Executives said they see strong demand for equipment and materials continuing for several years, driven by burgeoning demand for smart phones, tablet computers and flat-panel televisions. On the technology front, companies are touting new equipment for through-silicon via (TSV) production.
This year’s SEMICON West is “the first time since 2007 that we can get together with smiles on our faces,” said Mike Splinter, CEO at Applied Materials Inc. “It comes after two pretty tough years.” The roughly trillion-dollar electronics systems market is on track for 8% growth this year, which Splinter said “is as big a growth rate as I can remember.”
Back in March of this year, Applied said nine new fabs are under construction or in the planning stages. At Tuesday morning’s meeting with press and analysts, Splinter said 14 new fabs are in the works. “This is a very positive trend as our customers gain more confidence. We see 100% growth in the wafer fab equipment market this year, the beginning of a multi-year cycle.”
Also, demand for refurbished 200 mm equipment is rebounding. Charles Pappas, in charge of Applied’s Global Services (AGS) operation, said during the downturn some device makers mothballed equipment used for 0.5 and 0.35 µm production. Those companies are now taking those tools out of warehouses, refurbishing them, and putting them back in service, largely for 0.18 µm and some 0.13 µm production.
Rick Hill, CEO at Novellus Systems Inc., said he believes the equipment industry is set to enjoy a multi-year upturn. “People are worried about Europe, but that hasn’t impacted chip demand,” he said. “What we need to watch is the emergence of the Chinese consumer.”
PC shipments are up 22% this year, said Tim Archer, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Novellus, adding that by 2014 about 80% of all netbooks and notebooks will be purchased by consumers in Asia. Over the next five years, smart phones and media tablets will grow sharply, Archer said, with smart phones accounting for 45% of all mobile phone shipments. That will translate into 85% annual bit growth for NAND flash. The PC refresh cycle, driven in part by adoption of the Windows 7 operating system, will push DRAM bit growth to a 55% annual growth rate for the next few years.
Randhir Thakur, executive vice president of Applied’s Silicon Systems Group (SSG), said he expects SSG to enjoy 140% year-on-year revenue growth this year, with more good times ahead. The smart phone boom will result in an incremental increase of 200,000 wafer starts per month for NAND flash, part of a global incremental increase of 800,000 wspm. Moreover, chips are getting more complex, with an increase of 32 steps for memory and 43 for logic, resulting in extremely strong demand for new equipment.
Both Applied and Novellus introduced a series of new products at SEMICON West aimed at TSVs. The movement to TSVs is being driven both by small form factor products, including smart phones and tablet PCs, and by high-performance systems, including networking equipment.
Future chips will have 5-6 million copper TSVs, according to Fusen Chen, executive vice president of semiconductor system products at Novellus. “Filling those vias without voids is a real challenge. Because of the thermal mismatch between copper and silicon, copper wants to pump out of the vias.”
Novellus, an early pioneer in copper interconnect deposition, aims to leverage its metal deposition experience with Sabre 3D, which Chen said employs a propriety pretreatment technology to accomplish void-free filling. The company also introduced a PVD system aimed a TSV copper sidewall coverage, depositing a thinner seed layer than competing PVD systems.
Applied Materials is ready with its Avila dielectric deposition systems targeted at TSVs and other wafer-level packaging applications, said Sesh Ramaswani, senior director of strategy for the TSV program at Applied. Because the adhesives that bond wafers together are damaged by high temperatures, Applied’s dielectric deposition system operates at <200⁰C.
“In the vias-last approach, customers have to guard against wafer shattering, and they need to protect the adhesive integrity of the bonded wafers by keeping temperatures relatively low,” Ramaswani said. Many of the TSV-enabled ICs will connect graphics processors and graphics memories, where bandwidth requirements are demanding, he added.
Ramaswani said he now counts 14 development lines for TSV processing using 300 mm wafers. While Applied has now largely filled out its own product portfolio for TSV processing, Ramaswani said the larger industry still faces a few areas that need work before TSV tool suites are ready to go. Wafer thinning remains challenging, and methods to bond and transport the extremely thin wafers also need further work, he said.
— David Lammers, SEMICON West Daily News