Category Archives: Semiconductors

Photoresists are primarily used in the electronics industry and in high demand from the semiconductor and liquid crystal display (LCD) sectors where photolithography is a main manufacturing process. Photolithography is a very important process during chip fabrication and makes up a large portion of production costs. Although it varies depending on semiconductor types, the photolithography process generally accounts for 30 percent of memory chip manufacturing costs and 60 percent of total production time.

Read more: Price erosion accelerates for LCD TV open call panels in Q3

Reflecting the trend toward microfabrication in the semiconductor industry, photoresists have emerged as core materials. Organic photosensitive material producers, which have been participating in the industry from the beginning, are leading the development of photoresists. Those companies include JSR Corp., Tokyo Ohka Kogyo Co. Ltd. (TOK), Dow Chemical Co. (formerly Rohm and Haas Co.), Shin-Etsu Chemical Co. Ltd., Sumitomo Chemical, and AZ Electronic Materials (AZEM). All major photoresist suppliers run their businesses in South Korea where the world’s top LCD and semiconductor manufacturers are based. In particular, most of major photoresist companies make every effort to supply their products to Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., as it could serve as a guarantee of product quality. Samsung has the most advanced semiconductor fabrication processes in the sector.

Read more: How Samsung is climbing the charts

The consumption of photoresists by the South Korean semiconductor industry was estimated at $240 million in 2012, down from 2011 in value due to a drop in shipment volume, and it will decline further to $220 million in 2013. With the prospective adoption of high-end extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photoresist in 2014, the photoresist market is expected to post an annual growth of more than five percent in value going forward, despite a minimal volume growth.

Read more: Gigaphoton successfully achieved two hour continuous operation of its EUV light source

The number of wafer inputs into semiconductor fab lines has barely changed since the industry is increasingly adopting microfabrication process. Despite anemic growth in photoresist demand compared with the chip output increase, the rising portion of high-end ArF resists will push the photoresist market higher in terms of value. 

photoresist demand

The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2), a global semiconductor standards consortium, announced today that it has appointed John Ellis as vice president of Engineering and officer of Si2. He will be responsible for managing the technical strategy and direction for all semiconductor / EDA standardization projects created and managed at Si2. He will also directly manage Si2’s engineering staff to provide program management, training and documentation, software development, and infrastructure support.

John replaces Dr. Sumit DasGupta, who held the position since 2002 and retired on June 30th.

John has more than 25 years of experience leading diverse research and development programs spanning multiple industries. For over a decade, he served the semiconductor industry at SEMI, a global trade association for the semiconductor industry, where as VP of Technology he was responsible for semiconductor, photovoltaic, and flat-panel display manufacturing standards as well as coordination of industry initiatives such as e-Diagnostics and 450mm wafer size economic analyses. Prior to joining SEMI, John worked at Sandia National Labs on R&D projects for the Department of Energy, Department of Defense, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and other federal agencies. His broad experience includes nuclear weapons testing, missile guidance, air-borne and space-borne imaging systems, Internet and IC security, MEMS, and semiconductor manufacturing.

“John’s domain knowledge in semiconductor technology and software development, coupled with his extensive experience managing a large international staff to lead the development of important industry standards at SEMI, make him an excellent fit to lead engineering for Si2,” said Steve Schulz, President and CEO. “John received strong support from industry leaders on Si2’s Board of Directors, following many hours of rigorous interviewing and assessment. I look forward to John’s unique contributions in the months and years ahead that will further Si2’s mission and future success.”

Sono-Tek Corporation, a global ultrasonic spray technology company, announces a just completed expansion of their laboratory testing facility, located at their corporate headquarters in Milton, NY. The recent acquisition of new equipment, including an SEM microscope for on-site analysis of coatings performed in the lab, led to some reorganization and physical expansion of the facility itself, in order to provide a better workflow for customers and visitors, in addition to some increased elbow room.

sono-tek expands testing facility

The new equipment now installed, in particular the SEM microscope, enables Sono-Tek to gauge process variables by providing immediate on-site analysis of coatings requiring very precise deposition characteristics, such as photoresist onto MEMs, fuel cell coatings, medical implantable device coatings and other nanomaterial coatings. In addition, a new corona surface treatment has been installed, to better prepare substrates for improved surface tension characteristics prior to coating. Acquisition of at least one more surface treatment tool is planned as well.

Located in the heart of the Hudson Valley, Sono-Tek is pleased to help bring these high tech applications for precision semiconductor and advanced energy close to home.

"Access to equipment such as this new SEM is beneficial not only to Sono-Tek customers, but to the surrounding community of colleges and other research institutions in New York for advancing research and manufacturing of future innovations in our area," said Steve Harshbarger, Sono-Tek’s President. "We envision our lab continuing to grow in the coming years, as new applications for ultrasonic spray coating continue to develop."

 

Primoceler, a microfabrication company specializing in laser micro welding and scribing of transparent materials, has developed the first sapphire-to-sapphire welding process.

“At Primoceler, we constantly expand technological boundaries,” said Ville Hevonkorpi, Primoceler’s managing director. “We were the first to weld glass to glass, glass to silicon and now sapphire to sapphire. Sapphire-to-sapphire welding is even more difficult than glass-to-glass welding, and no one has been able to do it before.”

Sapphire’s cost-effectiveness, durability, high melting point, chemical inertness, transparency and capacity for optical transmission in visible, ultra-violet and near-infrared light make it a highly desirable material in several industries. For example, because of the material’s resistance to heat and chemical erosion, sapphire substrates are currently used in the manufacturing of many LEDs for mobile handsets, televisions, automobile headlights and general lighting. “Now that we have developed this totally new technology, we’re anticipating that it will open new possibilities for industries, just as our glass-glass welding technology did,” said Hevonkorpi.

Hevonkorpi was referring to one of Primoceler’s previous innovations, a laser micro welding methodology that produced an extremely small heat-affected zone (HAZ), expanding the potential for packaging fragile components, including under or inside glass, which had been a challenge for manufacturers. “We recently learned the benefits of glass to welding glass in medical devices,” he continued. “As glass is transparent to infrared light and radio frequency waves, it makes new kind of implants possible. Also glass is highly bio-compatible and so better for patients.”

Sapphire has also yielded a great deal of benefits for medical devices. As an optical material, its durability is second only to diamond, which, in addition to the fact that it is chemically inert and non-thrombogenic (will not cause blood clots), makes it an excellent material for surgical tools, implants, braces as well as endoscopes and laser windows.

“Sapphire is widely used in sensors, different types of lenses and other devices, so there is a range of potential for this new technology,” said Hevonkorpi. “Companies that use sapphire for their products will come to us with ideas of how sapphire-to-sapphire welding technology can benefit them. We always welcome customers to challenge us and test their products.”

The machine that Primoceler developed for the new process is somewhat similar to the laser-based welding machine previously created to produce a small HAZ. The new machine contains a fiber laser unit specially optimized for the welding process by Corelase and also features software and components developed in-house.

Rolith, Inc., a developer of advanced nanostructured devices, yesterday announced the successful demonstration of Transparent Metal Grid Electrode technology based on its disruptive nanolithography method (Rolling Mask Lithography – RMLTM).

Read more: Researchers extend thermal nanolithography process

We see an explosive growth of touch screen displays in consumer electronics market. ITO (Indium Titanium Oxide) material is a standard solution for transparent electrodes so far. Apart from a considerable cost and limited supply of this material, it has additional problems: high reflectance of this materials reduces contrast ratio, optical properties degrade rapidly below 50 Ω/☐, which limits the size of display produced using ITO without degradation of performance.

The only viable alternative to ITO (and the only solution for large touchscreen displays) is a metal wire grid. The requirement for a metal wire grid to be invisible to human eye means that width of the wire should be < 2 micron. Moreover, narrow wires are helpful to fight Moiré effects, which caused by superposition of the metal wire grid and the pixel structure of a display.

Rolith, Inc. has used its proprietary nanolithography technology called Rolling Mask Lithography (RMLTM) for fabrication of transparent metal wire grid electrodes on large areas of substrate materials. RML is based on near-field continuous optical lithography, which is implemented using cylindrical phase masks.

Transparent metal electrodes on glass substrates were fabricated in the form of submicron width nanowires, lithographically placed in a regular 2-dimentional grid pattern with a period of tens of microns, and thickness of a few hundreds of nanometers. Such metal structure is evaluated as completely invisible to the human eye, highly transparent (>94 percent transmission) with a very low haze (~two percent), and low resistivity (<14 Ohm/☐). This set of parameters places Rolith technology above all major competition for ITO-alternative technologies.

Gen-2 RML tool capable of patterning substrates up to 1 m long and built earlier this year has been used to demonstrate this technology.

Read more: ITO film market undergoing a sea of changes

“Rolith has launched Transparent Metal Grid Electrodes application development just few months ago, and we are very excited with the extraordinary results already achieved. We believe RMLTM technology will enable high quality cost effective touch screen sensors for mobile devices and large format displays, monitors and TVs. Currently Rolith is negotiating partnerships with a few touch screen display manufacturers and hope to move fast with commercialization of our technology next year. Our roadmap also calls for expansion into OLED lighting and flexible substrates in 2014-2015,” said Dr Boris Kobrin, founder and CEO, Rolith.

 

Worldwide microprocessor sales are on pace to reach a record-high $61.0 billion in 2013 mostly due to strong demand for tablet computers and cellphones that connect to the Internet, but the ongoing slump in standard personal computers-including notebook PCs-is once again dragging down overall MPU growth this year.  Total microprocessor sales are now expected to increase eight percent in 2013 after rising just two percent in 2012, according to a new forecast in IC Insights’ Mid-Year Update of The McClean Report 2013.

IC Insights’ mid-year forecast trims the marketshare of x86 microprocessors primarily sold by Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices for PCs and servers to 56 percent  of total MPU sales in 2013 compared to the previous estimate of 58 percent.  Figure 1 shows embedded microprocessors are now expected to account for 11 percent of MPU sales in 2013 (versus nine percent previously), while tablet processors are projected to be six percent of the total (compared to five percent in the original January forecast).  The new forecast keeps cellphone application processors at 26 percent of total MPU sales in 2013 but lowers the marketshare of non-x86 central processing units (CPUs) in computers outside of tablets to one percent (from two percent previously).

The proliferation of multimedia cellphones and the surge in popularity of touch-screen tablet computers are fueling strong double-digit growth rates of MPU sales and unit shipments in these two systems categories. The vast majority of these systems are built with mobile processors based on 32-bit CPU architectures licensed from ARM in the U.K.  Many MPU suppliers serve smartphone and tablet applications with the same processor platform design.   The falloff in standard PC shipments is a major problem for Intel and AMD since they have supplied more than 95 percent of the x86-based MPUs used in personal computers since the 1980s.

Read more: Qualcomm and Samsung pass AMD in MPU ranking

The new mid-year forecast raises tablet processor sales in 2013 to nearly $3.5 billion, which is a 54 percent increase from $2.3 billion in 2012.  Cellphone application processor sales are now expected to grow 30 percent in 2013 to $16.1 billion from $12.4 billion in 2012.  At the start of this year, sales of mobile processors in tablet computers and cellphones were forecast to grow 50 percent and 28 percent, respectively.  Stronger unit shipment growth in mobile processors has lifted the revenue forecast in these MPU market segments.

 mpu sales

 Figure 1

Meanwhile, the larger market segment of MPUs used in PCs, servers, and embedded-microprocessor applications continues to contract, albeit at a slower rate than in 2012.  The mid-year forecast shows sales of MPUs in PCs, servers, large computers, and embedded applications slipping by one percent to $41.4 billion in 2013 from $41.9 billion in 2012, when revenues dropped  six percent.  This large MPU market segment was previously forecast to rebound with sales increasing five percent, but the anticipated bounce back has been blocked by weak shipments of standard PCs, which IC Insights believes will fall by five percent in 2013 to 327 million systems.

While the mid-year outlook lowers total MPU revenues in 2013, it slightly increases the growth in microprocessor unit shipments to 10 percent this year from a projection of nine percent in the January forecast.  Total MPU shipments are now expected to reach 2.15 billion devices in 2013, with tablet processors growing 62 percent to 190 million units and cellphone application processors increasing 11 percent to 1.50 billion this year.  IC Insights’ microprocessor category does not include cellular radio-frequency baseband processors or stand-alone graphics processing units (GPUs), which are counted in the special-purpose logic/MPR category of the IC market.

 

Everspin Technologies today announced that it has closed a Series B financing, raising $15 million to accelerate growth in the enterprise storage market and support the launch of its ground-breaking Spin-Torque MRAM (ST-MRAM) products. Investors in the round included leading venture capital firms New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Lux Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Epic Ventures.

Everspin’s MRAM is the fastest non-volatile memory with virtually unlimited endurance, providing superior solutions for non-volatile SRAM and DRAM applications and complementing incumbent memory technologies such as NAND and DRAM.

Read more: NAND value threatens DRAM market

The company also achieved a major milestone in the adoption of MRAM technology, announcing more than 10 million cumulative MRAM product shipments. Everspin is the only company in the world to successfully commercialize MRAM products.

“Everspin is breaking through to become a major supplier of the next generation non-volatile memory technology,” said Stephen Socolof, Managing Partner of New Venture Partners. “We are excited as Everspin’s second generation MRAM, Spin-Torque MRAM, is poised to penetrate massive mainstream markets across various storage and compute applications.

“Our MRAM products bring new levels of reliability, performance and endurance to persistent memory applications,” said Phil LoPresti, president and CEO of Everspin Technologies. “The support we’ve seen from leading investors is a vote of confidence that we’ve developed an only-in-class technology and are making a significant impact on the global memory market. We will use this new funding to productize our ground breaking Spin-Torque MRAM technology, significantly broadening the multi-billion dollar market opportunity.”

Everspin Technologies is a developer and manufacturer of magnetic RAM (MRAM), offering stand-alone and embedded Toggle and Spin-Torque MRAM products. Everspin is the world’s first volume MRAM supplier.

Read more: Imec and GLOBALFOUNDRIES collaborate to advance high-density memory technology

For most of us, a modern lifestyle without polymers is unthinkable…if only we knew what they were. The ordinary hardware-store terms we use for them include "plastics, polyethylene, epoxy resins, paints, adhesives, rubber" — without ever recognizing the physical and chemical structures shared by this highly varied — and talented — family of engineering materials.

Polymers increasingly form key components of electronic devices, too — and with its ever-escalating pursuit of high efficiency and low cost, the electronics industry prizes understanding specific behaviors of polymers. The ability of polymers to conduct charge and transport energy is especially appealing.

Now there’s help in appreciating the polymer mystique related to the emerging field of molecular conduction in which films of charge-transporting large molecules and polymers are used within electronic devices. These include small-scale applications such as light emitting diodes (LED). At the other end of the scale, in cities and across oceans, the polymer polyethylene is the vital insulating component in the reliable and safe transport of electrical energy by high voltage underground cables.

In work appearing in the current edition of the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers at the United Kingdom’s Bangor University describes how electrical charges may leak away to the ground through its labyrinth of molecules.

Researchers Thomas J. Lewis and John P. Llewellyn pay particular attention to the nano-scale structure of polyethylene in which crystalline regions are separated by areas known as "amorphous zones." Their novel employment of superexchange and quantum mechanical tunneling of electrons through the amorphous parts of the polymer helps improve understanding of electrical charge conduction.

"These findings could lead not only to improved properties of high voltage cables but also to a wider understanding of polymer semiconductors in device applications," said Lewis.

Their investigation shows that the tunneling feature accounts for the majority of the reported high-field charge transport effects in polyethylene.

Computer simulations have revealed how the electrical conductivity of many materials increases with a strong electrical field in a universal way. This development could have significant implications for practical systems in electrochemistry, biochemistry, electrical engineering and beyond.

The study, published in Nature Materials, investigated the electrical conductivity of a solid electrolyte, a system of positive and negative atoms on a crystal lattice. The behavior of this system is an indicator of the universal behavior occurring within a broad range of materials from pure water to conducting glasses and biological molecules.

Electrical conductivity, a measure of how strongly a given material conducts the flow of electric current, is generally understood in terms of Ohm’s law, which states that the conductivity is independent of the magnitude of an applied electric field, i.e. the voltage per metre.

This law is widely obeyed in weak applied fields, which means that most material samples can be ascribed a definite electrical resistance, measured in Ohms.

However, at strong electric fields, many materials show a departure from Ohm’s law, whereby the conductivity increases rapidly with increasing field. The reason for this is that new current-carrying charges within the material are liberated by the electric field, thus increasing the conductivity.

Remarkably, for a large class of materials, the form of the conductivity increase is universal – it doesn’t depend on the material involved, but instead is the same for a wide range of dissimilar materials.

The universality was first comprehended in 1934 by the future Nobel Laureate Lars Onsager, who derived a theory for the conductivity increase in electrolytes like acetic acid, where it is called the "second Wien effect." Onsager’s theory has recently been applied to a wide variety of systems, including biochemical conductors, glasses, ion-exchange membranes, semiconductors, solar cell materials and to "magnetic monopoles" in spin ice.

Researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN), the Max Plank Institute for Complex Systems in Dresden, Germany and the University of Lyon, France, succeeded for the first time in using computer simulations to look at the second Wien effect. The study, by Vojtech Kaiser, Steve Bramwell, Peter Holdsworth and Roderich Moessner, reveals new details of the universal effect that will help interpret a wide varierty of experiments.

Professor Steve Bramwell of the LCN said: "Onsager’s Wien effect is of practical importance and contains beautiful physics: with computer simulations we can finally explore and expose its secrets at the atomic scale.

"As modern science and technology increasingly explores high electric fields, the new details of high field conduction revealed by these simulations, will have increasing importance."

Nanometrics Incorporated, a provider of advanced process control metrology and inspection systems, today announced that SK Hynix has reported significant process control improvement by deploying the Atlas II platform for optical critical dimension (OCD) metrology across its memory device production.

"Nanometrics, with its Atlas II platform, has enabled key yield and performance learning on our DRAM devices," said a representative of SK Hynix. "Nanometrics continues to be a valuable technology supplier to SK Hynix and the Atlas II platform plays an important role in the production ramp of our next-generation products."

"We have a close collaboration with SK Hynix, and have provided the company metrology solutions across multiple technology generations of memory devices since first introducing our industry-leading NanoDiffract OCD analysis software," commented S. Mark Borowicz, senior vice president of silicon solutions at Nanometrics. "Our Atlas II system, with its advanced technology for in-line process control, has enabled this important customer to quickly identify and address manufacturing steps that impact device performance, and tune key processes to maintain process stability."

The Atlas II is a high-performance process control system capable of advanced thin film and OCD metrology, leveraging the industry-leading performance of Nanometrics’ NanoDiffract software for complex structure metrology.