Category Archives: Semiconductors

American Graphite Technologies Inc. announced today the successful production of test samples of a graphene paper product by its development and manufacturing partner, CTI Nanotechnologies LLC.

CTI Nanotechnologies reported it had successfully developed test samples and reproducible test results of a highly flexible membrane of nano-particles from 50-150um thick that is highly conductive showing about 2-3ohms resistivity across a 2 inch area.

The next phase of development is to work to continue improvements to the size, conductivity and scalability resulting in a low cost continuous "roll to roll" production operation at industrial specifications. In parallel with this work, CTI Nanotechnologies is working to upgrade its Vermont development facility.

Graphene Paper has the potential to revolutionize the automotive, aviation, electrical and optical industries. Currently Graphene Paper is available only in limited sizes, is relatively expensive and is very time consuming to make.

"This is an important early milestone, we are still engineering the drying, curing, and reduction process but most importantly we have thus far shown that our technology is capable of producing small scale graphene products," said Rick Walchuk, CEO of American Graphite Technologies. "This milestone is an important step towards AGIN’s goal of the development of a proprietary process for the production of high quality, low cost, large area Graphene Paper at a commercial scale."

  • Potential applications for Graphene paper include:
  • Computer and television displays
  • Electrical shielding
  • Reinforcing Material for manufacturing cars, boats, airplanes and machinery
  • Lightning Strike Dissipation
  • Heat Dissipation
  • Protection against electromagnetic pulses (EMP)
  • Armor plating
  • Reinforcement of plastics and polymers
  • Electrodes for batteries, fuel cells, solar cells and capacitors
  • Thermal heatsinks for electronic and computer equipment
  • Artificial limbs

American Graphite Technologies Inc. is focused on developing North American graphite mining opportunities along with the commercialization of graphene specific proprietary technology methods to maximize shareholder value.

It’s no secret: the past five years for the IC industry have been full of challenges. From 2007-2013, the IC market grew at an average annual rate of only 2.1%. One of the speakers slated to speak at The ConFab 2013 in Las Vegas has good reason to believe the IC industry is set to emerge from this difficult cycle.

President of IC Insights, Inc.Solid State Technology is pleased to have Bill McClean on their line-up of speakers for The ConFab 2013. McClean is the president of IC Insights, Inc., where he serves at the managing editor of the company’s market and research studies and reports.

“In IC Insights’ opinion, the “bottom” of the current cycle in the worldwide economy and IC industry was reached in 2012 and 2013 will mark the beginning of the next cyclical upturn—one in which the IC industry CAGR will more than triple to 7.4% in the next five-year period,” McClean writes in his abstract. “Overall, semiconductor industry cycles are becoming increasingly tied to the health of the worldwide economy. While poor semiconductor industry growth has occurred during periods of strong worldwide economic growth, primarily due to semiconductor industry overcapacity and the resulting IC price declines, it is rare to have strong semiconductor industry growth without at least a ‘good’ worldwide economy to support it. Thus, over the next five years, annual global semiconductor market growth rates are expected to gain significant momentum and closely mirror the performance of the worldwide economy.”

McClean began his market research career in the integrated circuit industry in 1980 and founded IC Insights in 1997.   During his 33 years of tracking the IC industry, McClean has specialized in market and technology trend forecasting and was responsible for developing the IC industry cycle model.  In addition, he instructs for IC Insights’ seminars and has been a guest speaker at many important annual conferences held worldwide (e.g., SEMI’s ISS and Electronic Materials Conferences, The China Electronics Conference, and The European Microelectronics Summit).  Mr. McClean received his Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and an Associate degree in Aviation from the University of Illinois.

To register for this event and learn more about our speakers, please visit The ConFab section of our website.

Mentor Graphics User Conference 2013 speaker line-up boasts a host of industry bigwigs, including former foundry CTO, Dr. Chenming Hu.  Hu will give the keynote address on April 25 in San Jose, California, addressing the future of FinFET.

“FinFET overcomes the impending show stopper that device physics imposes,” writes Hu, in his abstract. “The ultra-thin-body concept, which FinFET embodies, may lead to more new structures and materials research directions that can give relief for other future show stoppers such as the high cost of scaling by lithography.”

Dr. Chenming Hu is the TSMC Distinguished Professor of UC Berkeley and a board director of SanDisk, Inc. and Friends of Children with Special Needs.  He was formerly the Chief Technology Officer of TSMC. He is known for developing the 3D transistor, FinFET, that can be scaled to sub-10nm. He also developed IC reliability models and the industry-standard SPICE model used by most IC companies to design CMOS products. He has received the IEEE Andrew Grove Award, Solid State Circuits Award, Nishizawa Medal, and UC Berkeley’s highest honor for teaching–the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award.

Mentor Graphics User Conference 2013 is slated to be held April 25, 2013 in San Jose, California at the DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton. This one day event is offered free of charge; however participants are responsible for their own business travel expenses.  Complimentary refreshments including lunch and a networking event will be included.  Registration will begin at 8:00 a.m.  The session will start at 9:00 a.m. and end at approximately 5:00 p.m.

Visit Mentor Graphics User Conference 2013’s website for more information on speakers and accomodations.

Cisco Systems is preparing for a major shift in the industry, as the Internet of Things starts to become a reality. At an annual press event in San Jose, California this week, Cisco officials claimed that the much-anticipated IoT industry could be a $14 trillion opportunity, and they are ready to embrace the change.

Rob Lloyd, president of sales and development at Cisco, told the press that he believes as many as 50 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020, from which, he believes, the $14 trillion business opportunity will stem. The trend will create business opportunities initially in manufacturing, but extend into government, energy and health care, he said, as sensors will become part of traffic systems, hospitals, refineries and other civil and business infrastructures. These opportunities will extend far beyond today’s budgets for computer and communication systems.

An ambitious plan for Cisco, though some might recall that Cisco’s CEO has announced this plan before. Last year, John Chambers, Cisco’s chairman and chief executive, told the press that he expects the company will experience a shift in customers, handling government and large businesses’ projects such as designing and managing systems for clean water or efficient traffic.

“The first 10 years (of the commercial Internet) were really about transactions, and the last 10 were about interactions,” Padmasree Warrior, Cisco’s chief technology and strategy officer, told the press this week. “The next 10 is about processes being more efficient.”

However, the IoT space is already presenting plenty of challenges. Cisco is working with utilities worldwide in the hopes that 10 million smart meters will be deployed by the end of the year, supporting IoT protocol. Cisco has already deployed about $180 billion worth of network equipment into the world, Warrior said, and will build hardware and software that interacts efficiently with the legacy gear, so new kinds of intelligent systems can be quickly deployed.

What do you know about the Internet of Things? Do you think it’s all hype or a real opportunity? Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Comments posted on Solid State Technology articles will not automatically be posted to your social media account unless you select to share.

 

OneChip Photonics this week revealed strategic, outsourcing plans to expand into new markets, with announcements of newly-established relationships with semiconductor foundry GCS and wafer supplier IQE. Both announcements related to OneChip’s bigger, strategic plan to expand its services into the high-volume DCI market.

OneChip first announced that it is working with Global Communication Semiconductors (GCS), an ISO-certified pure-play compound wafer foundry. Under their fabless model, OneChip, based in Ottawa, Canada, has been working with GCS to process its OneChip-designed 4-inch InP-based wafers.  GCS will be providing an array of InP wafer processing services to OneChip, which OneChip will use to produce its photonic integrated circuits for the data center interconnect (DCI) and passive optical network (PON) markets.

“GCS is the most advanced, pure-play foundry of its kind, which offers indium phosphide and high-volume RF electronics processing technologies,” said Valery Tolstikhin, founder and CTO of OneChip Photonics. “Working with GCS gives us the commercial, high-volume processing capability we need to meet the strict cost requirements of the DCI and PON markets.”

OneChip believes that GCS’s foundry services, with its opto and heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) processes in indium phosphide, is an ideal match for their fabless model, which is built around its regrowth-free PIC platform. Because GCS’s opto and HBT and OneChip’s PIC technologies share the same process, the same fabrication process will be used to integrate both electronic and photonic pieces on one substrate.

“Our InP-based Opto and RFIC process technologies have great synergies with OneChip’s PIC technology,” Brian Ann, CEO of GCS, said. “We believe OneChip is a company that can create a truly volume business for photonics in the DCI market, with the unique ability to combine PICs and electronics to create the first optoelectronic circuits in InP.”

This market requires 100Gbps+ solutions with higher interface density and longer reach than those within the reach of currently deployed systems in 0.85um and multi-mode fibers. The DCI market also requires lower cost and power consumption than the solutions offered by the traditional telecom component vendors, which leads to the second of OneChip’s announcements.

OneChip announced plans to partner with IQE, using their epitaxial growth services to produce its InP PICs for the DCI and PON markets. IQE is an independent provider of III-V semiconductor epitaxy services, to grow the epitaxial (epi) structure, which OneChip will use to produce its PICs. IQE uses advanced crystal growth technology (epitaxy) to manufacture and supply bespoke semiconductor wafers “epi-wafers” to the major chip manufacturing companies, who then use these wafers to make the chips, which form the key components of virtually all high-technology systems.

“The iron-doped, semi-insulating 4-inch InP substrates, and the metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) growth technique, required for OneChip’s epi-wafers, are the same as those used by IQE for its high-volume epitaxy products, so we have strong economies of scale in working together.,” said Tolstikhin. “IQE is recognized as a leading independent, pure-play epi-wafer foundry, which not only provides world-class services, but also perfectly fits into our fabless PIC manufacturing model.”

OneChip’s regrowth-free multi-guide vertical integration, or MGVI, platform eliminates the need for multiple epitaxial growth steps. This will enable OneChip to decouple epitaxial growth and wafer processing, while outsourcing both functions to GCS and IQE.

“OneChip has developed some exciting new integrated photonics products for the high-volume, but cost-sensitive, optical communications markets,” said Drew Nelson, president and CEO of IQE. “We are delighted to apply our unique high-volume manufacturing expertise in producing InP-based epi-wafers for OneChip’s innovative PIC technology. OneChip’s use of the fabless manufacturing approach further endorses IQE’s outsourcing business model in the field of photonic devices, and we look forward to helping OneChip continue to scale its business as it extends its unique PIC technology to new markets.”

What do you think of OneChip Photonics’ outsourcing plans? Use one of your social media accounts to login and share your thoughts in the comment section below. Comments on Solid State Technology articles will not automatically be posted to your social media accounts unless you select to share.

Solid State Technology is thrilled to announce that Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, will be addressing the state of the semiconductor industry at The ConFab 2013. Hutcheson is a well-known visionary, helping companies make business out of technology for over thirty years and is best known for his many predictions of strategic industry infrastructure shifts.

“After two down years, the semiconductor industry is finally returning to returning to a growth mode. This should come as no surprise, because the bottom actually came early in 2012,” said Hutcheson, in his abstract. “But it was the downward slope of 2011 that held the yearly growth figures down, as the industry climbed out of the downturn in 2012. So far, 2013 is looking stronger than 2012 and VLSI research expects this to continue.”

Hutcheson’s presentation will examine the reasons why – with the most up-to-date data, drivers, and trends – covering the silicon supply chain from electronics through ICs and deep into manufacturing.

Hutcheson is a senior member of the IEEE and a recipient of SEMI’s Bob Graham Award for outstanding contributions in marketing. He has authored numerous publications including two invited articles for Scientific American. His pro bono work has included serving as an advisor on innovation to the White House Council of Economic Advisors in the Clinton Administration, teaching invited courses on Manufacturing Economics and The Economics of the Internet at Stanford University, and serving on the Board of Advisors to the Extension School at UC Berkeley.

To learn more or to register for The ConFab 2013, visit The ConFab section of our website.

Imec announced today the launch of its fully integrated silicon photonics platform through a cost-sharing Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) service via ePIXfab. The platform enables cost-effective R&D of silicon photonic ICs for high-performance optical transceivers (25Gb/s and beyond) and optical sensing and life science applications. The offered integrated components include low-loss waveguides, efficient grating couplers, high-speed silicon electro-optic modulators and high-speed germanium waveguide photo-detectors.

Since 2007, imec and its associated laboratory at Ghent University have been offering a platform for passive silicon photonic components via ePIXfab, for R&D under shared cost conditions. Now, imec extends its silicon photonics offering, using a standard130nm CMOS toolset, with active components such as high-speed optical modulators and integrated germanium photo-detectors.

“Imec’s Silicon Photonics platform provides robust performance and solutions to integrated photonics products in medical diagnostics, telecom and datacom industries. Companies can benefit from our silicon photonics capability through established standard cells, or explore the functionality of their own designs in MPW,” stated Philippe Absil, program director at imec. “This Silicon Photonics MPW offer provides a cost-efficient solution, with state-of-the-art performance, design flexibility and superior CD and thickness control”.

The first run opens for registration with tape-in on 9th of Oct 2013 and first devices will be out in May 2014. Support, registration and design kit access will be organized by Europractice IC service, in collaboration with world-wide MPW partners.

Imec’s Si Photonics 200mm wafer platform offers extensive design flexibility and includes –

  • Tight within-wafer silicon thickness variation 3 < 2.5nm
  • 3-level patterning of 220nm top Si layer (193nm optical lithography)
  • poly-Si overlay and patterning (193nm optical lithography)
  • 3-level n-type implants and 3-level p-type implants in Si
  • Ge epitaxial growth on Si and p-type and n-type implants in Ge
  • Local NiSi contacts, Tungsten vias and Cu metal interconnects
  • Al bond pads
  • Validated cell library with fiber couplers, polarization rotators, highly efficient carrier depletion modulators and ultra-compact Ge waveguide photo-detectors with low dark current.
  • Design kit support for Ipkiss, PhoeniX and Mentor Graphics software

Nanoplas, a global supplier of plasma processing equipment to the semiconductor industry, today announced a new dry-etch process offering virtually unlimited etch selectivity for removing dielectric films on microprocessors and memories at high throughput.

Nanoplas’s new Atomic-Layer Downstream Etching (ALDE) processing allows etching rate and selectivity to be controlled independently, which provides virtually unlimited selectivity. Based on the company’s new inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source, ALDE features atomic-layer control at wafer-surface level. 

“Nanoplas’s Atomic-Layer Downstream Etching technology enables a new class of plasma-based etching and stripping processes at the 20nm technology node and beyond,” said Gilles Baujon, Nanoplas CEO. “By allowing virtually unlimited selectivity, ALDE will alleviate many of the challenges engineers face in manufacturing next-generation devices – and enable them to achieve higher yields – because the process window will be larger and will easily integrate with existing pre- and post-ALDE steps. This is a huge benefit and driver for IC manufacturing. Bringing a new generation of devices to production is all about having sufficiently large process windows to generate high yields.”

Nanoplas intends for ALDE to replace current wet and dry techniques for removal of the many critical silicon-nitride spacer films in most advanced transistor-formation technologies.

Nanoplas expects to release a first ALDE application for SiN etching in Q2.

Nanoplas is an equipment supplier to the semiconductor industry specialized in novel plasma process solutions for nanoelectronics. The company’s plasma-processing tools are used by leading microelectronics companies in North America, Europe and Asia. The company is based near Grenoble, in St-Égrève, France.

 

The U.S. Photovoltaic Manufacturing Consortium (PVMC), an industry-led collaboration headquartered in New York at the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to improve manufacturing processes for thin film CIGS photovoltaic (PV)  cells and modules, including products, metrology and reliability that will support the U.S. solar industry in the development, manufacturing, and commercialization of next-generation solar PV systems.

“In support of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s innovative green energy strategy that is fueling New York’s emergence as a leader in the cleantech industry, PVMC is delighted to partner with NREL to help drive important advances in our nation’s solar future,” said Dr. Pradeep Haldar, PVMC Chief Operating and Technology Officer and CNSE Vice President of Clean Energy Programs. “Through this initiative, we look forward to enhancing the manufacturability of thin film solar PV technologies, which is critical to enabling increased usage in residential, commercial and utility applications across the country.”

“This unique partnership between NREL and PVMC will leverage national resources, accelerate commercialization of next generation solar products, and boost interactions between U.S. research labs and industry manufacturing initiatives,” said Joe Hudgins, senior VP of business development and strategic alliances, PVMC. “Together we are leading the national effort to help facilitate the transfer and commercialization of future solar products, equipment, and manufacturing lines including thin film, advanced silicon, and future materials.”

NREL is a renewable energy center, specializing in many fields of photovoltaic research, and has established processes, measurement and characterization capabilities, and expertise in all the major PV conversion technologies. PVMC will join NREL to support U.S. solar manufacturing by leveraging decades of knowledge and capabilities in materials and cell processing, advanced testing, metrology and materials analysis, and modeling. These interactions will accelerate PVMC program deliverables and help overcome the gaps and challenges necessary to build a strong U.S. solar industry.

Additionally, the NREL and PVMC collaboration effort will be expanded to other national labs to create a greater impact on the U.S. PV manufacturing industry. These national partnerships replicate the successful SEMATECH and CNSE models that have regained and sustained U.S. technology leadership in the semiconductor industry for several decades.

Spearheaded by CNSE and SEMATECH as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SunShot Initiative, PVMC is targeting a reduction in the total installed cost of solar energy systems by 75 percent over the next decade. As an active participant in PVMC’s U.S. Thin-Films PV Roadmap, NREL is working with other roadmap members to provide a congruent plan for the national CIGS industry, including module and systems manufacturers, suppliers, and end-users, that will identify common challenges and define the areas of technical developments needed to sustain and advance a competitive U.S. photovoltaic industry.

Several initiatives are currently underway to enhance product and manufacturing development, some of which are likely to become industry standards in the future. Recently, SEMI and PVMC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to enhance their cooperation in areas of standards and roadmap activities for the solar thin film industry.

Seven O-S-D product categories and device groups reached record-high sales in 2012 compared to 14 new records being set in 2011, according to data shown in the 2013 edition of IC Insights’ O-S-D Report, A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes.  Figure 1 shows that in 2012, two sales records were achieved in optoelectronics, four in sensors/actuators (including total sensor sales), and one in discretes.  Ten new sales records are expected to be set in the O-S-D markets in 2013.  All the products shown in Figure 1 are forecast to grow by moderate percentages in 2013, which will lift them again to new record-high levels.  Total sales of MEMS-based products are expected in rise 9% in 2013 and reach a new annual record of $7.6 billion, surpassing the current peak of $7.1 billion set in 2011.

O-S-D products record sales 2012

With sales in the much larger IC segment falling 4% in 2012, O-S-D’s share of total semiconductor revenues grew to 19% in 2012 versus 18% in 2011 and 14% in 2002.  O-S-D’s marketshare of total semiconductor sales in 2012 was the highest it’s been since 1991.

Key findings and forecasts in the 2013 O-S-D Report include:

CMOS image sensors were the fastest growing O-S-D product category in 2012 with sales rising 22% to a new record-high $7.1 billion, blowing past the previous peak of $5.8 billion set in 2011. Since the 2009 downturn year, CMOS image sensor sales have climbed 85% due to the strong growth of embedded cameras used in smartphones and portable computers (including tablets) and the expansion of digital imaging into more systems applications. CMOS designs are now grabbing large chunks of marketshare from CCD image sensors, which are forecast to see revenues decline by a CAGR of 2.4% between 2012 and 2017.  Sales of CMOS imaging devices are projected to grow by a CAGR of about 12.0% in the forecast period and account for 85% of the total image sensor market versus 15% for CCDs in 2017.  This compares to a 60/40 split in 2009.

High-brightness LED revenues climbed 20% in 2012 to nearly $9.5 billion and are expected to hit the $20.0 billion level in 2017, with annual sales growing by a CAGR of 16% in the next five years. That’s the good news, but of immediate concern is whether new solid-state lighting applications are growing fast enough to consume the large amounts of production capacity being added worldwide in LED wafer fabs—especially in China.  Solid-state lighting’s main growth engine in recent years—backlighting in LCD televisions and computer screens—is slowing, and the multi-billion dollar question is whether the next wave of applications (e.g., LED light bulbs, new interior and exterior lighting systems, digital signs and billboards, automotive headlamps, long-lasting street lights, and other uses) can keep the industry ahead of a potential glut in high-brightness lamp devices.

About 81% of the sensor/actuator market’s sales in 2012 came from semiconductor products built with MEMS technology.  Sensors accounted for 52% of MEMS-based device sales in 2012, while actuators were 48% of the total.   A 10% drop in actuator sales in 2012 lowered total revenues for MEMS-based devices to $7.0 billion from the current peak of $7.1 billion in 2011.  By 2017, MEMS-based sensors and actuators are projected to reach $13.5 billion in sales, which will be a CAGR increase of 14.0% from 2012, and unit shipments are expected to grow by a CAGR of 17.4% in the next five years to 9.7 billion devices.  MEMS manufacturing continues to move into the mainstream IC foundry segment, which will open more capacity to fabless companies and larger suppliers. TSMC, GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC all have increased investments to expand their presence in MEMS production using 200mm wafers.

Among the strongest growth drivers covered in the O-S-D Report are: high-brightness LEDs for solid-state lighting applications; laser transmitters for high-speed optical networks; MEMS-based acceleration/yaw sensors for highly adaptive embedded control in cellphones, tablet computers, and consumer products; CMOS imaging devices for automobiles, machine vision, medical, and new human-recognition interfaces; and a range of power transistors for energy-saving electronics and battery management.

 Now in its eighth annual edition, the 2013 O-S-D Report contains a detailed forecast of sales, unit shipments, and selling prices for more than 30 individual product types and categories through 2017.