Category Archives: Power Electronics

By Karen Savala, president, SEMI Americas

Companies in the microelectronics manufacturing supply loop see “sustainability” as an important objective in their operations as well as their business strategy.   This trend has progressed far beyond the niche players that traditionally positioned themselves as “green,” and, in our industry, now includes virtually every significant IC manufacturer as well as a broad base of their suppliers. While sometimes seen as a social, legal and regulatory obligation, sustainability is increasingly considered a differentiating factor in global competitiveness relative to the technologies and products being provided.

Sustainable manufacturing is the creation of manufactured products through economically-sound processes that minimize negative environmental impacts while conserving energy and natural resources. Sustainable manufacturing also enhances employee, community, and product safety.  A large and growing number of manufacturers are realizing substantial financial and environmental benefits from sustainable business practices and are driving requirements through the supply chain.

One example cited by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pertains to two of Freescale Semiconductor’s major energy-using systems that were assessed for energy efficiency. Following the assessment, the company implemented projects which included adjustments to water pumping and compressed air systems. As a result, the company’s Oak Hill Fabrication plant in Austin, Texas reduced its annual energy consumption by 28 million kWh of electricity and 26,000 million Btu of natural gas over a three year period, with more than $2 million in annual savings.

Now, key industry trends that influence facilities purchasing decisions pertain to issues such as energy efficiency, pollution control, water conservation, environmental impact, climate protection, conflict minerals in supply chains, as well as the ongoing attention to safety and ergonomics.

Intel Corporation says that technological advancement and environmental sustainability should go hand in hand.   The company incorporates environmental performance goals throughout their operations, seeking continuous improvement in energy efficiency, emissions reduction, resource conservation, and other areas. As delineated on the company’s web site, Intel strives to minimize the environmental impact of its products—from design through disposal—and seeks innovative ways that technology can help address long-term sustainability challenges.  According to their environmental reporting, TSMC requires equipment vendors to consider water, power, and material conservation when designing new generations of equipment, and also requires a long-term blueprint for carbon reduction and future environmental strategy. TSMC also verifies that the energy performance of each tool meets or exceeds conditions set in the procurement contract after tool installation is completed. GLOBALFOUNDRIES also states that environmental sustainability is at the core of high-volume silicon manufacturing.

Recently, SEMI presented its Environment, Health and Safety (EHS) leadership award to Dr. Tzu-Yin (TY) Chiu, CEO of SMIC for minimizing its environmental impact by using resources efficiently, reducing pollution substantially, disposing of hazardous materials responsibly, and upgrading facilities regularly (article: www.semi.org/en/node/49356).

Accordingly, SEMI members see an increasing amount and complexity of EHS performance and reporting requirements from both customers and regulators.  Throughout the electronics supply chain there is increased scrutiny of environmental performance and SEMI has long maintained an EHS program that encompasses the industry’s broadest network of EHS and purchasing professionals dedicated to collaborating on regulatory, manufacturing and fab facilities issues related to environmental impact.

Now we are extending the spotlight on this important area.  In conjunction with SEMICON West and INTERSOLAR North America, SEMI is organizing a four-day Sustainable Manufacturing Forum to share information about the latest technologies, products, and management approaches that promote sustainable manufacturing. The Forum will feature twenty hours of seminars / workshops / roundtable discussions in twelve distinct Sessions as well as many structured opportunities for professional networking.

A special exhibit pavilion will be associated with the Sustainable Manufacturing Forum to showcase companies and new technologies from around the world that address sustainable manufacturing needs for micro-electronics, nano-electronics, photovoltaics, solid state lighting, electronic displays, and other high-tech products. The SEMICON West Sustainable Manufacturing Pavilion will provide direct opportunities for companies to market their value to a wide variety of customers and their supply chains involved in high tech manufacturing.

Further complementing the focus on products that improve sustainable manufacturing, the Sustainable Technologies Award will recognize SEMICON West exhibitors who provide equipment, materials, or services that contribute to the sustainable improvement of the environment.

Together, the Sustainable Forum, Pavilion and Award will support the industry’s imperative for greater environmental, energy, and facilities performance.

I sincerely hope that you will participate and join the new focus on sustainable manufacturing at SEMICON West.

SureCore Ltd has today announced that early testing of its innovative low power SRAM design confirms its simulations that deliver in excess of 50 percent power savings over other SRAM technologies.

The tests prove that the patented circuit architecture developed by SureCore delivers greater than 50% power savings versus industry standard SRAMs. SureCore’s energy-efficient memory was designed through a unique combination of detailed circuit analysis, architectural improvements, and the use of advanced statistical models.

SureCore’s solution is technology independent and is applicable to Bulk CMOS, FinFET and FD-SOI technologies.

Paul Wells, SureCore CEO, said: “This is a tremendous achievement by our engineering team; right first time silicon at 28nm and performance measurements correlating exceptionally well with simulation. This demonstrates the immense capability of our technology and the expertise of our engineers to deliver next generation SRAM. Silicon verification of our design defines a major milestone in our relationships with partners and customers.”

SureCore’s Chairman and industry veteran, Guillaume d’Eyssautier commented: “These early evaluation results are excellent and show that this approach delivers game-changing power performance for emerging low power applications such as the Internet-of-Things. This performance could double battery life in power critical applications and brings the ‘fit-and-forget’ approach to distributed sensor networks a crucial step closer.”

In its official press release, SureCore will target this technology, and its significant efficiency advantages, at the mobile, networking and wearable technology markets, where power is critical.

Today, GaN on Sapphire is the main stream technology for LED manufacturing. GaN-on-Si technology appeared naturally as an alternative to sapphire to reduce cost. Yole Développement’s cost simulation indicates that the differential in silicon substrate cost is not enough to justify the transition to GaN-on-Si technology. The main driver is the ability to manufacture in existing, depreciated CMOS fabs in 6 inch or 8 inch.

“Despite potential cost benefits for LEDs, the mass adoption of GaN-on-Si technology for LED applications remains unclear. Opinions regarding the chance of success for LED-on-Si vary widely in the LED industry from unconditional enthusiasm to unjustified skepticism. Virtually all major LED makers are researching GaN-on-Si LED, but few have made it the core of their strategy and technology roadmap. Among the proponents, only Lattice Power, Plessey and Toshiba have moved to production and are offering commercial LED-on-Si,” explains Dr. Hong Lin, Yole Developpement analyst.

At Yole Développement, analysts believe that although significant improvements have been achieved, there are still some technology hurdles (performance, yields, CMOS compatibility). They consider that if the technology hurdles are cleared, GaN-on-Si LEDs will be adopted by some LED manufacturers, but will not become the industry standard. Yole Développement expects that Silicon will capture less than five percent of LED manufacturing by 2020.

GaN-on-Si technology will be widely adopted by power electronics applications

The power electronics market addresses applications such as AC to DC or DC to AC conversion, which is always associated with substantial energy losses that increase with higher power and operating frequencies. Incumbent silicon based technology is reaching its limit and it is difficult to meet higher requirements. GaN based power electronics have the potential to significantly improve efficiency at both high power and frequencies while reducing device complexity and weight. Power GaN are therefore emerging as a substitution to the silicon based technology. Today, Power GaN remains at its early stage and presents only a tiny part of power electronics market.

“We are quite optimistic about the adoption of GaN-on-Si technology for Power GaN devices. GaN-on-Si technology have brought to market the first GaN devices. Contrary to the LED industry, where GaN-on-Sapphire technology is main stream and presents a challenging target, GaN-on-Si will dominate the GaN based power electronics market because of its lower cost and CMOS compatibility,” says Dr. Eric Virey, analyst at Yole Developpement. Although GaN based devices remain more expensive than Si based devices today, the overall cost of GaN devices for some applications are expected to be lower than Si devices three years from now, according to some manufacturers.

“In our nominal case, GaN based devices could reach more than seven percent of the overall power device market by 2020,” adds Virey. GaN-on-Si wafers will capture more than one point five percent of the overall power substrate volume, representing more than 50 percent of the overall GaN-on-Si wafer volume, subjecting to the hypothesis that the 600V devices would take off in 2014-2015.

GaN-on-Si epiwafer: buy it or make it? Which business will be dominated?

GaN on Si LED

To adopt the GaN-on-Si technology, device makers have the choice between buying epiwafers or templates on the open market, or buying MOCVD reactors and making epiwafer by themselves. Today, there is a limited number of players selling either epiwafers or templates or both on the open market. These players comes from Japan, US and Europe. We have not observed an absolute dominance from one region.

As perceived by device markers, each business model has its pros & cons in terms of IP, technology dependence, R&D investments, and time. According to Yole Développement’s reports, analysts do not expect to see a significant template/epiwafer business emerge for LEDs and consider that LEDs makers would prefer making their epiwafers internally for mass production. For the power electronics industry, the opinion is divided. Yole Dévelopement considers that buying epiwafers could work as long as the price of the epiwafer on the open market keeps decreasing.

Both mobile and stationery high energy storage devices form a key element of electro-mobility and the energy turnaround to sustainable and renewable technologies. Siemens Industry Automation Division and M+W Group have joined forces with the aim to advance the development of production technology for battery manufacturing and develop a complete control technology solution for the mass production of large-size batteries. This includes the automation, monitoring and control of technical processes based on the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) system and a Manufacturing Execution System (MES).

Using Siemens’ established automation components from the production control groups “Simatic” and “WinCC” as a basis, a control technology solution concept will be developed. M+W Group will provide its technical expertise, particularly in terms of optimizing complex production processes, including vertical integration. Siemens will focus on devising a solution for automation and SCADA technology, whilst M+W Group’s key contribution is the application-specific integration of the systems based on the Manufacturing Execution System “Simatic IT.”

The benefits of a superordinate process control solution enable the monitoring, analysis and control of processes from a central control room. In this way, process changes can be measured quickly, and the process realigned utilizing Automatic Process Control (APC) algorithms. Thanks to data management that encompasses all processes, the key influencing factors of the entire value-creation chain can be monitored with the one system and included in the controller. Consistently high and reproducible battery quality can be guaranteed with maximum process reliability.

Lithium-ion batteries are the key components, both for modern hybrid automobiles and purely battery-powered vehicles, as well as the local storage of electricity from fluctuating renewable energy sources. Manufacturing of such batteries implies high value creation. The decisive progress in production technology will not only be achieved by optimizing individual processes and machines, but through well-thought production concepts and technology packages. These do not only reduce the costs, but ensure higher process stability and, in conjunction with that, a consistently high product quality.

A provider of automation and drive technology, Siemens has developed its own product and solution portfolio, especially for battery manufacturers and their engineering suppliers. The portfolio caters for the entire battery production process – from mixing the electrode material through to the finished cells and packs. The solutions encompass components at the field and control level, such as controllers, drives and the communications infrastructure, such as Profinet networks and general industrial software for planning, controlling and monitoring, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) systems, and connecting to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems.

In the area of process and manufacturing automation, M+W Group is a manufacturer-independent solution provider. The associated portfolio extends from advice to implementation right through to commissioning at all levels of business and production processes, from the sensor right through to the supply chain and throughout the life cycle of the plant. M+W Group has been involved in developing, planning and implementing lithium-ion battery factories since 2008, and has implemented a variety of projects for international battery, automotive and research customers since that date. In so doing, the company combines the goal of significant cost reductions in the manufacture of the cells with the most stringent requirements in terms of production quality.

EV Group (EVG), a supplier of wafer bonding and lithography equipment for the MEMS, nanotechnology and semiconductor markets, today announced that it has opened a new, wholly owned subsidiary in Shanghai, called EV Group China Ltd., which will serve as regional headquarters for all of EVG’s operations in China.  The new subsidiary, which houses a local service center and spare parts management facility, will further strengthen EVG’s presence in the region and support the company’s ongoing efforts to improve service and response times to local customers.

As China continues to increase its technology development efforts to become a leading manufacturing region for the semiconductor, compound semiconductor, power device, advanced packaging, light emitting diode (LED) and MEMS industries, EVG has expanded its operations in order to be more effective and efficient in meeting the needs of its growing customer base in the region.  EV Group China Ltd. is an integral part of EVG’s worldwide customer support network, serving as the first point of contact for all service and customer support issues.

“The opening of our new EV Group China subsidiary affords us a great opportunity to continue to deliver on our commitment to provide on-demand, stellar service that our customers have come to expect from EVG.  The significant growth in business that we’ve seen in China, coupled with the continued huge market potential in this region, makes establishing a new subsidiary in China an effective way to continue to build upon our presence here and strengthen support for our local customers and partners,” said Hermann Waltl, executive sales and customer support director at EV Group.

EVG has had an active presence in China for more than a decade.  Success in this region has allowed order intake from Chinese customers to multiply over the past several years.  EVG has now established five wholly owned subsidiaries across the globe.

Following a successful inaugural at SEMICON West last year, the Silicon Innovation Forum (SIF) is set to return to San Francisco this July in conjunction with SEMICON West 2014 (July 8-10 at Moscone Center) and expand to SEMICON Europa 2014, to be held this October for the first time in Grenoble, France (October 7-9, at Alpexpo).

Coordinated by SEMI, the Silicon Innovation Forum is organized by leading strategic investment groups in the global semiconductor industry including: Applied Ventures, Dow Ventures, Intel Capital, Micron Ventures, TEL Venture Capital, BASF Ventures, and Samsung Ventures.

Discussing the needs of and requirements for next-generation microelectronics, and gaining insight to strategies regarding technology, capital, partnership, and collaboration are critical for industry growth. The goal of the Silicon Innovation Forum (www.semiconwest.org/sif) is to connect early-stage technology companies and prospective investors from industry and the investment and venture capital community, providing a platform for companies to demonstrate their technologies and business plans, for investors to identify new business opportunities, and for both communities to explore the technology and business challenges shaping the future of microelectronics.
Companies and investors well-received the first Silicon Innovation Forum, held last year at SEMICON West 2013.

“SEMICON West and the Silicon Innovation Forum gave us entre to the key decision-makers we needed to reach,” said Bob Lloyd, CEO of Bright Spec,  “As a result of the discussions, we now have the right contacts within semiconductor makers in Asia, Europe, and the U.S.” Dadi Gudmundsson, president and CEO of Sensor Analytics, added “We were impressed with the caliber of both the companies selected and the industry/investor attendees. In addition to renewing contacts, we made contact with new investors and industry players that focus on and understand the semiconductor industry. We also successfully used the publicity from our SIF participation to secure business from companies attending SEMICON West.”

Based on the success of the SEMICON West program, SEMI will expand the Silicon Innovation Forum this year, hosting an additional event in conjunction with SEMICON Europa 2014 in Grenoble. The SIF Europe will be included as part of the new “Innovation Village” exhibition and presentation area on the SEMICON Europa show floor, showcasing start-ups and other early-stage technology companies from across Europe.

“Innovation and new ideas need investment, but traditional venture capital and private funding of advanced semiconductor technology development has significantly declined in recent years, threatening the future of microelectronics innovation and the industry as a whole,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI. “We are excited to renew and expand the Silicon Innovation Forum concept in the United States and Europe and focus on restoring investment in technology innovation and growing business through dynamic engagement with the investment community.”

For more information on the Silicon Innovation Forum held at SEMICON West, contact Ray Morgan, SEMI Americas at [email protected] or visit www.semiconwest.org/sif. For more information on the Silicon Innovation Forum Europe (www.semiconeuropa.org/Segments/InnovationVillage), contact Anne-Marie Dutron, SEMI Europe-Grenoble, at [email protected].

Silicon Labs today announced the purchase of the full product portfolio and intellectual property of California-based Touchstone Semiconductor Inc., an early-stage power management technology company and provider of high-performance, low-power analog IC products. Silicon Labs purchased the assets of Touchstone for $1.5 million.

Touchstone’s low-power analog products and technologies complement Silicon Labs’ embedded portfolio of energy-friendly microcontrollers (MCUs), wireless products and sensors for the Internet of Things (IoT) market. The transaction adds almost 70 analog products to Silicon Labs’ portfolio including op-amps, current sense amplifiers, low-power analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), comparators, power management ICs, timers, and voltage detectors and references. When combined with Silicon Labs’ existing embedded portfolio, these high-performance analog products enable new levels of power savings in battery-operated systems, which are becoming more prevalent in the IoT market. Silicon Labs will continue to sell the Touchstone IC products under the Silicon Labs name and plans to expand this product line going forward.

“As the IoT market expands exponentially, developers require an ever-widening array of low-power MCUs, wireless ICs, sensors and power management technologies for battery-powered end-nodes,” said Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Silicon Labs. “IoT end-node designs require the utmost in energy efficiency to maximize battery life without compromising performance. This asset purchase adds valuable energy-saving analog technology and products to enhance our embedded portfolio for the IoT.”

Renesas Electronics Corporation today unveiled the RX64M Group of microcontrollers (MCUs), its first product in the flagship RX Family of 32-bit MCUs to be fabricated in a 40nm process. Based on the new RXv2 CPU core, which was announced in November 2013, the new MCU Group consists of 112 products running up to 120 megahertz (MHz) with zero wait state from the high-speed embedded flash memory and feature both the high-speed real-time performance as well as large memory capacities required by industrial applications and network equipment. The new MCUs offer system designers a path to quickly and efficiently develop high-performance, low-power industrial equipment that supports a wide range of communication functions.

“As more and increasingly diverse Internet of Things applications emerge, designers are looking at smarter embedded design to achieve the desired energy efficiencies and performance,” said Semir Haddad, Director of Product Marketing, Renesas Electronics America. “Leveraging the RXv2 CPU core, the new RX64M MCUs offer system designers working with Smart Factory and Smart Building applications a high-end MCU solution to address evolving power, performance and memory demands for their markets.”

With the expansion of the connected society and Internet of Things (IoT) markets, there has been rapid growth in diverse IoT-related products such as connected network and industrial equipment used in factory automation and building automation, driving the need for greater CPU computing performance, improved real-time response, and ever lower power.

Related new: The Internet of Things is poised to change everything, says IDC

Smart Factory and Smart Building applications are also driving the demand for increased memory capacities, as the deployment of Ethernet, USB, and a wide range of other communications functions becomes more prevalent in these environments, to support all levels of factory communication from the plant level to the device level. Increased memory capacity will also play a key role in supporting further miniaturization of application equipment, and to secure software from unauthorized parties.
Improved development efficiency has also become a critical issue to support the move toward reduced development periods even as the number of process steps and costs from development through testing for software and hardware with expanding capacities and scales increases. Renesas designed the new RX64M Group of MCUs products to address these issues.

Part of the RX Family, which covers a wide range of applications, from mid-range to high-end products, the RX64M MCUs provide a high-end MCU solution for applications that require the higher performance, on-chip memory and lower power. Since the new MCUs maintain compatibility with the existing product line, system designers working with current RX products can migrate easily to these new MCUs. Also, system designers who adopt the RX64M MCUs or other members of the RX family can take advantage of a powerful set of tools that support both software and hardware development, and these tools can contribute to reducing the number of steps in the development and testing process and to reducing total costs.

The adoption of a leading-edge 40nm process provides not only increased on-chip memory capacities, but also lower power consumption and higher CPU performance.

The RX64M Group of MCUs are fabricated in a leading-edge 40nm process. Not only these MCU embedded up to 4 MB of the industry’s fastest flash memory (120 MHz operation with no wait states) and up to 512 KB of SRAM, but at the same time they also reduce operating power consumption by 40 percent compared to the earlier Renesas RX MCUs. Furthermore, by adopting the new-architecture RXv2 core, these devices will achieve CPU performance of a total of 504 Coremark, which is 1.6 times that of the previous generation devices and defines a new threshold for embedded MCU systems in overall. Thus the RX64M devices improve both real-time performance and low-power performance, and can contribute to cost reductions by reducing the need for external memory.

Renesas intends to continue development of high-functionality and high-performance MCUs for the industrial equipment and network equipment markets, which are expected to grow rapidly along with the progress in the IoT field.

International Rectifier, IR, today announced that the company has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore (IRSG).

Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR’s internal fabs and foundry partners. The facility, which will employ approximately 135 people in the initial phase, will process a variety of products, including the company’s latest generation power MOSFETs and IGBTs.

“IRSG will help improve IR’s flexibility and production cycle time by providing advanced wafer processing for wafers manufactured internally or at our foundry partners. Furthermore, IRSG will allow IR to consolidate final wafer processing in close proximity to our major assembly locations,” stated IR’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Oleg Khaykin.

“IRSG is a welcome addition to Singapore’s power electronics industry, which continues to be a key growth area. Beyond being a trusted manufacturing location in Asia, IRSG will be able to tap on Singapore’s strong base of talent and reputable research institutes and for R&D collaboration opportunities,” said Terence Gan, Director for Electronics, Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB).

International Rectifier Corporation is a developer of power management technology. IR’s analog, digital, and mixed signal ICs, and other advanced power management products, enable high performance computing and save energy in a wide variety of business and consumer applications.

Analysts at ReportsNReports forecast the Global Power Discrete market to grow at a CAGR of 8.43% over the period 2013-2018. According to the report, the growth of the Global Power Discrete market is driven by several factors, including the high demand for discrete IGBTs. Discrete IGBTs enable increased efficiency in electronic devices ranging from consumer electronics to several high power electronic applications. They play a major role in the technological advancement of power electronics.

Further, the report states that the demand for power discrete semiconductors is dependent on the growth of various customer segments including the EV/HEV, Renewable Energy, Industrial Motor Drive, and LED Lighting segments. In recent years, the Industrial Motor Drive segment has been witnessing a slowdown because of several factors such as the sluggish economic recovery in the US, the natural disasters occurring in Japan, and the Eurozone debt crisis.

The report recognizes the following companies as the key players in Global Power Discrete Market: Fairchild Semiconductor International Inc., Infineon Technologies AG, Mitsubishi Electric Corp., STMicroelectronics N.V., and Toshiba Corp.

Other vendors mentioned in the report are Fuji Electric Co. Ltd., International Rectifier, ON Semiconductor Corp., Renesas Electronics Corp., and Vishay Intertechnology Inc.

SiC power semiconductors comprise SiC MOSFET, SiC JFET, SiC BJT, and SiC Schottky diodes. Currently, SiC is widely used in the development of power semiconductors; however, GaN is a wide bandgap material that offers similar performance benefits to SiC but has greater cost-reduction potential, and the market for GaN power semiconductors is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years. In addition, GaN can be made available using existing silicon substrates, which can enable mass production and reduced cost. Power semiconductors using next-generation materials such as SiC and GaN are characterized to have lower energy loss, high-speed switching, and higher heat resistance than conventionally-used silicon. The adoption of SiC and GaN power semiconductors is expected to witness a significant increase, particularly in the EV/HEV and Industrial Motor Drive segments.

Global Power Discrete Market 2014-2018, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the EMEA and the APAC regions, and the Americas; it also covers the Global Power Discrete market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.