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June 14, 2012 — Dontech released the VCG-Series glass filters, formed with next-generation glass fabrication and thin-film vacuum deposition technology to provide exceptional optical transparency and environmental durability in displays.

Dontech’s precision glass optical filters are incorporated in demanding military, medical, industrial and avionic applications. 

The VCG-Series filters optimize display clarity and high ambient light contrast (enabling sunlight readability). Filters can be fabricated from chemically strengthened soda lime (etched or polished), borosilicate, fused silica, and optical glasses (e.g., Schott nBk-7).

VCG-Series filter customization options include high-energy vacuum deposited coatings such as antireflective, transparent conductive (EMI shielding, transparent heaters), and infrared (IR) or near infrared (NIR) blocking. Additional features include custom screen printing, polarizers, precision machining, and conductive optical grids (woven, etched and printed).  Dontech’s glass filters can be laminated or monolithic, clear or colored.

Filter sizes range from less than 1” to greater than 42” diagonal, as stand-alone display cover glass or integrated into a higher-level assembly. VCG-Series filters can be assembled into frames or bezels, or optically bonded to LCDs or touch screens by Dontech using its proprietary IMO-bond optical bonding process.

Dontech, Inc. is an ISO-9001:2008 certified designer and manufacturer of optical filters, coatings, and enhanced display solutions for military, medical, industrial, and avionic applications. Web: www.dontech.com.

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June 13, 2012 — The ConFab, Solid State Technology’s invitation-only meeting of the semiconductor industry, hosts sessions on the semiconductor industry’s blockbuster topics impacting advance technology manufacturing, such as the transition to 450mm wafers and the increasing importance of 3D integration and advanced packaging. But this year, the conference also allocated time to a discussion revolving around legacy manufacturing. Unlike finFETs and 450mm wafer fab, the challenges faced by mature production facilities are seldom in the headlines. However, as Sanjay Rajguru, director at SEMATECH/ISMI, pointed out, over half of the current fab capacity comes from facilities that are more than 10 years old.

The challenges faced by older production facilities include equipment obsolescence; skills obsolescence; availability of parts, software, and support; and equipment capability extension and tool re-use. Maintaining “More than Moore” fabs is a major concern to semiconductor manufacturers as these operations reach 20 or even 30 years old.

At the ConFab 2012 Executive Roundtable, representatives from Sematech/ISMI, IDMs, OEMs, equipment dealers, and industry consultants gathered to have an open discussion on concerns, roadblocks, and possible solutions.

ISMI has spent over a year looking at the problems fabs are encountering due to obsolescence. The issues are not limited to equipment. Fab operators are finding it difficult to obtain qualified parts through the traditional supply chain. Many of the field service support staff with 200mm and older wafer experience are retiring or moving on to more advanced equipment areas. There are also situations being reported of discontinued materials. In some cases, new materials mean re-qualifying the whole process.

One of the first questions brought to the table was what is going on in the supply chain? The main issue is who’s going to do what? What role does the OEM play when a tool needs maintenance or a replacement part? Most fab operators contact the OEM first. If the OEM no longer provides full support for that tool or part, what options does the fab have available?

Of the OEMs in the room, the problem of obsolete parts ranged from ‘It’s becoming a major issue’ to ‘It’s a nuisance’ to ‘We do not have a problem’. In addition to obsolete parts, other problems included missing support on software and availability of schematics.

Many IDMs with legacy fabs support their own machine shops. They can build their own parts or they have the capability to use third-party suppliers. Traditionally, handling systems, chillers, and pumps could be repaired internally but even these parts are becoming a problem. Even with internal resources, some of these parts are becoming harder to repair or replace.

IDMs have implemented several measures to meet their growing needs. To address the lack of technical knowledge, companies are holding their own training classes. Retired field service technicians are coming out of retirement to teach classes in order to pass on their knowledge base. Good lines of communication between IDM and OEM are essential. Some companies are using ‘communities’ such as ISMI and FOA (Fab Owners Association) to share information. To help out with parts replacement, the FOA has approximately 22 members and these member companies maintain a ‘common stock room’ to help each other in times of need.

What are some of the challenges providing continuous support?

Consolidation amongst equipment companies has created challenges in keeping up with all the types of equipment that are installed. Several companies no longer exist but the equipment is still being used and the IDMs expect OEMs to continue to support those tools even though the original vendor no longer exists. There are some tools that maintain a very small installed base but require a very high number of parts. One part may be consumed only once every three to four years. It is difficult to serve a customer who calls once every 2-3 years and needs only one part. There could be 500 known parts, 70 are obtainable, 430 require research. It is not cost effective for the OEM to maintain detailed information on every part.

What can the OEMs do to help?

As previously mentioned, open lines of communication are very helpful. How are OEM’s notifying customers about EOL (end of life) parts? Mass emails do not always work. How can the notification process be improved? How far back can an OEM go and still manage the system?

Some OEMs have programs to support legacy tools. An analysis is usually done to determine what is a cost-effective solution. That is compared to an open market alternative. Many customers are finding third party sources offering lower priced solutions.

OEMs do have ‘certified’ programs for those companies that are willing to pay a nominal fee in order to deal in qualified parts and service. But the industry cycles are hard on everyone. Some of the third party relationships do not last. It is difficult to find reliable, qualified partners.

Some OEMs offer a help line to address quick turnaround inquiries. TSIA (Technical Services Industry Association) provides studies on cost of delivery services in a technology environment. There are several options including onsite, email, chat rooms, and remote.

Conclusion

There were many topics that were not covered in the hour and a half allocated for this session. But the ConFab roundtable on legacy fab issues opened the door for further action and discussion. A better understanding of the costs, impact and positions from all players in the supply chain will help make the whole supply chain more effective and prosperous for all participants.

Bill Ross is a project manager at ISMI. Watch a video interview with him from The ConFab 2012.

Joanne Itow is Managing Director, Manufacturing for Semico Research.

June 13, 2012 — StratEdge Corporation, high-performance semiconductor package maker for microwave, millimeter-wave, and high-speed digital devices, launched the LL family of high-power laminate packages. The LL leaded laminate copper-moly-copper (CMC) base packages dissipates heat from high-power compound semiconductor devices, such as gallium nitride (GaN), gallium arsenide (GaAs), and silicon carbide (SiC) chips.

These packages handle applications through 6GHz, suiting use in RF radios for communications, radar, and high-power millimeter-wave signals.

The series includes two laminate power packages, both with a ratio of 1:3:1 CMC, a good thermal match for alumina-based materials and a GaN chip. StratEdge offers both flange and flangeless styles to accommodate manufacturing processes to either bolt down or solder the package. The LL802302 is 20.32 x 9.91mm with 2 leads and a raised lid with an epoxy seal. This is a flange package with a bolt hole on each end so the package can be bolted to the printed circuit board (PCB). The LL362302 is a flangeless, fully hermetic version of the LL802302 package, with a flat ceramic lid. Hermeticity is especially critical in aerospace and defense applications.

"StratEdge’s new laminate power packages solve thermal problems encountered when using GaN devices," explained Tim Going, StratEdge president. "The excellent thermal conductivity of the CMC base enables use of GaN devices in high power applications, and the flange package facilitates manufacturing."

IMS2012 is taking place in The Palais de Congres, Montreal, Canada, June 19-21, 2012. StratEdge will debut the new package family at booth #1625.

StratEdge Corporation designs, manufactures, and provides test and assembly services for a complete line of high-performance semiconductor packages operating from DC to 50+ GHz for the high speed digital, mixed signal, broadband wireless, satellite, point-to-point/multipoint, VSAT, and test and measurement industries, as well as aerospace stripline filters. Website: www.stratedge.com.

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If you want to quickly find and fix the source of a process excursion, you have to be able to capture the right defects, and review and classify them efficiently. Electron-beam review is always the rate-limiting step in this process; thus it’s worth investing effort in improving the odds of identifying defects that are going to lead to discovery of the source of the excursion. Even at the blinding speed of up to12,000 defects per hour (the state of the art for an e-beam review tool), most fabs can’t justify the time to review every defect on every wafer. How do you make sure you’re reviewing the yield killing defects and not wasting time reviewing nuisance events?

On critical layers, optical wafer inspection has to be run very “hot,” that is, with very high sensitivity settings, in order to capture the smallest, lowest-contrast defects that may affect yield. The problem is that hot inspections frequently capture not only defects of interest (DOI), but also nuisance events, such as line-edge roughness or defects on dummy pattern.  Unfortunately, nuisance events tend to strongly dominate the defect count in a hot inspection. When it comes time to review the defects to determine their source, choosing a random, unbiased sample may lead to reviewing a very small number of DOI—perhaps too small to represent the DOI population accurately.  You might not even be lucky enough to sample all DOI defect types, if nuisance defects represent a large fraction of the defects captured. The result is a misleading defect pareto—which can result in a delay in getting a new process to yield, or even a delay in getting a new chip to market.

There are two main approaches to skew the defect pareto away from nuisance events and toward DOI: (1) reduce the percent nuisance capture on the inspection system and (2) identify nuisance events after inspection and remove them from the review sample. A third approach would be to identify nuisance defects during e-beam review, but that strategy would be the least efficient. Nuisance capture on the inspection system can be reduced by selecting an appropriate combination of inspection wavelengths, apertures and polarizations that preferentially captures DOI over nuisance. Having an inspection system that offers the flexibility to manipulate defect type capture can be very effective at reducing nuisance capture during inspection. This sort of approach has been used for many device generations and over many generations of inspection systems for nuisance reduction.

What’s new is the ability to use design information to either skip “nuisance areas” of the die during inspection—or, after inspection, to remove defects residing in nuisance areas from the review sample. The former strategy is called micro-care area inspection; the latter is called design-aware nuisance filtering.

One of our technology-leading customers recently used micro-care area inspection to focus a high sensitivity inspection on patterns comprised of dense, thin lines. An automatic “care area” generator was used to search through the design file of the die, to draw hundreds of thousands of small care areas wherever dense, thin lines occurred (Figure 1). Only these care areas would be inspected. Together the care areas represented less than 5% of the die area normally inspected—but defects occurring in these areas had a high probability of being yield killers. Severely restricting the inspected areas dramatically increased capture of the yield-killing bridge defects and reduced the nuisance defect population to nominal levels.

 

Design-aware nuisance filtering was used to help two prominent foundries reduce nuisance defects on a silicon-germanium (SiGe) layer. SiGe is used in some high K metal gate processes to improve device performance. The problematic nuisance defect on the SiGe layer represented a small change in shape to the edge of the polygon—a variation that had no apparent effect on the device. After the defect team optimized the wavelength/aperture/polarization combination for best capture of DOI, traditional nuisance filtering, based on the attributes of the defect signal during inspection, was able to reduce the nuisance defect count by an order of magnitude. However, nuisance events still dominated the captured defect population, at a rate of 90%. At this point, design-aware nuisance filtering was used to associate the locations of the nuisance defects to a small number of pattern types. When all inspection events associated with these pattern types were eliminated, the DOI contribution to the defect pareto advanced from 10% to 85%.  Two SiGe nuisance areas are indicated in Figure 2 with solid yellow lines.

 

Strategically manipulating the defect sample reviewed by the e-beam review system so that it contains a high percentage of DOI has become necessary to creating a defect pareto that quickly and clearly directs defect engineers to the source of the excursion. Techniques like micro-care area inspection and design-aware nuisance filtering can be valuable tools for skewing the defect pareto toward yield-killing defects. For further information about creating an actionable defect pareto, please see last month’s Process Watch article, “The Dangerous Disappearing Defect.”

Rebecca Howland, Ph.D., is a senior director in the corporate group and Ellis Chang, Ph.D., is Nuisance Czar in the wafer inspection division at KLA-Tencor.

Authored by experts at KLA-Tencor, Process Watch articles focus on novel process control solutions for chip manufacturing at the leading edge.

Check out other Process Watch articles: “The Dangerous Disappearing Defect,” “Skewing the Defect Pareto,” “Bigger and Better Wafers,” “Taming the Overlay Beast,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Reticle,” “Breaking Parametric Correlation,” “Cycle Time’s Paradoxical Relationship to Yield,” and “The Gleam of Well-Polished Sapphire.”

 

June 11, 2012 — After high growth and limited supply in 2010, then a price slump and oversupply in 2011, the light-emitting diode (LED) sapphire substrate supply should find a supply/demand balance in 2012, shows Displaybank. The overall LED industry is showing positive signs of recovery due to the decreased price of LED lighting and LED lighting support policies from governments.

Figure 1. LED substrate use by region, year (Thousands of mm). Source: "LED-use Ingot, Substrate Industry Analysis & Market Forecast" Report, February 2012, Displaybank.

2012’s balance of demand and supply is based on the downward-stabilized price of sapphire wafers. More ingot suppliers are coming online, with new entrants in Korea and China, providing a broader supplier base for LED makers.

Figure 2. LED substrate price trends by wafer size, monthly. Source: "LED-use Ingot, Substrate Industry Analysis & Market Forecast" Report, February 2012, Displaybank.

Large corporations are becoming sapphire ingot suppliers in Korea, which could push changes at existing ingot makers. For instance, the vertical integration of LED upstream and downstream industries was completed as Samsung Electronics merged Samsung LED. As a result, Korea is expected to have competitiveness ranging from LED ingot to the industrial sector of all LED lighting and application product areas by cost reduction and capacity expansion, Displaybank reports.

In China, new LED-related companies continue to open, with LED support policies from the Chinese government. Existing companies are also aggressively expanding their capacities. China is expected to be the biggest supply and demand market for LEDs, especially as consumers of LED lighting.

Displaybank analyzed overall status and forecast regarding the sapphire ingot industry through manufacturing technology and processing of the ingot used most widely as LED-use ingot, major ingot makers’ status and new companies’ trend, capacity analysis by maker, market price forecast and demand prediction, in “LED-use Ingot, Substrate Industry Analysis & Market Forecast.”

This report was written for LED ingot and substrate companies, Epi-wafer/chip-related companies, package companies, companies interested in opening LED application business, and those belonging to LED-related parts and materials sectors. Learn more at http://www.displaybank.com/_eng/research/report_view.html?id=733&cate=8

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June 8, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Freescale Semiconductor (NYSE:FSL) named Gregg A. Lowe president and CEO, effective immediately. Lowe joins Freescale from Texas Instruments (TI, NASDAQ:TXN), where he was SVP and manager of the Analog business.

The FSL board appointed board member J. Daniel McCranie as non-executive chairman of the board of directors as part of the transition. Rich Beyer, who previously served as Freescale’s chairman and CEO, will continue to serve on the company’s board of directors to ensure a smooth transition. Beyer has been with the company since 2008.

“Beyer’s considerable management and leadership skills drove the company through a successful transformation, creating a solid foundation to enable future profitable growth and we look forward to his continued involvement with the board,” said McCranie, noting also Lowe’s long experience in the semiconductor industry.

Lowe joined TI’s field sales organization in 1984, with a focus on automotive application growth. In 1990, he led the European automotive sales force, managing teams and customer relationships in France, Germany, Italy, England and Spain. In 1994, he began to manage TI’s Microcontroller organization, then led the Application Specific Integrated Circuit organization, overseeing a worldwide team with design centers and customers on each continent. In 2001, he moved to the Analog business to manage High Speed Communications and Controls. Later that year, Mr. Lowe became manager of the High Performance Analog business unit with responsibility for TI’s high-performance data converter, amplifier, power management and interface integrated circuits.

Lowe earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1984 from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. He later received the university’s Career Achievement Award to recognize his accomplishments in the community and within the semiconductor industry. He graduated from the Stanford Executive Program at Stanford University.

Freescale Semiconductor is a global leader in embedded processing — microprocessors and microcontrollers to sensors, analog integrated circuits and connectivity — solutions for automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. Learn more at http://www.freescale.com

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June 7, 2012 — Semiconductor stockpiles held by chip suppliers increased during Q1 2012, but the rise in inventory for a second straight quarter was driven by the anticipation of higher demand from customers, according to an IHS iSuppli Inventory Insider Market Brief report.

Figure. Semiconductor supplier inventory as a percentage of revenue. SOURCE: IHS iSuppli Research.

Total semiconductor inventory as a percentage of suppliers’ revenue ticked up to 50.0% in Q1 from 47.8% in Q4 2011 and 46.1% in Q3 2011. But while inventory grew during the last two quarters, the reasons behind the expansions for each of the two periods and what they implied for the market couldn’t be more different.

“In the fourth quarter, inventory rose among suppliers because of uncertain macroeconomic conditions such as the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, leading to an overall decline in the worldwide demand for semiconductors,” said Sharon Stiefel, semiconductor inventory analyst at IHS. “And while inventory rose during the fourth quarter for semiconductor suppliers, chip stockpiles fell at the same time among customers, indicating a paucity in demand. In contrast, the higher inventory numbers among semiconductor suppliers for the first quarter of 2012 represent a signal of better things to come. There was an increasing level of inventory both among chip suppliers and customers, indicating that both the supply and demand sides of the business believe that the environment in the electronics market has turned positive.”

A look at customer inventory trends in Q4 2011 reveals a broad-based decrease in stockpiles among major semiconductor purchasers. Customer inventory held by the electronics distributor segment fell to 36.9% of revenue in Q4, down from 41.7% sequentially. The same pattern of decreasing inventory replicated across various semiconductor customer segments during the same period: from 26.7% to 24.9% for EMS providers; from 21.5% to 20.8% for original equipment manufacturers in the storage segment; and from 13.8% to 9.6% for handset makers.

In Q1 2012, however, suppliers saw order bookings fill up, allowing them to gain greater visibility into the supply chain. Book-to-bill ratios are also close to reaching parity, indicating more balanced supply-and demand dynamics. Such developments, combined with anticipated higher demand for the second quarter, led to a rise in inventory as a percentage of supplier revenue during the first quarter, giving the market fresh reason to cheer.

Despite the improvement in market conditions, some problem areas do persist, however, especially in the memory segment. Semiconductor makers commonly bring too much capacity on-line to meet rising demand. This cycles into softer demand and an inventory overhang and inability to reduce production quickly enough, creating oversupply.

Memory companies, in particular, are historically prone to larger swings in oversupply and undersupply in response to shifting end demand, making them potentially vulnerable.

The analog semiconductor segment is another potential problem area, because the sector is exposed to markets that are traditionally slower to rebound from cyclical downturns.

As overall semiconductor sales increase over the course of this year, the ratio of inventory to sales increasingly should come into alignment. The anticipated return to moderate demand will also give semiconductor suppliers extra confidence their inventory levels.

IHS (NYSE: IHS) is a leading source of information, insight and analytics in critical areas that shape today’s business landscape. Internet: www.ihs.com.

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June 7, 2012 – BUSINESS WIRE — Veeco Instruments Inc. (Nasdaq: VECO) added 3 new models of its TurboDisc metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) systems for high brightness light emitting diode (HB-LED) production: TurboDisc MaxBright M and MHP, and TurboDisc K465i HP.

MaxBright M is a modular and more compact version of the multi-reactor system, with up to 15% smaller footprint. Its layout configuration flexibility accommodates various fab spacing requirements.

MaxBright MHP (pictured above) is a high-performance version of the MaxBright M, with as much as 20% within-wafer wavelength uniformity improvement. The system incorporates new thermal and flow technologies to improve LED yields, and Veeco reports that it offers lower cost of ownership than MaxBright.

K465i HP is a high-performance option for Veeco’s single-reactor MOCVD system which delivers up to 20% within-wafer wavelength uniformity improvement compared to the K465i and lower cost of ownership. It is available as a field upgrade for existing systems.

All 3 of the new MOCVD tools are available in 2”, 4”, 6”, and 8” wafer configurations.

Veeco makes MOCVD, MBE, ion beam, and related equipment for the manufacture of LEDs, power electronics, hard drives, MEMS and wireless chips. For information, visit www.veeco.com.

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June 6, 2012 — The ConFab, taking place this week in Las Vegas, NV, is an invitation-only meeting of the semiconductor industry. As packaging has played a larger and larger role in chip performance, form factor, and capabilities, The ConFab has increased its focus on back-end processes. Cue

June 6, 2012 — Fab equipment spending has improved in 2012, breaking the barrier into positive growth for the year, shows SEMI. Semiconductor makers will invest $39.5 billion in fabs, up 2% from 2011 spending. Fab capex will hit a record in 2013, $46.3 billion or 17% above 2012.

Figure 1. Fab equipment spending (front-end). SOURCE: SEMI World Fab Forecast, May 2012.

Korea will spend the most on fab equipment this year, topping $11 billion, and will increase this to $12.5 billion in 2013. Other regions with high 2012 spending include Taiwan ($8.5 billion) and the Americas ($8.3 billion). The Americas will leapfrog Taiwan in 2013, growing spending to $11.5 billion, while Taiwan will decrease spending to around $8 billion.

All product types are increasing equipment spending in 2012, with the largest increase in memory and foundry.

2012 capex reports:

Construction spending has an improved outlook when compared to just a few months ago, with major announcements from Intel, Samsung, SMIC, TSMC, UMC and others. SEMI has identified about 45 planned projects (including new and ongoing) in 2012 and 24 planned in 2013. Fab construction spending will drop only 6% in 2012 to $6.2 billion. Fab construction spending in 2013 should improve dramatically, with a decline of only about 1% to $6.1 billion.

Figure 2. Spending on semiconductor fab construction. SOURCE: SEMI World Fab Forecast, May 2012.

In 2012, 11 new fabs will begin construction. The combined planned capacity of all new fabs beginning construction in 2012 will be 900,000 wafers per month (in 200mm equivalents). Memory accounts for 60% of this capacity; foundry 20%; system LSI 20%. In 2013, only 7 new fabs will begin construction, though this picture may still change. The new fabs beginning construction in 2013 have a planned capacity for 550,000 wafers per month.

This latest data was published in the May edition of the SEMI World Fab Forecast. Using a bottom-up approach, the quarterly World Fab Forecast report tracks multiple projects in over 1,150 fabs worldwide. Since the February edition, over 340 updates have been made concerning more than 225 fabs, keeping the industry up to date on the ever-changing announcements of spending for fab equipment and construction. Learn more about the SEMI fab databases at http://www.semi.org/MarketInfo/FabDatabase.

SEMI’s Worldwide Semiconductor Equipment Market Subscription (WWSEMS) data tracks only new equipment for fabs and test and assembly and packaging houses. The SEMI World Fab Forecast and its related Fab Database reports track any equipment needed to ramp fabs, upgrade technology nodes, and expand or change wafer size, including new equipment, used equipment, or in-house equipment.

SEMI is a global industry association serving the nano- and microelectronics manufacturing supply chains. For more information, visit www.semi.org

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