for several reasons. It shows that the magnetic interaction between the iron oxide nanoparticles is one of the main effects behind the scroll formation. It also shows that the nitrogen defects in the graphene lattice are necessary for both stabilizing a sufficiently high number of maghemite nanoparticles, and also responsible for “buckling” the graphene sheets and thereby lowering the formation energy of the nanoscrolls.

The process is extraordinary efficient. Almost 100 percent of the graphene sheets are scrolled. After the decoration with maghemite particles the research team could not find any open graphene sheets.

Moreover, they showed that by removing the iron oxide nanoparticles by acid treatment the nanoscrolls again open up and go back to single graphene sheets

“Besides adding valuable fundamental understanding in the physics and chemistry of graphene, nitrogen-doping and nanoparticles we have reasons to believe that the iron oxide decorated nitrogen doped graphene nanoscrolls have very good properties for application as electrodes in for example Li-ion batteries, one of the most important batteries in daily life electronics, “ says Thomas Wågberg.

The study has been conducted within the “The artificial leaf” project which is funded by Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation to physicist, chemists, and plant science researchers at Umeå University.

Bruker Corporation today announced the appointment of Thomas Bachmann as the new president of its Bruker BioSpin Group. Bachmann most recently served as CEO of Tecan Group in Switzerland, a global provider of complex laboratory instrumentation and integrated liquid-handling workflow solutions for life science research and diagnostics.

The Bruker BioSpin Group is the global market and technology leader in analytical and preclinical magnetic resonance instrumentation, with major operations in Germany, Switzerland, France and the United States, as well as numerous applications and customer service centers around the world. The Bruker BioSpin Group operates in two divisions:

  • Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy (MRS) division, consisting of the three business units nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) and compact magnetic resonance (CMR)
  • Preclinical Imaging (PCI) division, consisting of the preclinical imaging product lines magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), magnetic particle imaging (MPI), X-ray micro-CT, as well as optical and PET/SPECT/CT molecular imaging.

“I am very pleased to welcome Thomas Bachmann to Bruker,” said Frank Laukien, Bruker’s president and CEO. “His life-science background and his broad management experience will allow him to lead our excellent BioSpin management team in order to further accelerate our innovation, profitable growth and operational excellence initiatives. Thomas will be a valuable addition for all of Bruker due to his diversified industrial experience, his global customer and operations exposure, and his successful track record.”

“I am delighted to join Bruker, and together with an experienced management team I look forward to further developing the Bruker BioSpin Group,” Bachmann said.

Thomas Bachmann brings over twenty-five years of global experience in sales and marketing, in leading and transforming complex businesses, as well as in strategy and business development to his new role as Bruker BioSpin Group President, including experience as a CEO of two publicly traded companies. From 2005 until 2012, Bachmann served as CEO of Tecan Group, where he increased operational effectiveness, expanded into new businesses, developed emerging markets, created a solid organization, established regulatory competence and compliance, grew profitability and built a strong balance sheet. From 2002 until 2004, he was CEO of the Arbonia-Forster Group’s Steel Systems Business, a global provider of building supplies. From 1985 until 2002, Bachmann served in various roles as global Sales and Marketing Director, Business Unit Director and Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Rieter Holding, a global provider of textile machinery and plants, as well as an automotive supplier of acoustic- and thermal insulation systems. Bachmann holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an Executive MBA from IMD Business School in Switzerland.

Applied Materials, Inc. announced today that its board of directors has appointed Gary E. Dickerson as president and chief executive officer and Michael R. Splinter as executive chairman of the board of directors, effective September 1, 2013. Dickerson also was elected a member of the board of directors, effective at the same time. Dickerson is currently president of Applied Materials and succeeds Splinter who has served as the company’s CEO since 2003.

Applied Materials’ Mike Splinter (L) will become executive chairman of the Board of Directors and Gary Dickerson (R) will become president and CEO and a member of the board of directors, effective Sept. 1, 2013. Dickerson has served as president since June 2012 and was previously CEO of Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc., which was acquired by Applied Materials in 2011.  Splinter has been CEO since 2003.

"As president, Gary has proved to be an outstanding leader and partner, focusing Applied on new strategies for profitable growth through our unmatched strength in precision materials engineering," said Mike Splinter.  "I welcome him to the Board and have every confidence that his vision and personal drive will translate into remarkable success in leading Applied Materials as our next CEO."

"Today, Applied Materials enjoys a stronger foundation than ever before on which to build momentum for growth," said Gary Dickerson.  "We have better and broader technology, very deep talent and the passion to drive the materials innovation that will provide the device performance and yield solutions our customers need to advance and win.  Our opportunities have never been greater and I am grateful to Mike and the board for the privilege to lead Applied into a new era of growth and success."

A long-time industry leader, Gary Dickerson, 56, has a demonstrated track record of delivering growth in revenue and profits while achieving recognition for outstanding customer satisfaction and gaining market share. Dickerson served for seven years as CEO of Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates, Inc. until its acquisition by Applied Materials in 2011 and spent 18 years at KLA-Tencor Corporation where he held a variety of operations and product development roles before serving as president and chief operating officer.  He earned a BS degree in Engineering Management from the University of Missouri, Rolla and an MBA from the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Mike Splinter, 62, was named president and chief executive officer of Applied Materials and a member of its board of directors in 2003, and became chairman of the board in 2009. Splinter is a 40-year veteran of the semiconductor industry and has led Applied to record revenue and profits during his tenure as CEO. This fall, he will receive the Semiconductor Industry Association’s 2013 Robert N. Noyce Award for his outstanding achievements and leadership in support of the semiconductor industry.

Read more: Applied Materials CEO receives 2013 SIA Robert N. Noyce Award

The market for semiconductors used in industrial electronics applications relished a better-than-expected first quarter as macroeconomic headwinds turned out to be less severe than initially feared, according to the latest Industrial Electronics report from information and analytics provider IHS.

Worldwide industrial electronics chip revenue in the first quarter reached $7.71 billion, up 1 percent from $7.63 billion in the final quarter of 2012. Although the uptick seemed modest, the increase marked a turnaround from the three percent decline in the fourth quarter. It also represents a major improvement compared to the 3 percent contraction of the market a year ago in the first quarter of 2011, as shown in the figure below.

 

“The industrial semiconductor market’s performance was encouraging, especially in light of continuing global economic uncertainty and the seasonal nature of the market, which typically sees slower movement in the first quarter of every year,” said Robbie Galoso, principal analyst for electronics at IHS. “Some large segments of the industry, particularly avionics and oil and gas process-automation equipment, saw muscular double-digit gains, helping to drive up overall revenue.”

In another positive development, several large industrial semiconductor suppliers also reported very lean inventories because of strong orders from customers. Infineon Technologies of Germany, Analog Devices of Massachusetts, and Dallas-based Texas Instruments all posted a sequential decline in industrial chip stockpiles as their days of inventory (DOI) measure fell well below average. Infineon achieved higher sales from increased volume in isolated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) chips; Analog Devices was strong in factory automation and medical instrumentation; and Texas Instruments saw growth in its analog products.

Other companies reporting sound increases during the period were Xilinx of California for its test and measurement, military aerospace and medical product lines; and Microsemi, also from California, which likewise enjoyed expansion in medical electronics along with broad-based growth for the period.

Europe’s woes inhibit industry, but China counters with growth

However, the industry was not without its challenges, with the Eurozone crisis causing the most havoc.

Read more: Regional developments to affect the growth of semiconductor industry

“The financial troubles on the continent, particularly in Greece, Italy and Spain, had the effect of stifling growth as a whole, especially in the commercial market for building and home control,” Galoso said. “As a result, the individual sectors for lighting, security, climate control and medical imaging were deleteriously impacted in the first quarter, compared to positive performance for those areas in the fourth quarter of 2012.

In contrast to Europe’s woes was China, which displayed growth momentum and much-improved demand across a number of industrial end markets. Manufacturers like Siemens of Germany, Philips of the Netherlands, Swiss-based ABB and Schneider Electric of France said their first-quarter sales in China improved from the earlier quarter.

In the rare earth industrial sector, however, China’s hold on the market loosened as rare earth prices started going south this year. China had a more than 90 percent monopoly on rare earth elements in the past, but new sources in Australia, the United States, Brazil, Canada and South Africa have opened up the market, decreasing dependence on China.

Products that incorporate rare earth materials include wind turbines, rechargeable batteries for electric vehicles and defense applications, including jet-fighter engines, missile guidance systems, and space satellites and communications systems.

Aerospace flies high; oil and gas equipment is also a winner

The military and civil aerospace market had the most robust performance among all industrial semiconductor segments in the first quarter. Avionics was especially vigorous, driven by commercial aircraft sales from pan-European entity EADS Airbus and U.S. maker Boeing, up 9 percent and 14 percent, respectively, on the quarter.

The oil and gas exploration market also saw solid revenue growth, with strong subsea systems and drilling equipment driving sales for ABB, Honeywell and GE.

In contrast to those high-performing segments, lackluster sales were reported in the markets for building and home control, for energy generation and distribution, and for test and measurement. One other market, manufacturing and process automation, reported stable growth, even though its sector for motor drives remained in negative territory.

Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Volterra Semiconductor Corp. for $23 per share, which represents a 55 percent premium to Volterra Semiconductor’s closing share price on August 14, 2013. The transaction value is approximately $605 million equity value or $450 million net of Volterra’s cash position of approximately $155 million.

Volterra is a provider in high-current, high-performance, and high-density power management solutions. The company develops highly integrated solutions primarily for the enterprise, cloud computing, communications, and networking markets. Volterra’s portfolio of highly integrated products enables better performance, smaller form factors, enhanced scalability, improved system management, and lower total cost of ownership.

"Maxim Integrated is known for its highly integrated solutions. With Volterra, we will strengthen our position in the enterprise and communications markets," said Tunç Doluca, Maxim’s president and chief executive officer. "We add a very talented team and leading-edge proprietary technology in high-current power management solutions, which further diversifies our business model."

"This is an attractive transaction for our employees, customers, and investors," said Jeffrey Staszak, Volterra’s president and chief executive officer. "The Volterra team will build upon Maxim’s scale and market leadership to expand our ability to deliver innovative and differentiated products to our customers.”

At $9 billion, power management is currently the largest and fastest-growing product segment in the analog market, according to Databeans. Maxim offers a broad portfolio of products for power conversion: switching regulators, linear regulators, charge pumps, digital Point-of-Load (POL) converters, and Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs), primarily in medium-to-low current applications.

Pending regulatory approvals, Maxim’s acquisition of Volterra is expected to close early in the December quarter.