Category Archives: Semiconductors

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "The Global Market for Graphene to 2020" report to their offering.

Graphene has moved swiftly from the research laboratory to the marketplace, driven by demand from markets where advanced materials are required. These include the aerospace, automotive, coatings, electronics, energy storage, coatings and paints, communications, sensor, solar, oil, and lubricant sectors.

The exceptional electron and thermal transport, mechanical properties, barrier properties and high specific surface area of graphene and combinations thereof make it a potentially disruptive technology across a raft of industries. The European Union is funding a 10-year, 1.35 billion euro coordination action on graphene. South Korea is spending $350 million on commercialization initiatives and the United Kingdom is investing £50million in a commercialization hub. Applications are coming onto the market for polymer composites and EMI shielding coatings. Graphene-based conducting inks are also finding their way into smart cards and radio-frequency identification tags.

Many of the current and potential applications of carbon nanotubes may be taken by graphene as it displays enhanced properties but with greater ease of production and handling. In this regard, carbon nanotubes may be viewed as a stalking horse for commercial applications of graphene. However, in an interesting development, using carbon nanotubes and graphene in combination shows great promise, allowing for greater consistency and higher concentrations of these materials in the end product.

Most graphene producers currently produce graphene nanoplatelets and graphene oxide. Within the last year graphene producers have increased production capabilities considerably. XG Sciences, Angstron Materials and Vorbeck have increased, or are planning to increase, their production capacities twenty-fold.

Producers are generally small, start-up companies who have witnessed an explosion in demand for their materials from a variety of industries. Companies such as IBM and Samsung are pursuing applications for graphene in electronics and optics, which are likely only to be realized in the medium to long-term. Most near-term demand is for composites and coatings for application in the automotive, plastics, coatings, construction, metals, batteries, aerospace and energy markets.

Crossbar, Inc., a start-up company, unveiled a new Resistive RAM (RRAM) technology that will be capable of storing up to one terabyte (TB) of data on a single 200mm2 chip. A working memory was produced array at a commercial fab, and Crossbar is entering the first phase of productization. “We have achieved all the major technical milestones that prove our RRAM technology is easy to manufacture and ready for commercialization,” said George Minassian, chief executive officer, Crossbar, Inc. The company is backed by Artiman Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Northern Light Venture Capital.

The technology, which was conceived by Professor Wei Lu of the University of Michigan, is based on a simple three-layer structure of silver, amorphous silicon and silicon (Fig. 1). The resistance switching mechanism is based on the formation of a filament in the switching material when a voltage is applied between the two electrodes. Minassian said the RRAM is very stable, capable of withstanding temperature swings up to 125°C, with up to 10,000 cycles, and a retention of 10 years. “The filaments are rock solid,” he said.

 

Crossbar has filed 100 unique patents, with 30 already issued, relating to the development, commercialization and manufacturing of RRAM technology.

After completing the technology transfer to Crossbar’s R&D fab and technology analysis and optimization, Crossbar has now successfully developed its demonstration product in a commercial fab.  This working silicon is a fully integrated monolithic CMOS controller and memory array chip. The company is currently completing the characterization and optimization of this device and plans to bring its first product to market in the embedded SOC market.

Sherry Garber, Founding Partner, Convergent Semiconductors, said: “RRAM is widely considered the obvious leader in the battle for a next generation memory and Crossbar is the company most advanced to show working demo that proves the manufacturability of RRAM.  This is a significant development in the industry, as it provides a clear path to commercialization of a new storage technology, capable of changing the future landscape of electronics innovation.”

Crossbar technology can be stacked in 3D, delivering multiple terabytes of storage on a single chip. Its simplicity, stackability and CMOS compatibility enables logic and memory to be integrated onto a single chip at the latest technology node.

Crossbar’s technology will deliver 20x faster write performance; 20x lower power consumption; and 10x the endurance at half the die size, compared to today’s best-in-class NAND Flash memory. Minassian said the biggest advantage of the technology is its simplicity. “That allowed us in three years time to get from technology understanding, characterization, cell array and put a device together,” he said.

Minassian said RRAM compares favorably with NAND, which is getting more complex and expensive. “In 3D NAND, you put all of these thing layers of top of each other – 32 layers, or 64 or 128 in some cases – then you have to etch them, you have to slice them all at once and the equipment required for that accuracy and that geometry is very expensive. This is one of the reasons that 3D has been very difficult for NAND to be introduced.” With the Crossbar approach, “you’re always dealing with three layers. It’s much easier to stack these and it gives you a huge density advantage,” Minassian said.

“The switching media is highly resistive,” explains Minassian. “If you try to read the resistance between top and bottom electrode without doing anything, it’s a high resistance. That’s the off state. To turn on the device, we apply a positive voltage to the top electrode. That ionizes the metal on the top layer and puts the metal ions into the switching media. The metal ions form a filament that connect the top and bottom electrode. The moment they hit the bottom electrode, you have a short, which means that the top and bottom electrode are connected which means they have a low resistance.” The low resistance state is the on state. He said that although silver is not commonly used in front-end CMOS processing, the RRAM memory formation process is a back-end process. “You produce all your CMOS and then right before the device exits the fab, you put the silver on top,” he said. The silver is deposited, encapsulated, etched and then packaged. “That equipment is available, you just have to isolate it at the end,” Minassian said.

The approach is also CMOS compatible, with processes used to fabricate the memory layers all running at less than 400°C.  “This allows you to not only be CMOS compatible, but it allows you to stack more and more of these memory layers on top of each other,” Minassian said. “You can put the logic, the controllers and microprocessors, next to the memory in the same die. That allows you to simplify packaging and increase performance.”

Another advantage compared to NAND is that the controllers used to address the cells can be less complicated. Minassian said that in conventional cells, 30 electrons are required to produce  1 Volt. “If you shrink that to a smaller node, the number of electrons is less. Fewer electrons are much harder to detect. You need a massive controller that does error recovery and complex coding so if the bits are changed, it can still provide you the right program to execute.” Also, because the Crossbar RRAM is capable of 10,000 write cycles, less complicated controllers are needed. Today’s NAND is capable of only 1000 write cycles. “If you write information 1000 times, that cell is destroyed. It will not contain or maintain the information. You have this complex controller that keeps track of how many cells have been written, how many times, to make sure all of them are aged equally,” Minassian said.  

Non-volatile memory, expected to grow to become a $60 billion market in 2013, is the most common storage technology used for both code storage (NOR) and data storage (NAND) in a wide range of electronics applications. Crossbar plans to bring to market standalone chip solutions, optimized for both code and data storage, used in place of traditional NOR and NAND Flash memory. Crossbar also plans to license its technology to SOC developers for integration into next-generation systems-on-chips (SOC).

Michael Yang, Senior Principal Analyst, Memory and Storage, HIS, said: “Ninety percent of the data we store today was created in the past two years.  The creation and instant access of data has become an integral part of the modern experience, continuing to drive dramatic growth for storage for the foreseeable future.  However, the current storage medium, planar NAND, is seeing challenges as it reaches the lower lithographies, pushing against physical and engineering limits.  The next generation non-volatile memory, such as Crossbar’s RRAM, would bypass those limits, and provide the performance and capacity necessary to become the replacement memory solution.”

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Texas have revealed more about graphene’s mechanical properties and demonstrated a technique to improve the stretchability of graphene – developments that should help engineers and designers come up with new technologies that make use of the material.

graphene

Graphene is a promising material that is used in technologies such as transparent, flexible electrodes and nanocomposites. And while engineers think graphene holds promise for additional applications, they must first have a better understanding of its mechanical properties, including how it works with other materials.

"This research tells us how strong the interface is between graphene and a stretchable substrate," says Dr. Yong Zhu, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper on the work. "Industry can use that to design new flexible or stretchable electronics and nanocomposites. For example, it tells us how much we can deform the material before the interface between graphene and other materials fails. Our research has also demonstrated a useful approach for making graphene-based, stretchable devices by ‘buckling’ the graphene."

The researchers looked at how a graphene monolayer – a layer of graphene only one atom thick – interfaces with an elastic substrate. Specifically, they wanted to know how strong the bond is between the two materials because that tells engineers how much strain can be transferred from the substrate to the graphene, which determines how far the graphene can be stretched.

The researchers applied a monolayer of graphene to a polymer substrate, and then stretched the substrate. They used a spectroscopy technique to monitor the strain at various points in the graphene. Strain is a measure of how far a material has stretched.

Initially, the graphene stretched with substrate. However, while the substrate continued to stretch, the graphene eventually began to stretch more slowly and slide on the surface instead. Typically, the edges of the monolayer began to slide first, with the center of the monolayer stretching further than the edges.

"This tells us a lot about the interface properties of the graphene and substrate," Zhu says. "For the substrate used in this study, polyethylene terephthalate, the edges of the graphene monolayer began sliding after being stretched 0.3 percent of its initial length. But the center continued stretching until the monolayer had been stretched by 1.2 to 1.6 percent."

The researchers also found that the graphene monolayer buckled when the elastic substrate was returned to its original length. This created ridges in the graphene that made it more stretchable because the material could stretch out and back, like the bellows of an accordion. The technique for creating the buckled material is similar to one developed by Zhu’s lab for creating elastic conductors out of carbon nanotubes.

PI (Physik Instrumente) presents the E-482, a new high-power amplifier providing 6 kW peak power with an energy saving power recovery design.

The E-482 is useful for a multitude of fast actuation and switching applications such as adaptive structures and mechanisms, precision tool servos, fatigue testing, quality control purposes or highly dynamic control of piezo driven valves in test stands.

The E-482 comes a 19-inch rack-mount chassis and can be upgraded to a full closed-loop system by means of the E-509 servo-control module. The piezo driver is designed for the operation of large, high-capacitance piezo actuators. The class D switching amplifier controls the piezo output voltage by modulating the pulse width of the control signal. When the piezo actuator is discharged, a patented energy recovery circuitry stores the returning energy in a capacitor and makes it reusable for the next charging cycle. Despite its very sink/source current of 6A (peak, 2A avg.) and a voltage swing of up to 1050V (unipolar and bipolar) this amplifier achieves very high efficiency, accounting to energy savings up to up to 80 percent compared with traditional piezo drivers. Another benefit is significantly reduced heat dissipation.

The PI group provides a portfolio of piezo motion control solutions for markets as diverse as semiconductor manufacturing, bio-technology, photonics, aerospace and medical engineering. PI has 4 decades of experience with the design and manufacture of precision positioning systems based on piezoceramic and electromagnetic drives. The company has been ISO 9001 certified since 1994 and provides innovative, high-quality solutions for OEM and research. PI is present worldwide with 10 subsidiaries, R&D / engineering on 3 continents and total staff of 750+.

The U.S. image sensors market was worth USD 2.0 billion in 2011 and is forecasted to reach USD 3.7 billion in 2017 at a CAGR of 11.1 percent from 2011 to 2017, according to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research “Image Sensors Market – The U.S. Industry Analysis Market Share, Trends and Forecast, 2011 – 2017.” The linear image sensors segment accounted for the largest share – i.e. 84.2 percent – of the U.S. image sensors market at USD 1.7 billion in 2011.

The X-ray image sensors market segment will have the fastest revenue growth at a CAGR of 18.8 percent during 2011 – 2017. The U.S. CMOS image sensor shipment reached 464.0 million units in 2011 registering a growth of 27.6 percent over 2010.

Image sensors are broadly categorized under CCD image sensors (area image sensor), linear image sensors and X-ray image sensors. Linear image sensors are further segmented into CMOS image sensors, NMOS image sensors and InGaAs image sensors. The linear image sensors command the largest share of shipment and revenue, largely due to CMOS image sensors, which accounts for more than 90 percent of the linear image sensor market.

Growing technological advancement and faster adoption of new generation of mobile technology has spurred the demand for high resolution imaging technology. With nationwide mobile penetration inching towards 100 percent, mobile phone manufacturers are introducing a new array of imaging-enabled products. Current differentiators for imaging in mobile technology are low cost, low power, high performance and small size. Increasing integration and low power operation has opened new application segments for image sensors.

CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) image sensors facilitate large scale integration and can enable a single chip to accommodate all camera functions, which eliminates the need for additional support packaging and assembly; thus lowering cost. Market players are progressively providing higher levels of integration by incorporating DSPs (digital signal processing), as well as ISPs (integrated signal processing). Other ground-breaking features such as multiple color filters that allow JPEG images conversion on the sensor are also supporting the market growth.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today announced that worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $74.65 billion during the second quarter of 2013, an increase of 6 percent from the first quarter when sales were $70.45 billion. This marks the largest quarterly increase in three years. Global sales for June 2013 hit $24.88 billion, an increase of 2.1 percent compared to June 2012 and 0.8 percent higher than the May 2013 total. Regionally, sales in the Americas jumped 8.6 percent in Q2 compared to Q1 and 10.6 percent in June 2013 compared to June 2012, marking the region’s largest year-over-year increase of 2013. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

"There’s no question the global semiconductor industry has picked up steam through the first half of 2013, led largely by the Americas," said Brian Toohey, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. "We have now seen consistent growth on a monthly, quarterly, and year-to-year basis, and sales totals have exceeded the latest industry projection, with sales of memory products showing particular strength."

Quarterly sales outperformed the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization’s latest industry forecast, which projected quarter-over-quarter growth of 4.6 percent globally and 3.4 percent for the Americas (compared to the actual increases of 6 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively). Total year-to-dates sales of $145.1 billion also exceeded the WSTS projection of $144.1 billion. Actual year-to-date sales through June are 1.5 percent higher than they were at the same point in 2012.

Regionally, sales in June increased compared to May in the Americas (3.5 percent), Asia Pacific (0.4 percent), and Europe (0.1 percent), but declined slightly in Japan (-0.9 percent). Compared to the same month in 2012, sales in June increased substantially in the Americas (10.6 percent), moderately in Asia Pacific (5.4 percent), and slightly in Europe (0.8 percent), but dropped steeply in Japan (-20.8 percent), largely due to the devaluation of the Japanese yen.

"While we welcome this encouraging data, it is important to recognize the semiconductor workforce that drives innovation and growth in our industry," continued Toohey. "A key roadblock inhibiting our innovation potential is America’s outdated high-skilled immigration system, which limits semiconductor companies’ access to the world’s top talent. The House of Representatives should use the August recess to work out their political differences on this issue and return to Washington next month ready to approve meaningful immigration reform legislation."

Later this month, IC Insights’ August Update to the 2013 McClean Report will show a ranking of the top 25 semiconductor suppliers in 1H13.  A preview of the top 20 companies is listed in Figure 1.  The top 20 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O S D—optoelectronic, discrete, and sensor) sales leaders for 1H13 include eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., four in Japan, three in Europe, three in Taiwan, and two in South Korea.

The top-20 ranking includes three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC) and four fabless companies.  IC foundries are included in the top-20 semiconductor supplier ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted.  With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers.  Overall, the list shown in Figure 1 provides a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.

There were numerous changes within the top-20 semiconductor ranking in 1H13 as compared to the top 20 ranking of 2012.  Some of the companies rising in the ranking included SK Hynix, which moved up three places and into the top 5; Broadcom, which edged into the top 10; Elpida, which was officially purchased by Micron on July 31, 2013, shot up seven places to 17th place; and MediaTek, which jumped up four positions to make it into the top 20 (now ranked 18th).  In contrast, Fujitsu dropped five places and fell out of the top 20 ranking, going from being ranked 17th in 2012 to 22nd in 1H13.  The other company to fall out of the top 20 ranking was fabless supplier Nvidia, which went from being ranked 18th in 2012 to 21st in 1H13, even though the company posted a two percent increase in year-over-year sales.  Another “casualty” in the top 20 ranking was Sony, which fell to 16th place in 1H13 from the 12th position in 2012.

Micron’s acquisition of Elpida was completed on July 31, 2013.  It is interesting to note that if Micron and Elpida’s 1H13 sales were combined, the “new” company would have had $6,699 million in total sales in 1H13 and would have been ranked as the fifth-largest semiconductor supplier worldwide.  Now that the two companies are officially combined, look for Micron to move up in the ranking of top suppliers over the remainder of 2013 and in 2014.

Figure 1

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies’ sales increased by 4 percent in 1H13 as compared to 1H12, one point better than the total 1H13/1H12 worldwide semiconductor market increase of 3 percent.  It took semiconductor sales of just over $1.9 billion in 1H13 to make the top-20 ranking.

As shown in Figure 2, there was a 64-percentage-point range of growth rates among the worldwide top 20 semiconductor suppliers in 1H13 (from +38 percent for SK Hynix to -26 percent for Sony).  The continued success of the fabless/foundry business model is evident when examining the top 20 semiconductor suppliers ranked by growth rate.  As shown, the top 10 performers included three fabless companies (Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Broadcom) and three pure-play foundries (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, and UMC).

Figure 2

Figure 2 illustrates that two of the three top-20 ranked companies that registered a double-digit sales decline in 1H13 were headquartered in Japan (Renesas and Sony).  Japan-based Fujitsu also registered a double-digit decline (-19 percent) in 1H13 to drop out of the top 20 ranking.  However, it should be noted that the conversion of Japanese company semiconductor sales from yen to U.S. dollars, at 95.47 yen per dollar in 1H13 versus 79.70 yen per dollar in 1H12, had a significant impact on the sales figures for the Japanese companies.  Still, Sony would have logged a double-digit (12 percent) semiconductor sales decline even if its sales results were not converted to U.S. dollars while Renesas would have posted a two percent increase in semiconductor sales if the numbers were expressed in yen.

Unfortunately for AMD, it cannot attribute its extremely poor 1H13 sales performance (-25 percent) to currency conversion issues.  However, the company’s 3Q13/2Q13 guidance is for a 22 percent surge in sales, a significant rebound but one that still may not prevent the company from posting another full-year decline in sales in 2013 (AMD registered a steep 17 percent sales decline in 2012).

More details on the 1H13 top 25 semiconductor suppliers, including a look at the companies’ 3Q13 expectations and guidance, will be provided in the August Update to The McClean Report.

 

Spansion Inc., a developer of Flash memory-based embedded systems solutions, and XMC, China’s fastest growing 300mm semiconductor foundry, today announced an agreement for XMC to license Spansion’s floating gate NOR Flash technology. The agreement expands the companies’ 300mm manufacturing partnership of Spansion’s proprietary 65nm, 45nm and 32nm MirrorBit Flash memory technology.

"Spansion’s IP program allows valuable partners such as XMC to leverage our strong portfolio of nonvolatile memory technology to enhance their products and offer the technology and its benefits to their customers," Joe Rauschmayer, senior vice president of wafer fabrication, corporate quality and product engineering of Spansion. "We look forward to our continued partnership with XMC to drive innovation in the market."

"This agreement further strengthens the successful partnership we have had with Spansion, and adds significantly to our world class IP coverage enabling us to reliably and securely deliver high-value IP solutions to partners worldwide," said Walt Lange, senior vice president of sales and marketing at XMC. "We are well positioned to offer leading-edge 300mm-based manufacturing capacity based on the most advanced process nodes, down to 32nm.”

The Spansion and XMC collaboration began in 2008. XMC foundry services, along with Spansion’s flagship manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, are central to Spansion’s fab lite manufacturing strategy. Spansion utilizes world-class flash memory fabs from both existing internal facilities as well as foundry partnerships to create a flexible, cost-efficient manufacturing network.

Spansion Inc., a provider of Flash memory-based embedded systems solutions, today announced that it has closed the acquisition of the microcontroller and analog business of Fujitsu Semiconductor Limited. Under the terms of the agreement, Spansion will pay approximately $110 million, plus approximately $38 million for inventory. The net impact is expected to be accretive for Spansion in 2013.

"We are very excited about the new products and business opportunities we can create with this acquisition," said John Kispert, president and CEO of Spansion. "We will expand our embedded market leadership and support our customer base with a broader product line including Flash memory, microcontrollers, analog, mixed signal and system-on-chip solutions that will shape the future of electronics."

Apple recently acquired Silicon Valley-based wireless chip developer Passif Semiconductor, though the terms of the acquisition have yet to be disclosed.

Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette confirmed the deal, saying: “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

Passif was founded by Ben Cook and Axel Berny, two PhD students from the University of California, Berkeley. While Apple has not stated the purpose for the acquisition, many news outlets have speculated that the acquisition will fulfill its need for low-power chips. Passif is known for its low-power technologies and with more and more battery-draining features being packed into smartphones, utilizing technologies that will extend battery life is essential.

News of the acquistion was first reported by former Wall Street Journal reporter Jessica Lessin.