Worldwide Highlights
03/01/2002
N.A. book-to-bill goes up; chip sales drop in December
The North American book-to-bill ratio rose again for the month of December, reaching 0.78, up from November's 0.73, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Semi).
Semi reports that North American-based equipment companies posted $652.4 million in orders during December 2001, up from November's revised $609.3 million. December's orders total is the largest since August 2001's $714.6 million.
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Worldwide billings in December 2001 were $834.9 million, just higher than November's revised $829.5 million, but lower than October's $895.5 million.
On the chip side, worldwide sales for Dec-ember 2001 totaled $10.18 billion, down 4% from November's $10.6 billion, and down 43.1% from December 2000's $17.89 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. All regions dropped in December.
According to SIA President George Scalise, the December drops aren't much of a surprise. "Except for 1999," he said, "monthly semiconductor sales in December for the past six years have registered a decline just as we are seeing this year."
Front-end capacity utilization dropped in December as well, according to VLSI Research Inc., falling to 69.1% from November's 72.1%.
USA
Nine new companies have joined the X Initiative, a supply chain consortium set up to promote and perfect the new, diagonal interconnect approach to chip design. These latest additions mean that the consortium's ranks have tripled since it was founded in June. Joining the consortium, which now has more than 30 members, are HPL Technologies Inc.; Leica Microsystems AG; RUBICAD Corp.; Sagantec; Sanyo Electric Co.; Silicon Valley Research Inc.; Sycon Design Inc.; Toppan Printing Co.; and Zygo Corp.
Daw Technologies Inc., Salt Lake City, UT, has established a new subsidiary business unit, Daw Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V., in Guadalajara, Mexico. The company has hired Jose de Jesus Cázares G. to manage the new business unit. Most recently, Cázares was responsible for all facilities for ON Semiconductor in Guadalajara, which included a 6-in. wafer fab originally owned by Motorola.
Brooks Automation Inc., Chelmsford, MA, and Unaxis Semiconductors, Zurich, Switzerland, have signed a long-term agreement for the supply of Brooks' integrated cluster tool platforms to Unaxis. Under the terms of the purchasing agreement, Unaxis Semiconductors commits to using Brooks' vacuum cluster tools as the foundation of its new unified platform initiative.
Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates (VSEA), Gloucester, MA, and Lam Research Corp., Fremont, CA, have amicably resolved the patent infringement litigation between them that was filed by Varian in October 1993. Under the settlement agreement, VSEA has granted a nonexclusive license to Lam under the patents in question. In return, Lam will pay Varian $20 million, along with other financial considerations.
Veeco Instruments Inc., Woodbury, NY, and Photronics Inc., Jupiter, FL, have formed a strategic relationship in hopes of accelerating the development of manufacturing technologies for enhanced reticle and next-generation lithography mask technologies. Details of the agreement were not disclosed.
MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., St. Peters, MO, has completed the transition of its center of excellence from a pilot line to a full-scale 300mm silicon-manufacturing site.
MKS Instruments Inc., Andover, MA, is set to acquire ENI, an Emerson company. ENI is a supplier of solid-state rf and direct current plasma power supplies, matching networks, and instrumentation to the semiconductor and thin-film processing industries.
Isonics Corp., Golden, CO, and Silicon Quest International Inc. (SQI), Santa Clara, CA, have agreed to work together to manufacture, market, and sell SOI wafers under the Isonics brand name. Under the terms of the agreement, SQI will manufacture SOI wafers using Isonics' IP, while Isonics will provide SQI with access to certain manufacturing knowledge, will provide technical marketing, and will utilize SQI's facilities to further develop other SOI wafer products.
ECI Technology, East Rutherford, NJ, a provider of cyclic voltametric stripping for plating bath analysis, has completed construction on its worldwide headquarters, which has been expanded by 40%. The new space will be used to increase production capacity and maintain customer service standards. Additionally, ECI's R&D facilities were also expanded.
Therma-Wave Inc., Fremont, CA, has completed the acquisition of Sensys Instruments Corp., a provider of optical metrology systems. Sensys has become a wholly owned subsidiary of Therma-Wave.
Cadence Design Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, and Simplex Solutions Inc., San Jose, CA, have signed a technology-licensing agreement that gives Cadence exclusive distribution rights to the Simplex stand-alone parasitic extraction technology, Fire & Ice QX. Financial terms of the four-year agreement were not disclosed.
Brooks Automation, Chelmsford, MA, recently opened its new training facility, "Brooks University," located at its corporate headquarters. The University enables Brooks' Learning Systems Group to give customers state-of-the-art multimedia instruction, hands-on training, and practical demonstrations of Brooks' hardware and software products.
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Festivities (left) at Brooks included CEO Bob Therrien cutting the ribbon (right).
Amkor Technology Inc., Chandler, AZ, has signed an agreement in which Agilent Technologies Inc. will outsource its printer ASIC assembly requirements to Amkor. Amkor will provide Agilent with a broad range of semiconductor-packaging technology, and will support the company with multisite supply assurance and compliance with a vendor-managed inventory program. Agilent has transferred assembly assets to Amkor.
Tektronix Inc., Beaverton, OR, has been granted a US patent on its digital phase analysis technology, a jitter analysis approach that tests optical communications networks.
Princeton University, the research partner working in conjunction with Universal Display Corp. (UDC), Ewing, NJ, has been issued a new patent for an organic vapor phase deposition process that can provide advantages for the manufacturing of OLED flat panel displays. UDC has the exclusive, worldwide rights to the patent, US no. 6,337,102.
Europe
MEMSCAP, Grenoble, France, has entered into an agreement to acquire Capto AS from SensoNor ASA, for 10 million euros. Capto, a wholly owned subsidiary of SensoNor, specializes in MEMS-based sensor products.
Micronic Laser Systems AB, T&aumi;by, Sweden, has signed an agreement to increase and strengthen its cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems, extending their current agreement by three years. Additionally, Micronic's present exclusive license rights for spatial light modulator technology for direct write and photomask writing with inspection and measurement will be expanded.
Pfeiffer Vacuum, Asslar, Germany, will acquire the activities of Aschaffenburg, Germany-based Multimedia Machinery GmbH, formerly Leybold Systems. Purchase details were not disclosed. The new company will be called Pfeiffer Vacuum Systems GmbH.
IMEC, Leuven, Belgium, is searching for partners in Asia and Japan for joint operations in deep submicron technologies. It is focusing on five categories: design technology for integrated information and communication systems; semiconductor process technology; silicon technology and device integration; microsystems, components, and packaging; and training.
Nikon Precision Europe GmbH (NPE), a supplier of microlithography-manufacturing equipment headquartered in Langen, Germany, has opened a branch in Herzelia Pituah, Israel, to replace the former M.T.S. Technical Services Ltd./Herzliya. There will be no change to the sales structure for the Israeli region, nor to the service personnel and equipment.
Japan
Japanese trading houses Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui & Co. are set to begin mass production of high-tech materials based on nanotechnology, according to local news reports. In September, Mitsui subsidiary Carbon Nanotech Research Institute Inc. plans to start manufacturing carbon nanotubes at the level of 120 tons/year. Mitsubishi expects its joint venture with Mitsubishi Chemical Corp., Frontier Carbon Corp., will start mass production in February of a nanotech-based material called Fullerene, a carbon molecule with a football-shaped structure. The Mitsui subsidiary is to start building a factory next spring in the city of Akishima for the production of the Fullerene material.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Sharp Corp., and Nippon Control System Corp. have joined the Low Energy Electron-beam Proximity Lithography Technology Consortium (LEEPL) led by Tokyo Seimitsu Co. Adding these companies raises the number of member companies to 19. The consortium was established in June 2001 to develop next-generation lithography technology.
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CFD software
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software makes it possible to simulate the effects of fluid flow, heat transfer, and chemical reactions as they apply to the user's equipment, allowing optimization early in the design process. Fluent Inc.'s suite of CFD software is specifically tailored to the needs of the semiconductor industry, predicting design performance in a variety of process applications, including plasma processing, CVD, etch, RTP, and spin coating. For more on this software, see Product News.
The world's second-largest supplier of gallium arsenide has given up trying to make money in the market. Despite its 15% market share, Furukawa Electric will stop making GaAs, blaming intense price competition from new entrants in Taiwan. The company's production has fallen to half its peak levels of some $75 million (¥10 billion)/month. It has reassigned its 60 GaAs engineers to develop lasers for optical communications.
Adotech Engineering, Tokyo, Japan, is entering the semiconductor lithography market with a new 2¥ projection exposure tool for wafer-level packaging applications that exposes an entire 300mm wafer at one pass. The maker of photo exposers for printed circuit boards plans to start selling pass should reduce costs. The company says its tool's small 16cm-dia. lens also keeps costs down, to around $606,000 (¥80 million).
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Technos, Tokyo, Japan, has entered the market for quick-and-dirty metrology. The sensor maker puts one of its sensitive graphics sensors in a CCD camera above the wafer fab line, where it says the combined sensor and camera can check the edges of a 25-wafer cassette full of wafers for defects in about 20 sec. Technos says it plans to expand its marketing of the $265,000 (¥35 million) sensor and computer system to the US and Korea in June.
The Japanese government has decided to invest about $240 million (¥31.5 billion) in a joint national 0.1μm fab, according to Nikkei Microdevices Online, though the Diet still needs to approve the budgeted amount. Now the issue is whether Japan's chipmakers can get it up and running fast enough — by the second half of this year. Giving up on differentiating many products by process technology, chipmakers are focusing on time to market. With customers asking foreign foundries for 0.1μm pilot production in the second half of 2002, proponents figure Japan's foundry will have to be ready before its users all contract with overseas rivals.
Furukawa Co. plans to enter the market for MOCVD tools that grow epitaxial layers of gallium arsenide and indium phosphide. The company says it plans to have a tool ready for sale by the fall, and targets sales of around $8 million the first year. Furukawa worked with a chipmaker to develop a prototype, and plans to install pilot tools this month in its new lab, now under construction in Tsukuba, to finish commercial development. The automated tool, which uses a spinning process for even coating, will be priced around $1.1 million (¥150 million).
Asahi Glass says work with Selete on testing its highly transparent fluorine resin has made 100nm lines with a 250mm layer of resist the typical production thickness, suggesting the material will likely work to make F2 photoresist for the 157nm node. Development sensitivity is <10mj/cm2. Asahi, which is focusing on fluorine chemistry as a new core business, says it is building production facilities to start shipping research samples. It is starting production for pellicles for ArF masks as well.
Asia Pacific
Cadence Design Systems, San Jose, CA, will invest $50 million to establish a direct sales presence in the Chinese market. It has established Beijing Cadence Electronic Technology as a wholly owned subsidiary in Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Shenzhen. The subsidiary will have a staff of about 80. Cadence will also establish R&D centers in China.
Sony plans to shift more assembly to Thailand, increasing capacity at its Thai plant from 39 to 43 million units/month, or from 50 to 80% of its total assembly work. It will transfer work from its Oita plant and convert the advanced assembly facilities in Oita to development work. Depending on demand, Sony may also invest several tens of millions of dollars to increase capacity to 55 million units/month in Thailand by midyear.
China plans to set up a national R&D center for ICs, according to Wang Yangyuan, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and chairman of Shanghai-based Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. The center will be funded by Peking University's Institute of Microelectronics, the Microelectronics Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Shougang Group steel company. The central government and the Beijing municipal government will also contribute funds. The center will be involved in both the research and the manufacture of ICs over the next 3-5 years.
Clarification
In Feb. 2002's Tech News article "Intermediate rinse improves post-etch via cleans," p. 26, the middle and bottom SEMs in the figure were incorrectly labeled. They appear here with the correct explanation.
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"Intermediate rinse cleaning process results were compared to the 5-min continuous clean. Though the chemical dispense time was longer, the continuous clean did not completely remove the post-etch residue (see bottom SEM). In contrast, the intermediate rinse process removed all residue (top SEM), in less time...."