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November 23, 2012 – Growth in the industrial electronics semiconductor market is set to fall short of previous expectations in 2012 as the business is buffeted by weakening global economic conditions, with the LED market the sole bright spot, says IHS iSuppli in an updated report.

In general, revenue for industrial semiconductors — used in a wide array of application markets from home automation to aeronautics and military purposes — is projected to rise just 3% in 2012 to $31.4 billion — that’s less than half than the 7.7% growth forecast back in July. It’s also a meager expansion compared with 2011’s solid 9% increase and the exuberant 35% surge in 2010 immediately after the recession. For the next four years, revenue is set to rise in a range from 7-12% each year, reaching $44.8B by 2016.

Worldwide industrial electronics semiconductor revenue, in US $B. (Source: IHS iSuppli)

"Economic headwinds" started intensifying in 2Q12 and undercut chip revenue forecasts, affecting top semiconductor suppliers and OEMs of industrial electronics, explained Jacobo Carrasco-Heres, industrial electronics analyst at IHS. "And when hoped-for growth did not pan out as expected, and sales eventually came out lower, the market was downgraded to reflect the changed circumstances."

One segment that seems to have remained untouched this year is the robust LED market, thanks to the LED lighting boom that has taken hold in many parts of the world, noted Robbie Galoso, principal analyst for electronics at IHS. Philips enjoyed a 37% climb in LED sales in 2Q12 vs. a year-ago, and other LED lamp suppliers like Cree, LG Innotek, and Samsung LED also enjoyed solid 2Q results.

Industrial semiconductors are used in energy generation and distribution; military and civil aerospace; building and home control; medical electronics; manufacturing and process automation; and the test and measurement segment.

November 19, 2012 – Researchers from Rice U. say they have developed a micron-scale spatial light modulator (SLM) built on SOI that runs orders-of-magnitude faster than its siblings used in sensing and imaging devices. The "antenna-on-a-chip for light modulation," developed with backing from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, is described in Nature‘s Scientific Reports.

While light processing has found use in consumer electronics (CDs and DVDs), communications (fiber optics), of course lighting applications (LEDs) and even industrial materials processing (lasers for cutting, welding, etc.), photonics for computing applications are still being explored, and reliant upon waveguides in 2D space. So-called "free space" spatial light modulators (SLM), however, could tap into "the massive multiplexing capability of optics," in that "multiple light beams can propagate in the same space without affecting each other," explains researcher Qianfan Xu.

To demonstrate, the Rice team built SLM chips with nanoscale ribs of crystalline silicon surrounded by SiO2 claddings, forming a cavity between positively and negatively dopes Si connected to metallic electrodes. The positions of the ribs are subject to nanoscale "perturbations" and tune the resonating cavity to couple with incident light outside. This coupling pulls incident light into the cavity; infrared light passes through silicon but is captured by the SML and can be manipulated to the chip on the other side, with electrodes’ field switched on/off at very high speeds.

In the paper they go into more detail on the structure of the device:

SLMs are fabricated in a CMOS photonics foundry at the Institute of Microelectronics of Singapore. The fabrication starts on an SOI wafer with a 220nm-thick silicon layer and a 3μm-thick buried oxide layer. To construct the 1D PhC cavities, silicon ribs with the height of 170nm are patterned on a silicon slab with the thickness of 50nm using 248nm deep-UV lithography and inductively-coupled plasma etching. Following the etching, the p-i-n junctions are formed by patterned ion implantations with a dosage of 5 × 1014 cm-2 for both the p+ and n+ doping regions. A 2.1μm-thick SiO2 layer is then deposited onto the wafer using plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Finally, vias are opened on the ion-implanted areas and a 1.5μm-thick aluminum layer is sputtered and etched to form the electric connections. The serial resistance of the diode is measured to be 105 Ω. After the fabrication process, the contact pads connecting to the p-i-n junction are wire-bonded to a SMA connector with a 50-ohms terminal resistor for impedance match.

The 3D FDTD simulations are done with commercial software Lumermical FDTD. A non-uniform grid is used which has a spatial resolution ~30nm around the resonator. Even though perturbation we introduced is much smaller than the grid size, the software is capable of incorporate that in the simulation. When a dielectric interface (Si/SiO2) lies between two grid points, the program modifies the dielectric constant at the neighboring grid points according to the position of interface. This way, the small shift of the dielectric interface due to the width perturbation is taken into account in the simulation.

Conventional integrated photonics incorporate an array of pixels whose transmission can be manipulated at very high speed, explains Xu; adding an optical beam can change the intensity or phase of the exiting light. In LED screens and micromirror arrays in projectors (both of which are SLMs) where each pixel changes the intensity of light which generates an image, some switching speeds can get down to microseconds, but that’s far too slow for moving data around in a computing application. The new Rice device can "potentially modulate a signal at more than 10 gigabits per second."

Another key to their device is that it is silicon-based and can be fabricated at volume in a CMOS fab, which can scale up the capabilities to build very large arrays with high yield, he adds. For example, Rice researchers are separately creating a single-pixel camera, which initially took eight hours to process an image; this new SLM chip could enable it to handle real-time video. Alternatively, a million-pixel array could mean "a million channels of data throughput in your system, with all this signal processing in parallel" and at gigahertz levels, he said.

Xu is careful to note that the new SLM antenna-on-a-chip is not for general computing, but more for optical processing comparable in power to supercomputers. Optical information processing is " not fast-developing right now like plasmonics, nanophotonics, those areas," he admits, "but I hope our device can put some excitement back into that field."

Left: An illustration showing the design of Rice University researchers’ antenna-on-a-chip for spatial light modulation. The chip couples with incident light and makes possible the manipulation of infrared light at very high speeds for signal processing and other optical applications. Right: Crystalline silicon sits between two electrodes in the antenna-on-a-chip.  (Credit: Xu Group/Rice University)

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TELEFUNKEN Semiconductors is expanding its manufacturing capacity at the Roseville, California facility. The first phase expansion plan provides for a 100% increase in wafer processing capability (to 220,000+ 8 inch wafers, or 5,500,000 mask layers per year). This expansion will make TELEFUNKEN’s Roseville facility one of the largest U.S.-based semiconductor foundry services companies in the United States.

Roger Lee, President & CEO, said: “The increased capacity is the result our recent acquisition of the state-of-the-art semiconductor equipment from factories in Japan. Growing our capacity with advanced silicon processing tools and offering a comprehensive suite of strategic foundry services at a competitive cost is an important part of our overall corporate mission. This expansion is a testimony of our strong commitment to, and profound belief in, the high-tech manufacturing and R&D which are so critical to our overall economic eco-system.”

TELEFUNKEN Semiconductors is a specialty analog and mixed-signal foundry services company with ISO Automotive and Industrial Class Certifications. TELEFUNKEN Semiconductors International offers contract semiconductor foundry services at its manufacturing locations in Roseville, California and Heilbronn, Germany.

November 15, 2012 – The LCD TV panel sector closes 2012 with continued tightness due to new process technologies, capacity conversions, a strong market in China, and growing panel sizes. A number of new sizes (39, 50, 58, 60, and 65-in.) enjoyed success and some broke into the mainstream with wide adoption and volume growth.

Looking ahead to 2013, a number of established LCD panel sizes (26, 32, 37, 40-42, 46-47, and 55-in.) will give way to new sizes as TV brands adjust their product mix, calculates NPD DisplaySearch. In a new report, the analyst firm looks at everyone’s 2013 LCD TV panel product mix, and found some big differences between what suppliers offer and what buyers want:

2013 plans for LCD TV set and panel size mix. (Source:
NPD DisplaySearch Quarterly LCD TV Value Chain Report)

While panel makers want to maximize the efficiency of each fab-generation panel size, TV brands are focused on maximizing their market share and revenue. "As panel makers aggressively expand into new sizes, the mismatch is growing more serious," notes Deborah Yang, research director for monitor & TV at DisplaySearch. When the market tightens and push comes to shove, "the push from panel makers is usually stronger than the pull from LCD TV brands," she writes, and "many LCD TV brands will have to adjust their product mixes accordingly.

Here’s her rundown of factors driving that push-pull and how it’ll shake out:

  • Get bigger faster: Panel makers eager to maintain high capacity utilizations (and thus value) have been racing to adopt larger sizes than the TV brands, especially for the biggest sizes (46-60-in. and above).

  • Make bigger cheaper: The very low priced 60-in. set "has changed the ecosystem," Yang writes. Some Chinese TV brands have introduced 58-in. sets to compete with it, while Korea’s Samsung and LG Display are churning out more 60-in. product to compete with Sharp and Vizio. Gen-8 panels are not optimized for that particular size, though, so panel makers are moving to "multi-model glass" from which they can make 60-in and 32-in panels on the same substrate.

  • A shift in smaller panels: Almost everyone (Taiwan, Japan, Korea suppliers) plan to reduce their 32-in. production, which will open the door for Chinese panel makers to grab design wins with international brands.

  • Give a little extra:Most TV brands selling 46/47-in. panels (Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, Sony, Toshiba, Vizio, LG Electronics, and Chinese brands), anticipating a replacement cycle to bigger 50-in. panels, are now adding 50-in. panels.

  • Plug a midsize shortage: A lack of Gen 7 capacity, especially in China, is creating a shortage of 40/42-in. panels. AUO, LG Display, and Chi-Mei Innolux are planning to ramp up 42-in. production in their Gen-8 lines.

  • Move on up: Samsung can add every new size to its product line; Toshiba recently shifted from current mainstream sizes (40, 46, and 55-in.) to new sizes (39, 50, and 58-in.). Sony is considering 42-in. and 39-in. to avoid concentrating too much on 40-in. TV brands in China are coping with a complicated Chinese TV market in which Chinese consumers tend to prefer new products.

November 8, 2012 – Growing use of disposable devices and respiratory monitoring are underpinning growing use of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) used as pressure sensors in medical electronics, according to IHS iSuppli.

Medical electronics is a relatively small slice of the overall market for MEMS pressure sensors. Sales of such devices are seen rising 6%-7% this year to $137.6M, with steady growth continuing through 2016. But they’re in the "high-value" category where suppliers can command much higher average selling prices, so it’s a more profitable and attractive market, points out Richard Dixon, principal analyst for MEMS & sensors at IHS. (Another high-value MEMS category, industrial and military/aerospace, will rake in about $283M this year.)

Worldwide high-value MEMS pressure sensor revenue forecast, in US $M. (Source: IHS iSuppli)

Pressure sensors are poised to become the leading type of MEMS device, generating $1.5B in revenue. In medical applications the technology is found in accurate low-pressure measurement devices. They are particularly seen as a low-cost consumable for invasive applications such as the monitoring of blood pressure. The most common medical pressure sensor is the disposable catheter to monitor blood pressure and micro vascular resistance in the vicinity of the heart. Another type of disposable (and low-cost) MEMS pressure sensor is the infusion pump, used to introduce fluids, medication, or nutrients into a patient’s circulatory system — 60M units of these devices were shipped in 2011.

MEMS pressure sensors also have use in non-invasive applications where they are reusable and cost considerably more. The biggest category in this segment is respiratory monitoring, such as the Continuous Positive Air Pressure (CPAP), used mainly to treat sleep apnea at home. (The US is the main market for such devices, since the treatment is included in healthcare programs, iSuppli notes.) Another application is in oxygen therapy machines, incorporating both a low-pressure and high-pressure sensor, to administer or increase the amount of oxygen in a patient’s blood. This application is growing given the aging population and increase in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Another respiratory-use market, though currently small, is in ventilators to treat lung injuries, asthma, and adult or acute respiratory distress syndrome.

Yet another medical market for MEMS pressure sensors is in measuring vital signs: benchtop or mounted-central-station patient monitors, and multiparameter monitoring devices. Low-end instruments include at least one non-invasive pressure sensor; midrange counterparts comprise one or two such devices, and high-end devices have both non-invasive and invasive pressure sensing, as well as additional respiratory pressure sensing.

One market "in its infancy today" but with high promise is implantable devices such as cardiac monitors, glaucoma monitors, and cranial pressure monitors, iSuppli notes. With a cardiac sensor a patient can be monitored from his/her home, eliminating repeat hospital visits for tests — which would realize huge savings in healthcare costs.

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November 7, 2012 – Deca Technologies has introduced a new chip-scale packaging (CSP) product line offering a rugged, fully molded packaging technology in ball-grid array (BGA) style formats that eliminate the need for laminate substrates.

A year ago Deca launched its inaugural wafer-level chip-scale packaging (WLCSP) technology "derivatives," developed with help from solar tech firm SunPower, promising a combination of speed, low cost, and flexibility. Much of the technology behind its work, though, was customized and deeply proprietary, with few details made available.

Nonetheless, industry response to the WLCSP offering "has been very strong," with multiple customers now in production and many more undergoing qualification, claims Tim Olson, Deca president/CEO.

The company’s new M-Series CSP line, geared for applications where the WLCSP option isn’t a good fit, features an "Adaptive Patterning" design/patterning process that allows features such as vias and redistribution traces to dynamically align to shifting die within an embedded device structure — creating a unique design for each device during the manufacturing process. The company says the methodology integrates a fixed design pattern with an adaptive region to resemble classic wirebond, but realized through a wafer-level build-up flow. With an additional "dimensional inspection" step and processing through an automated design software, a unique design is created for every device within a molded panel, removing the barrier of a cost-effective embedded flow, the company claims.

The M-Series CSP is now sampling "to a limited set of customers," with broader availability planned for 2013, the company says.

Dr. Phil Garrou, SST‘s resident expert and blogger about all things advanced packaging, is digging into the details of Deca’s new CSP and "adaptive patterning" offering — look to his Insights from the Leading Edge (IFTLE) blog for an analysis in the coming days.

November 6, 2012 – A big boost in demand in the US helped ratchet up chip sales growth in September to its highest month-vs.-month rise in over two years, according to the latest data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA).

After being essentially flat in August, global semiconductor sales rose to $24.79 billion in September, up nearly 2% from August. (The gap continues to widen vs. a year ago, though, now at nearly -4%). Sales in the third quarter totaled $74.4B, also up nearly 2% from 2Q12, but down -4.7% from 3Q11.

By regions, growth was most significant in the Americas, which posted its largest M-M increase since May 2010; sales increased across all other regions as well: Asia-Pacific (1.6%), Europe (0.7%), and Japan (0.2%). Compared with a year ago, though, all regions are still underwater, and in fact outside the Americas region the Y/Y decline is widening. On the bright side, the moving three-month average picked up nicely in September, from a minor decline in August to nearly 2% growth in September.

Brian Toohey, SIA president/CEO, credited the semiconductor industry’s "relative steadiness in a choppy global economy," but cautioned that lingering economic headwinds continue to pressure demand.

Barclays analyst CJ Muse notes that month-to-month semi growth flipped back into positive territory for the first time since June — but "all eyes remain on the trajectory for 4Q and outlook for 2013." Chip vendors’ current 4Q guidance is a decline of -1% to -8%, which would wrap up 2012 IC sales at around a -4% decline. "We continue to see a more modest recovery than what we had modeled at the outset of the year," he writes.

Tracking IC demand by application, Muse finds the automotive sector continuing to thin out — revenues up 4% Y/Y, vs. 11%/14%/19% in August/July/June, and unit shipments slowing to just 5% Y/Y vs. 22% in August — though ASPs are stabilizing (-1% Y/Y vs. -9% in August and -17% in July). The communications sector improved (11% Y/Y IC sales, 12% increase in unit shipments) as infrastructure spending seems to be rebounding. Computing continues to be "lackluster" with another -20% decline in revenues and -18% unit sales, though there was a M/M bump partly attributed to the Windows 8 launch. And the Consumer sector rebounded somewhat from a soft back-to-school season with 6% Y/Y sales and 10% higher unit shipments.

November 5, 2012 – The US semiconductor industry now employs almost a quarter of a million workers and added jobs three times faster than the rest of the US economy, according to an analysis of government data by the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Total direct US semiconductor employment is estimated at 244,800.

"Semiconductor workers — a quarter of a million strong and growing — are creating the technology breakthroughs that improve our lives, strengthen our country, and build our future," stated Brian Toohey, SIA president and CEO. "Through their hard work, the US semiconductor industry continues to create jobs and spur growth despite a challenging national economy."

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the semiconductor industry’s manufacturing workforce grew by 3.7% over the previous year, while jobs throughout the broader US economy increased by 1.2%. (It’s worth mentioning that the nation’s employers added 171,000 positions in October, according to just-published data from the US Labor Department.)

All employment figures reflect recently-released 2011 BLS data. Total semiconductor employment data is based on the number of semiconductor employees in the US manufacturing sector as reported by BLS, plus an estimate for the number of semiconductor workers employed by semiconductor fabless firms, which BLS currently counts in the wholesale trade sector. More detailed information is available in the SIA’s Employment Issue Paper.

November 2, 2012 – OLED revenues are currently being driven by display applications (e.g. smartphones), but there’s a new battleground slowly emerging: OLEDs for lighting applications where the technology could offer some advantages in design and efficiency for some applications — if panel makers are willing to make some sacrifices, according to a report from Yole Développement.

Conventional LED technology has paved the way in solid-state lighting, and has a large headstart; OLED has to overcome high costs and current lower efficiency, which are hampering market adoption and penetration. The firm sees OLEDs for lighting making initial inroads in specific lighting applications (automotive, general lighting) and in niche specialty and high-end lighting where it can offer some differentiation in design options. To crack more traditional lighting markets (commercial, office buildings, etc.), however, OLED technology will have to advance the technology and expand across different niche markets to achieve economies of scale and will decrease costs. Yole pegs this happening sometime in 2014, with the rise of larger substrates and better process control.

Pars Mukish, technology & market analyst for LED & OLED at Yole, then foresees an astonishing growth projection for OLED lighting panels: from a $2.8M market this year (2012) to nearly $1.7B by 2020, with general lighting applications representing more than 70% of that business.

OLED panels revenue for lighting applications. (Source: Yole Développement)

That won’t come easy, though. There are a number of materials and OLED structures being explored and in production, tweaked to improve performance and lifetime and also decrease manufacturing costs. Polymer materials for OLEDs continue to struggle (vs. small-molecule OLED materials) in demonstrating their capabilities to lower costs and improve performance to production-acceptable levels. Rigid glass is still the go-to substrate for OLED lighting panels, but work continues on other flexible OLED technologies including roll-to-roll processing, ultrathin glass, and encapsulation options.

To have a chance at fulfilling the aforementioned growth expectations for OLED lighting, OLED panel makers have to quickly identify the winning technology approaches and time-to-market strategies. "New business models are mandatory as the traditional lighting industry will be reluctant to integrate new technology as it could eat away at margins — OLED cost directly impacts the cost of OLED-based luminaires," points out Milan Rosina, Yole’s technology & market analyst for OLED & photovoltaics. The kicker: both the new OLED technology and its integration into production are brand-new to panel makers, who are unlikely to sacrifice existing LED lighting sales and complicate production just to deploy a new technology, he notes.

Thus the key to OLED technology’s future in more mainstream lighting applications, the Yole analysts say, boils down to how and when panel makers can establish vertical integration strategies and figure out how to push the new technology through existing distribution channels. And above all, find that "spark" niche market (or markets) that will pave the way to economies-of-scale, which will open up the conversations to convey opportunities and advantages for OLED technology in general consumer lighting applications.

October 31, 2012 – Applied Materials has announced two new tools for making ultrahigh-definition displays and high-pixel-density screens for mobile devices. One offers a new design for depositing IGZO films for TFTs; the other handles bigger substrates of low temperature polysilicon (LTPS) films to help lower manufacturing costs.

The Applied AKT-PiVot PVD for metal oxide-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) enables a transition from aluminum to copper interconnect bus lines leading to faster pixel response and lower power consumption in LCD TV panels. It overcomes the problem of "mura effect" that reduce display quality, which the company says has hindered metal-oxide technology’s inroads into mainstream LCDs. The "breakthrough" stability of the IGZO films deposited by the tool offers the promise of metal oxide backplanes for OLEDs which would significantly lower their cost as well, the company adds.

(Source: Applied Materials)

A proprietary rotary cathode design employs unique deposition modulation technology to deposit copper layers and form the transistor channel with uniform grain distribution, low resistivity and high thickness uniformity. The technology enables nearly 3× higher target utilization than competitive systems, according to the company, and its rotary targets have >4× longer lifetimes than conventional planar targets.

(Source: Applied Materials)

The Applied AKT-PX PECVD is an extension of the company’s line of PECVD systems to deposit highly-uniform LTPS films on glass substrates. The new tool extends to larger sheets (1.6-5.7m2, or Gen 5 to Gen 8.5 sizes) to help manufacturers increase production and drive down costs, and accelerate the transition of LTPS technology to larger screen sizes for both mobile devices and TVs, the company points out. AMOLED and advanced TFT-LCD displays are switching to the polysilicon-based transistors, which offer higher electron mobility vs. the amorphous silicon (a-Si) used in conventional LCD displays, leading to smaller and faster pixel-controlling transistors, and displays that are brighter, sharper, and use less power — features most desirable for mobile applications.

(Source: Applied Materials)

"The display industry is undergoing one of the most critical technical transitions in the last 20 years — which is being driven by advances in TFT technology," stated Tom Edman, group VP and GM of Applied’s display business group. He added that "customers have reported excellent results with our systems and we already have received multiple orders from major display manufacturers."

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