Asia Focus

06/01/2001

Canon brings big company muscle to the SOI market with yet another technology
With chipmakers starting to show some signs of serious interest in silicon-on-insulator wafers, Canon, Tokyo, Japan, is stepping up its efforts to promote its alternative bonded-wafer technology, using water jet cutters and hydrogen annealing instead of CMP.

Canon has had this SOI technology for awhile, and major chipmakers have evaluated its wafers. But, with more signs of life in the market, the company has opened a marketing office in the US. Canon says it's ready to expand production when demand warrants. It generated $19 million in free cash flow last year, more than total revenues at its $15 million SOI rivals Ibis Technology Corp., Danvers, MA, and Soitec Technologies, Bernin, France.

Though silicon wafers are a whole new field for the big maker of cameras, copiers, and steppers, Canon has huge plans for the new business. Company executives say at presentations to investors that they plan to invest $2.5 billion in new businesses over the next three years. SOI is one of only three new ventures they're touting, along with digital x-ray machines and surface-conduction electron emitter displays. The company is targeting $30 billion in revenues from these new products by 2005, or 10% of total company sales.

To expand its wafer-marketing muscle, Canon is looking for a partner in the wafer business. "We realize collaboration with a wafer maker is needed," says Ken Yoshikawa, Canon's new man in charge of SOI marketing in the US, based in Lake Success, NY. "But we have to think about many things before signing an agreement. We have also started collaboration with device makers on things closer to production than R&D."

Canon claims its epitaxial transfer process offers higher quality than competitors with its epitaxial silicon surface. The company says water jet cutting, etching, and annealing are cheaper and better than CMP for making uniform thin layers on bigger wafers.

"We have some confidence about our quality," says Yoshikawa. "SIMOX offers a very low price so far, but the price is not always based on cost. Lately, the bonding method is replacing SIMOX. In the early phase, people tried to use low-cost wafers, but they may have difficulties with yield and have to replace them with other wafers."

Asia Briefs
Yamatake Corp., Tokyo, Japan, signed new agreements to strengthen joint R&D with Ball Semiconductor, Allen, TX. Under the arrangement, Yamatake will invest $1.6 million in the joint development and will retain ownership of intellectual property. Yamatake sees the development of spherical semiconductors as a key to next-generation sensors, and is working now with Ball to produce a wireless temperature sensor. Yamatake and Ball made their first agreement to jointly develop a wireless temperature sensor in December of 1999. Yamatake has sent four engineers to Ball's headquarters for 18 months to accelerate the development of potential applications for the semiconductors.

Trecenti Technologies, Hitachi-Naka City, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan, said it has started commercial volume production of semiconductor LSIs on 300mm wafers. Tricenti (which means 300 in Latin) is a joint venture between Hitachi (60%) and UMC (40%) for 300mm production at Hitachi's Hitachi-Naka plant and claims to be the first 300mm fab operating in Japan. Trecenti announced its first successful trial fabrication of SRAMs on 300mm wafers late last year. This announcement, however, is for commercial production. Initial production capacity is said to be 2,000 300mm wafers/month now, with a full capacity expected late this summer of 7,000/month.

Korea's semiconductor equipment and materials market is expected to weaken this year, according to the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association. The semiconductor equipment market is expected to lower to $2.2 billion this year, from $4 billion last year, the association said.

Japanese firms band together for green standards
Nine major Japanese electronics companies plan to come up with a set of common environmental standards for their materials suppliers by next spring.

Sony, Canon, NEC, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Sharp, Ricoh, and NTT have all reportedly signed onto the plan, which could give it enough critical mass to become the industry standard for Japan.

These Japanese companies have started discussions aimed at unifying their green procurement standards, in order to be able to develop environmentally responsible products more quickly, and get them to market faster, according to a Sony spokesperson.

Sources say Hitachi now requires suppliers to meet 1380 criteria for each chemical it uses, and the other companies have their own equally complex but entirely different systems. Sharp has 105 criteria for each material, Ricoh has 84, and Canon has 52.

Now, said Sony, since each individual user company has its own set of rules for choosing chemicals to meet green standards, suppliers go through a great deal of trouble and expense to show how they meet these criteria. It can take them up to a month to document and report on how each material meets the different requirements.

To alleviate these problems, user companies want to come up with a common set of criteria for suppliers to show they meet the requirements. The new consortium wants to collect this information into a database and publish it with the hope that it will become the basis for industrywide standards.

NEC reorganizes DRAM, LCD production
In addition to gradually shrinking its DRAM production in China and shifting to logic LSI manufacturing there, NEC Corp., Tokyo, Japan, will integrate its DRAM production in Japan into NEC Hiroshima, Higashi-Hiroshima, by March 2002. The NEC/Hitachi joint DRAM manufacturing and marketing company, Elpida Memory, Tokyo, is constructing a 300mm DRAM volume manufacturing plant on the site of NEC Hiroshima.

NEC will also withdraw from conventional LCD display manufacturing in 2002, and will instead invest in making plasma displays. The company will concentrate on small displays for mobiles and larger ones (18 in. or more) at its subsidiary in Akita.