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After strong year-over-year growth of 24% in 2017, worldwide semiconductor revenue is forecast to grow for the third consecutive year in 2018 to $450 billion, up 7.7% over 2017, according to a new Semiconductor Applications Forecaster (SAF) from International Data Corporation (IDC). The SAF also forecasts that semiconductor revenues will log a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.9% from 2017-2022, reaching $482 billion in 2022.

The overall memory market was the key story of last year, due to strong demand, limited supply, and product mix constraints. The DRAM and NAND memory markets grew to $73 billion and $49 billion respectively, reflecting year-over-year growth rates of 77% and 52% for 2017. Excluding DRAM and NAND, the overall semiconductor market grew by 12% year over year. For 2018, non-memory semiconductors are forecast to grow $11 billion to $302 billion. Both DRAM and NAND will continue to grow this year, but are expected to decline from 2019-2021 before recovering slightly in 2022.

The strong memory market resulted in Samsung Electronics capturing the top semiconductor manufacturer spot away from Intel and raised the profile of all the memory manufacturers, which now represent three of the top five semiconductor companies compared to only two the previous year. Revenue concentration continued to increase for the overall market with the top 10 companies making up 60% of the semiconductor market compared to 56% in 2016 and 53% in 2015.

“Market consolidation in the semiconductor industry over the past five years continues to shape the competitive landscape for semiconductor suppliers as each company continues to refine its core markets and make acquisitions to find new and emerging sectors for growth. The pace of change and technology is expected to accelerate as machine learning and autonomous systems enable a more diverse set of architectures to address the opportunity. This will fuel the engine of growth for semiconductor technology over the next decade,” said Mario Morales, program vice president, Semiconductors at IDC.

The automotive market and the industrial markets will continue to be the leading areas of growth for the semiconductor market throughout the forecast period, growing at a 9.6% and 6.8% CAGR from 2017-2022. “The key drivers of electrification, connectivity and infotainment, advanced driver assistance (ADAS), and autonomous driving features will continue to drive the growth of semiconductor content on a per vehicle basis,” said Nina Turner, research manager for Semiconductors at IDC.

Other key findings from IDC’s Semiconductor Application Forecaster (excluding memory) include:

  • Semiconductor revenue for the computing industry segment will decline 4.0% this year and will show a negative CAGR of -0.7% for the 2017-2022 forecast period. Two bright spots for the computing segment are computing and enterprise SSDs, growing in high double digits and 9.8% CAGR respectively for 2017-2022.
  • Semiconductor revenue for the mobile wireless communications segment will grow 5.5% year over year this year with a CAGR of 5.8% for 2017-2022. Semiconductor revenue for 4G mobile phones will experience an annual growth rate of 10.9% in 2018 and a CAGR of 3.1% for 2017-2022. 5G will also drive growth in the later part of the forecast as the technology becomes mainstream by the middle of the next decade.
  • Communications infrastructure semiconductors are forecast to grow at a 1.7% CAGR from 2017-2022 with the strongest growth coming from consumer networks.

Photolithography of organic semiconductors is an emerging technology that can enable high resolution OLED displays.

BY PAWEL MALINOWSKI and TUNGHUEI KE, imec, Leuven, Belgium

Modern society has grown accustomed to an overflow of visual information, with displays in the center of most user interfaces. The pace of introducing new technologies and of reducing cost of manufacturing has been impressive and does not seem to slow down. The most prominent examples are OLED displays (based on organic light emitting diodes), evolving from a curiosity only some years ago to a technology that is dominating the market position today. 2017 has seen major increase in both shipments (more than 400 million units) and revenue (around $25 billion) for AMOLED display panels (according to UBI Research and DSCC).

From the very beginning of OLED history, it was crucial to find a way to maintain efficient emission in stacks composed of very fragile materials. As most of the materials used in an OLED structure are highly sensitive to a lot of elements (e.g., air, moisture, solvents, temper- ature, radiation), protecting the device has always been crucial, both during fabrication and during operation. This has evolved into several research tracks. Firstly, great effort by material companies to synthesize new molecules and polymers resulted in many OLED families, both for thermal evaporation and solution processing. Secondly, equipment advances made it possible to uniformly deposit stacks on large substrates with indus- trial takt time. Thirdly, different encapsulations were developed to protect the OLED stack during usage to ensure enough lifetime for consumer applications. All of the above required years of research and significant investments, which makes it challenging to introduce new OLED manufacturing techniques and change the existing process flows.

At the same time, current manufacturing methods have their limitations. Two main approaches are color-by- white (WOLED) and side-by-side red-green-blue (RGB OLED), differing by the way that the colors are realized in subpixels (FIGURE 1). In WOLED, the light source is a continuous layer of a broadband (white) OLED emitter and the three basic colors are selected by passing the light through color filters (CF). The advantage is that the pixel density is limited only by the backplane resolution and the CF resolution, which is why this is the main concept used for OLED microdisplays with CMOS circuitry. The disad- vantage is that significant portion of the light is lost due to CF absorption, which impacts the display power efficiency. In RGB OLED, each subpixel is a different material stack, so each subpixel is a separate light emitter. This is typically realized by depositing each stack by thermal evaporation through a fine metal mask (FMM) and is used for most smartphone OLED displays. The advantage is that each color is optimized, so the display efficiency is much higher. At the same time, it is difficult to scale the FMM technique both in substrate size (masks tend to bend under their own weight, so the motherglass has to be cut for OLED deposition) and in resolution (standard masks are not suitable for resolutions above several hundred ppi and the cross-fading area limits the aperture ratio).

An alternative way to realize side-by-side RGB pixels is to use photolithography techniques known very well from the semiconductor industry (and used in displays for the TFT backplane fabrication). In such case, after depositing a blanket OLED stack, photoresists could be used to transfer the pattern and remove the unnec- essary material by etching (FIGURE 2). The challenge here is, again, susceptibility of OLED materials to solvents – using standard (semiconductor) photo- resist chemistry results in dissolution/removal of the stack. Still, the gains are definitely worth the extra effort, as litho can provide both very high pixel density (submicron pixel pitch) and, at the same time, very high aperture ratio (emitting area maximized thanks to minimizing pixel spacing). Over the years, some new approaches for photolithography have been proposed. One way, followed by Orthogonal Inc, is to use fluorinated materials which should not have any chemical interaction with the organic stacks (thus, orthogonal to OLED). The other approach, followed by imec together with Fujifilm, is to pattern organic stacks using a non-fluorinated, chemically amplified photoresist system.

For imec, R&D hub with long traditions of devel- oping new photolithography nodes, organic photolithography is a way to address the challenges of next- generation high resolution displays. In virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) applications, the display is very near to the eye of the user. This results in very aggressive requirements in terms of pixel density in order to avoid annoying “pixilation.” The same goes for required minimum pixel spacing, to avoid “screen door effect”. With photolithography, these two challenges can be addressed simultaneously. The OSR photoresist system from Fujifilm can deliver lines and spaces with 1 μm pitch, which fits in the roadmap towards several thousand ppi resolution for the OLED frontplane. We have realized a dot pattern transfer to OLED emission layer with 3 μm pitch, which corresponds to 8400 ppi resolution in a monochrome array. After stripping off the photoresist, the EML remains on the substrate, as verified by photolumines- cence (FIGURE 3).

On the device level, we have fabricated OLED arrays with 10 μm pixel pitch (FIGURE 4), corresponding to 2500 ppi. In this case, an important parameter is the alignment accuracy, which defines how much of the total display area can be used for emission. Another limitation is the resolution of the PDL (pixel definition layer), a dielectric layer separating the OLED stack from the bottom contact level. The resolution of this layer limits the maximum opening that can be achieved, which translates to the aperture ratio of the pixel – or the percentage of the area that is used for OLED emission. In this example, the “photo- luminescence aperture ratio”, or the relation of the OLED island to the pixel area is around 50%, which is enabled by small spacing (<3 μm). However, the “electroluminescence aperture ratio”, of the relation of the area emitting light, is 25% because of the PDL area and the necessary overlap of the OLED island. Assuming minimum line spacing of 1 μm, one can envision PL ratio of 81% (9 x 9 μm) and EL ratio of 64% (8 x 8 μm) for a subpixel of 10 x 10 μm. With such scaling, the usable area of the array can be enlarged, which results in longer device lifetime (since we can reduce the driving current density) and in reduction or elimi- nation of the screen-door effects.

Obviously, interrupting the optimum deposition process in ultra-high vacuum and exposing the OLED stack to photolithography materials has an impact on the device performance. Just breaking the vacuum results in a hit on lifetime performance. Additionally, our initial process flow includes exposure of the stack to ambient atmosphere (air and humidity), as we have been using standard cleanroom equipment. In the beginning, such “worst case scenario” resulted in proof-of-concept of emitting OLEDs after patterning, but, unsurprisingly, with device lifetime of only few minutes. In the course of the development, we have introduced improvements on three fronts. Firstly, there have been continuous upgrades of the photoresist system to make it more compatible with the organic stack. Secondly, the process flow has been optimized to reduce the impact of process parameters on device performance. Thirdly, the OLED stacks have been tuned for robustness, for example by introducing additional protection layers for the most critical interfaces. All these actions resulted in device lifetimes of several hundred hours at 1000 nit luminance. As the lifetime is the major concern when it comes to the readiness of this technology, this is an ongoing effort to bring all the parameters to a level acceptable by the industry.

In parallel to performance improvement, we have been developing a route for patterning of multicolor arrays with photolithography. The main challenge in this case is to protect the previous “color” (OLED stack) while patterning the next one. Once this condition is satisfied, side-by-side arrays with several stacks can be realized – and, this is not limited to light emitters. Next to red-green-blue OLEDs, for example an organic photo- detector subpixel could be fabricated to add functionality to the display. In terms of manufacturing, each “color” of the frontplane would be fabricated in a similar way as it is done for each layer of the backplane.

In our recent work, we fabricated a 2-color passive OLED display and this prototype was demonstrated at the Touch Taiwan 2017 exhibition (FIGURE 5). The 1400 x 1400 pixel array has a subpixel pitch of 10 μm, resulting in a resolution of 1250 ppi. The stacks are phosphorescent red and green small molecule OLEDs, deposited by thermal evaporation. The display is designed for top emission and uses glass encapsulation. Thanks to the separate driving of two groups of subpixels, the two colors can be displayed independently. The prototype has been in operation for tens of hours with all pixels turned on, with no visible degradation. This indicates that the process flow for multicolor patterning proves basic functionality and already ensures stability for reasonable working time. A similar frontplane can be integrated with a TFT or CMOS backplane, enabling then video mode of operation, with individual driving of each subpixel. In a separate demonstration, we have also verified that the fabrication process is compatible with a FPD backplane process using IGZO TFT and flexible substrate.

Taking everything into account, photolithography of organic semiconductors is an emerging technology that can enable high resolution OLED displays. Many technology milestones have been already cleared – we know that we can achieve patterns of few microns, realize side-by-side multicolor pixels, integrate the pixelated frontplane on different backplanes, and get encouraging efficiency and lifetime performance. Currently, optimization of OLED performance after patterning is still the top priority. At the same time, we are addressing the complete integration flow and manufacturability aspects. To have this technology fully incorporated in a fab process flow, material and equipment developments are required. Still, the prospect of ultra-high resolution with simultaneous high aperture ratio in a process flow based on standard semiconductor techniques remains very attractive and justifies going the extra mile to tackle the pending engineering challenges.

By Walt Custer, Custer Consulting Group

Broad global & U.S. electronic supply chain growth

The first quarter of this year was very strong globally, with growth across the entire electronics supply chain. Although Chart 1 is based on preliminary data, every electronics sector expanded –  with many in double digits. The U.S. dollar-denominated growth estimates in Chart 1 have effectively been amplified by about 5 percent by exchange rates (as stronger non-dollar currencies were consolidated to weaker U.S. dollars), but the first quarter global rates are very impressive nonetheless.

Walt Custer Chart 1

U.S. growth was also good (Chart 2) with Quarter 1 2018 total electronics equipment shipments up 7.2 percent over the same period last year. Since all the Chart 2 values are based on domestic (US$) sales, there is no growth amplification due to exchange rates.

Walt Custer Chart 2

We expect continued growth in Quarter 2 but not at the robust pace as the first quarter.

Chip foundry growth resumes

Taiwan-listed companies report their monthly revenues on a timely basis – about 10 days after month end. We track a composite of 14 Taiwan Stock Exchange listed chip foundries to maintain a “pulse” of this industry (Chart 3).

Walt Custer Chart 3

Chip foundry sales have been a leading indicator for global semiconductor and semiconductor capital equipment shipments. After dropping to near zero in mid-2017, foundry growth is now rebounding.

Chart 4 compares 3/12 (3-month) growth rates of global semiconductor and semiconductor equipment sales to chip foundry sales. The foundry 3/12 has historically led semiconductors and SEMI equipment and is pointing to a coming cyclical upturn. It will be interesting to see how China’s semiconductor industry buildup impacts this historical foundry leading indicator’s performance.

Walt Custer Chart 4

Passive Component Shortages and Price Increases

Passive component availability and pricing are currently major issues. Per Chart 5, Quarter 1 2018 passive component revenues increased almost 25 percent over the same period last year. Inadequate component supplies are hampering many board assemblers with no short-term relief in sight.

Walt Custer Chart 5

Peeking into the Future

Looking forward, the global purchasing managers index (a broad leading indicator) has moderated but is still well in growth territory.

Walt Custer Chart 6

The world business outlook remains positive but requires continuous watching!

Walt Custer of Custer Consulting Group is an  analyst focused on the global electronics industry.

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

By Emir Demircan

SEMI Position on the European Commission’s Proposal for a Regulation Establishing a Framework for Screening Foreign Direct Investments into the European Union

In response to the European Commission’s (EC) proposed framework for screening foreign direct investments (FDI), SEMI, representing the global electronics manufacturing supply chain, offers three recommendations for consideration by EU policymakers:

To support the sophisticated global ecosystem of semiconductor manufacturers, the EU should remain open to global investment. More efforts should be made to form trade and investment agreements that support European businesses’ access to foreign markets.

The global micro- and nano-electronics (MNE) industry consists of organizations specializing in research, design, equipment, materials, semiconductor manufacturing, assembly and applications – a complex global ecosystem that contributes 2 trillion USD (SEMI data) to the world economy. With its production of smaller, faster, more reliable products with higher performance, the MNE industry is one of the world’s most capital- and research-intensive sectors. Today, a state-of-the-art semiconductor manufacturing fab can easily cost billions of euros and might require international investment to deliver cutting-edge solutions.

Europe’s MNE industry plays a pivotal role in this global value chain through its investments in emerging technologies such as autonomous driving, smart healthcare, artificial intelligence and industrial automation. The region’s MNE industry features leading electronics manufacturing equipment and materials businesses, world-class research and development (R&D) and educational institutions, and vital semiconductor manufacturing hubs that are home to multinationals headquartered both inside and outside of the EU.

In the proposed framework, the EU recognizes that FDI is an important engine of economic growth, jobs and innovation. Its work to maintain a climate of open investment and connect European businesses with leading innovators and investors around the world has laid the groundwork for the success of European industrial technologies sector. These efforts have set an example for rich cross-border business relations even in the face of rising protectionist practices around the world.

The proposed EC regulation aims to establish an EU-level framework for exchanging information related to a broad range of technologies between the EC and Member States, and to assess, investigate, authorize, condition, prohibit, or unwind FDI in certain technologies on the grounds of security or public order. EU policymakers should bear in mind that a new EU-level FDI screening mechanism must be implemented very carefully. Stakeholders must clearly understand how FDI can pose a threat to security and public order in the EU.

Only transparent and precise definitions of FDI, security and public order and a limited scope of targeted technologies can provide the regulatory certainty for the EU to remain an attractive destination for foreign investors and European investees alike. On the contrary, unclear regulations could sow insecurity amongst potential investors, leading to delays or cancellation of much-needed investments and choking access to finance in capital-intensive sectors such as MNE.

MNE is a key enabling technology and advances in semiconductors enable market adoption of game-changing technologies such as artificial intelligence. The EU should ensure that future regulations do not cause lock-in effects or limit the growth of key technologies in Europe.

In the interest of security and public order, the proposed EU regulation permits Member States and the EC to screen FDI in critical infrastructure such as energy, transportation, communications and critical technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.  While it might be easier to screen critical infrastructure and the large-scale public services it provides for potential threats in security and public order, applying the same FDI filter to critical technologies can be extremely challenging.

Semiconductors are embedded in virtually all smart devices and systems including computers, mobile phones, cars, and aircraft. The ubiquity of chips raises the prospect that FDI in European smart technologies – and the supply chain that develops them – could be subject to screening. This level of regulatory oversight is likely to hamper not only EU’s competitiveness in key enabling technologies such as MNE but also ever-evolving applications including artificial intelligence. Also, the proposed screening framework calls for the assessment of FDI risks to security or public order by determining if an investor is controlled by foreign governments through “significant funding.” In the context of FDI, differentiating between state and private actors in other countries can be extremely challenging or even impossible, and the term “significant funding” is not clearly defined. Under this light, SEMI recommends:

  1. Defining a limited scope with clear conditions, explaining in quantitative and qualitative terms how FDI in key enabling technologies can threaten public order and security, and
  2. Introducing criteria that identifies whether an FDI leads to market distortions in Europe because a government investment program is not aligned with EU state-aid rules.

FDI is a powerful tool to support economic growth and competitiveness. Many Member States already screen FDI on the grounds of security and public order. Future regulations should ensure that additional screening neither duplicates national and EU-level assessments nor hampers Member States’ competitiveness.

Under the proposed regulation, the EC could screen FDI at the Union level. However, because many Member States already have detailed screening procedures in place to protect national security and public order, the draft regulation could increase red tape by duplicating administrative processes and regulations at the national and EU levels. Policymakers should keep in mind that FDI must in principle remain a national competence, with each Member State establishing its own national policy aimed at attracting FDI and supporting its economic growth. Many Member States compete to increase their share of EU FDI in key technologies that underpin national economic growth. Likewise, international investors already subject each Member State to their own investment criteria before making significant FDI decisions. Any proposed regulation that pushes Member States to share national-level FDI information could dilute successful FDI policies of some Member States and hamper the EU’s overall competitiveness.

Emir Demircan is Senior Manager Public Policy at SEMI Europe. Contact Emir at [email protected] , 0032484903114. 

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

IC Insights will release its May Update to the 2018 McClean Report later this month.  This Update includes a discussion of the 1Q18 IC industry market results, an update of the 2018 capital spending forecast by company, and a look at the top-25 1Q18 semiconductor suppliers (the top-15 1Q18 semiconductor suppliers are covered in this research bulletin).

The top-15 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O-S-D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 1Q18 is shown in Figure 1.  It includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one each in Taiwan and Japan.  After announcing in early April 2018 that it had successfully moved its headquarters location from Singapore to the U.S. IC Insights now classifies Broadcom as a U.S. company.

The top-15 ranking includes one pure-play foundry (TSMC) and four fabless companies.  If TSMC were excluded from the top-15 ranking, Taiwan-based fabless supplier MediaTek ($1,696 million) would have been ranked in the 15th position.

IC Insights includes foundries in the top-15 semiconductor supplier ranking since it has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases the semiconductor sales are double counted.  With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers.  As shown in the listing, the foundries and fabless companies are identified.  In the April Update to The McClean Report, marketshare rankings of IC suppliers by product type were presented and foundries were excluded from these listings.

Overall, the top-15 list shown in Figure 1 is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.

Figure 1

Figure 1

In total, the top-15 semiconductor companies’ sales surged by 26% in 1Q18 compared to 1Q17, six points higher than the total worldwide semiconductor industry 1Q18/1Q17 increase of 20%.  Amazingly, the Big 3 memory suppliers—Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, each registered greater than 40% year-over-year growth in 1Q18. Fourteen of the top-15 companies had sales of at least $2.0 billion in 1Q18, four companies more than in 1Q17. As shown, it took just over $1.8 billion in quarterly sales just to make it into the 1Q18 top-15 semiconductor supplier list.

Intel was the number one ranked semiconductor supplier in 1Q17 but lost its lead spot to Samsung in 2Q17 as well as in the full-year 2017 ranking, a position it had held since 1993.  With the continuation of the strong surge in the DRAM and NAND flash markets over the past year, Samsung went from having 5% less total semiconductor sales than Intel in 1Q17 to having 23% more semiconductor sales than Intel in 1Q18!

It is interesting to note that memory devices represented 83% of Samsung’s semiconductor sales in 1Q18, up six points from 77% in 1Q17 and up 12 points from 71% just two years earlier in 1Q16.  Moreover, the company’s non-memory sales in 1Q18 were only $3,300 million, up 6% from 1Q17’s non-memory sales level of $3,125 million.

As would be expected, given the possible acquisitions and mergers that could occur this year (e.g., Qualcomm/NXP), as well as any memory market volatility that may develop, the top-15 ranking is likely to undergo a significant amount of upheaval over the next few years as the semiconductor industry continues along its path to maturity.

Despite the low seasonality factor and brands turning their focus away from volume growth, the demand for large display panels showed better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2018, albeit still weak, according to IHS Markit (Nasdaq: INFO).

First quarter of each year is typically a slow season for the display market as set brands try to clear out carried inventories before they launch new models in a new year. In addition, particularly this year, top-tier brands were expected to stop focusing on volume growth, which lowered market expectation on the panel demand.

However, shipments of large display panels posted better-than-expected results in the first quarter of 2018, according to Large Area Display Market Tracker by IHS Markit. Compared to a year ago, shipments of large displays — larger than 9 inches — increased by 6 percent in unit and by 10 percent in area.

LG Display retained its lead in the large display panel market in terms of area shipments with a stake of 22 percent, followed by Samsung Display with 17 percent, while, in terms of unit shipments, BOE led the market with a 22 percent share.

“In area shipments, South Korean panel makers keep their leading position in the large display market as they are strong in the TV display market,” said Robin Wu, principal analyst at IHS Markit.

Shipments of TV displays increased by 12 percent in unit and by 11 percent in area in the first quarter of 2018 compared to a year ago, leading to the better-than-expected trend. In particular, unit shipments of 55-inch and larger TV panels jumped 20 percent year on year in the first quarter. 4K TV display unit shipment also increased by 19 percent during the same period to 24.6 million units, and OLED TV display shipments reached some 600,000 units with 110 percent year-on-year growth.

051518_Large_area_display_unit_shipment_share_by_maker_in_Q1_2018 051518_Large_area_display_area_shipment_share_by_maker_in_Q1_2018

“Increases in large display panel production capacity, particularly in China, helped the year-on-year shipment growth, which was somewhat expected,” Wu said. “But, if you look at the shipment growth in a quarter-on-quarter term, it is quite interesting.”

For the past three years from 2015 to 2017, on average, unit shipments of large display declined 10 percent in the first quarters compared to the previous quarter, and area shipments were down 8 percent.

“This year also shows declines in the first quarter with a 4 percent drop in unit shipments and 7 percent down in area shipments, but the contraction is narrower than the previous years,” Wu said. “This indicates the shipment trend in first quarter 2018 was better than expected.”

051518_Large_display_shipments

Wu noted, however, that shipments dropped 10 percent in value due to continued erosion in panel price, which began in mid- 2017.

“The major concerns to the panel makers is how to achieve a turnaround in panel prices and when,” Wu said. “Trends in TV display panels that are shifting to larger sizes and heading to higher-end products can be the key to overcome the challenge.”Wu noted, however, that shipments dropped 10 percent in value due to continued erosion in panel price, which began in mid- 2017.

The Large Area Display Market Tracker by IHS Markit provides information about the entire range of large display panels shipped worldwide and regionally, including monthly and quarterly revenues and shipments by display area, application, size and aspect ratio for each supplier.

Cadence Design Systems, Coventor, X-FAB and Reutlingen University announced the grand prize winner of the Global MEMS Design Contest 2018 at CDNLive EMEA 2018, the Cadence annual user conference. A team from ESIEE Paris and Sorbonne University received the grand prize award for designing an innovative MEMS-based energy harvesting product using electrostatic transduction. Energy harvesting products can be used in implantable medical devices and other portable electronics that need to operate without an external power source.

The winning team received a $5,000 cash prize along with a complimentary one-year license of CoventorMP™ MEMS design software. In addition, X-FAB will fabricate the team’s winning design using the X-FAB XMB10 MEMS manufacturing process.

The design contest was launched two years ago at the 2016 Design, Automation and Test in Europe (DATE) conference, with the goal of encouraging the development of imaginative concepts in MEMS and mixed-signal design. Contest submissions were received from around the world, and three semifinalist teams were selected in February 2018 to compete for the grand prize. A panel of industry professionals and respected academics selected the grand prize winner based upon the degree of innovation demonstrated in the hardware and methodology, the novelty of the application, adherence to the design flow and the educational value of the submission.

“We are extremely excited to be working with the team from ESIEE and Sorbonne to manufacture their energy harvesting product,” said Volker Herbig, vice president, BU MEMS at X-FAB. “The design rules and process specifications provided in X-FAB and Coventor’s MEMS PDK, along with Cadence technology, should help ensure ‘first-time-right’ manufacturing of the winning team’s design. We look forward to bringing the winning contestant’s innovative thinking to life, using our well-tested open-platform MEMS and CMOS manufacturing technologies.”

“We are very pleased that the contestants used the CoventorMP design environment and XMB10 MEMS PDK to create and model their designs,” said Dr. Stephen Breit, Vice President of Engineering at Coventor, a Lam Research Company. “We’re looking forward to X-FAB’s successful manufacturing of the winning team’s design, which will demonstrate how this new approach can reduce the cost and time of developing new MEMS products.”

“We were impressed with the high-calibre and creativity of the designs submitted,” said Sanjay Lall, Regional Vice President EMEA of Cadence. “The contestants were able to successfully simulate their combined MEMS and mixed-signal designs in the Cadence Virtuoso® Analog Design environment and use the Cadence Spectre® Circuit Simulator for their transient simulations. Choosing one winner was very difficult, as all the finalists put forward excellent projects.”

A team from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, took home the second-place prize, which included a cash award of $2,000. The team from KAUST created a MEMS resonator for oscillator, tunable filter and re-programmable logic device applications.

Third place went to a team from the University of Liege, Microsys, KU Leuven and Zhejiang University. This team created a genetic algorithm for the design of non-linear MEMS sensors with compliant mechanisms and showcased it using a capacitive MEMS accelerometer. They received a cash prize of $1,000.

In addition to the cash prizes, all three semifinalists had the opportunity to present their winning entries to an audience of design professionals at the CDNLive EMEA 2018 conference.

For more details regarding the winning teams and their contest entries, please visit the MEMS Design Contest website.

 

By Lung Chu

Lung ChuThe growth of China’s semiconductor industry outstripped sector expansion in many other regions in 2017 thanks in part to heavy government investments and supportive state policies. But China’s chip industry also struggled under the weight of overheated investment, inconsistent project quality, insufficient investment in research and development, a poor ability to innovate, and barriers to international cooperation. To overcome these headwinds to growth, China must identify global trends in the development of global semiconductor industry and better understand the forces it needs to mobilize to further expand its own semiconductor sector.

AI and 5G fuel global semiconductor industry growth

In 2017, global semiconductor industry revenue reached a seven-year peak, expanding 22 percent to nearly USD 420 billion, and entered a new growth phase with artificial intelligence (AI), 5G and other new technologies leading the surge with greater market segmentation, diversification and decentralization. The emergence of smart automobiles, smart cities, smart medicine, AR/VR and other new markets headed the list of new applications. In the next three to five years, semiconductor industry growth is expected to remain stable, with no marked declines. In 2018, the growth rate is expected to fall to between 5 percent and 8 percent, with the expansion more comprehensive and balanced.

The memory market, in particular, will find it hard to match its 2017 blistering growth rate. The market’s expected growth of 10 percent to 20 percent will be chiefly driven by DRAM and 3D NAND Flash. In 2019, NAND growth will continue but DRAM shipments could decline.

Emphasis on both innovation and investment key to sustainable growth of Chinese IC

Under the China government’s Guidelines to Promote National IC Industry Development, designed to provide key policy guidance and capital support for the development of China’s IC industry, the Chinese semiconductor industry is seeing particularly rapid growth that is expected to be a key contributor to continuing global industry expansion. In IC design, HiSilicon and Unigroup Spreadtrum & RDA ranked among the top 10 in the world. In wafer fabrication, Chinese IC manufacturing accounted for 13 percent to 15 percent of global market capacity despite SMIC and Huahong Group lagging international competition in advanced processing. In packaging and testing – China’s strongest segment – JCET, NFME and Huatian Technology also ranked in the global top 10.

The Guidelines to Promote National IC Industry Development has fueled a boom in capital investments. However, investments must go well beyond fab construction to add new capacity for China’s semiconductor industry to flourish. A strategy for sustainable, long-term chip industry growth must focus more on technology innovation while continuing heavy capital investments, though it takes time for innovation to lead to higher capacity demand and GPD growth and more jobs.

Despite large investments by the 02 Special Project in semiconductor equipment and materials, China trails other regions of the world in advanced technologies. Global spending on semiconductor equipment reached a record-breaking USD 56 billion in 2017, with Korea a major driver. In 2017, Samsung alone invested USD 25 billion in semiconductor equipment, followed by TSMC (USD 10.8 billion), Intel (USD 11.5 billion), Hynix (USD 8.5 billion), Micron (USD 0.5 billion), SMIC (USD 2.3 billion) and YMTC (USD 2 billion). In 2018, Samsung’s equipment spending is expected to drop slightly, to USD 24 billion, while investments by Intel and TSMC will be remain roughly equal.

China’s equipment spending will continue to grow in 2018, with SMIC and YMTC maintaining investment levels similar to last year’s and other China semiconductor manufacturers starting to ramp up investments. In 2018, China is expected to surpass Taiwan in equipment spending to claim the number two position after Korea.

SIIP China dedicated to international connection and cooperation

The huge investments in China’s semiconductor industry need to be supported by robust business strategies, greater international cooperation, deeper expertise in advanced technologies, and more skilled workers. China lags the global industry in all of these areas. The rapid rise of China’s semiconductor industry has raised concerns among many countries over China’s growing influence, with some, most notably the United States, going so far as to implement containment measures. Other regions including Japan, Korea and Taiwan followed suit.

The continued growth of China’s semiconductor industry hinges on technological innovation enabled by international cooperation, as well as strong international communication to allay concerns and misunderstandings over the rising prominence of China’s chip sector. China must overcome these obstacles. One partial solution is for China to convince the rest of the world that its need a thriving semiconductor industry if only to meet enormous demand for electronics products within its own borders.

As the largest international semiconductor industry association, SEMI enjoys a unique ability to strengthen the connection between China’s semiconductor sector and its international counterparts. SEMI is well-known for its vital support of the traditional semiconductor equipment and materials markets, but SEMI’s work also spans IC design, manufacturing, packaging and testing. What’s more, SEMI has expanded into innovative market vertical applications such as AI, smart manufacturing, smart transportation and smart automotive as it aims to bring together supply chains across these growth areas.

For its part, SEMI China remains dedicated to improving communications and cooperation between the Chinese and global semiconductor industries. SEMI China will also continue to encourage deeper collaboration among individual enterprises and government institutions in the interest of industry growth while making full use of SEMI’s international, professional and localization platform to promote the development of China’s semiconductor industry.

Last year, we established SEMI Innovation Investment Platform (SIIP) China to help grow China’s pool of skilled workers, promote advanced technology, generate industry capital, and expand China’s semiconductor industry while developing stronger connections with chip sectors in other regions. SIIP China is focused on the following:

  • Promoting sustainable development of the Chinese semiconductor industry
  • Establishing stronger connections to help take advantage of global technology and investment opportunities
  • Providing a platform for open communications between the Chinese and global semiconductor industries
  • Promoting greater coordination between China and its global partners
  • Helping newly enterprises secure funds for expansion

Encouraging greater cooperation with foreign semiconductor manufacturers in the interest of openness and mutual benefit will be the best way for China to overcome obstacles to the development of its semiconductor industry. Meanwhile, China will continue to strive to merge into the global semiconductor industry and become a key partner.

SEMICON China has witnessed the development of Chinese semiconductor industry

SEMICON China-1

SEMICON China marked its 30th anniversary this year. Over the past three decades, China’s semiconductor industry has seen remarkable growth. This year’s SEMICON China was the largest ever. SEMICON China and FPD China 2018 numbered 3,628 booths, covered 74,000 square meters of exhibition space and attracted 1,116 exhibitors from 21 countries and regions and 91,252 professional attendees from 58 countries and regions.

Most of China’s top device makers and global leading packaging houses, together with their equipment and materials suppliers, exhibited at SEMICON China and FPD China 2018, representing the global IC manufacturing ecosystem. The number of SEMICON China and FPD China 2018 visitors jumped 32.3 percent from last year, with representation by professionals from the design, manufacturing, assembly and test, equipment and materials sectors.

Lung Chu is President of SEMI China.

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

The spread of digital camera applications in vehicles, machine vision, human recognition and security systems, as well as for more powerful camera phones will drive CMOS image sensor sales to an eighth straight record-high level this year with worldwide revenues growing 10% to $13.7 billion, following a 19% surge in 2017, according to IC Insights’ 2018 O-S-D Report—A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discretes. The new 375-page report shows nothing stopping CMOS image sensors from continuing to set record-high annual sales and unit shipments through 2022 (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 1

CMOS image sensors continue to take marketshare from charge-coupled devices (CCDs) as embedded digital-imaging capabilities expand into a wider range of systems and new end-use applications, says the 2018 O-S-D Report.  With the smartphone market maturing, sales growth in CMOS image sensors slowed to 6% in 2016, but strong demand in other imaging applications played a major factor in boosting revenues by 19% to $12.5 billion last year.  Sales of CCD and other image sensor technologies fell 2% in 2017 to about $1.6 billion after rising 5% in 2016, according to the new IC Insights report.

Overall, CMOS image sensors grabbed 89% of total image sensor sales in 2017 compared to 74% in 2012 and 54% in 2007.  Unit shipments of CMOS imaging devices represented 81% of total image sensors sold in 2017 compared to 64% in 2012 and 63% in 2007.  New CMOS designs keep improving for a variety of light levels (including near darkness at night), high-speed imaging, and greater resolution as well as integrating more functions for specific applications, such as security video cameras, machine vision in robots and cars, human recognition, hand-gesture interfaces, virtual/augmented reality, and medical systems.

In new smartphones, CMOS image sensors are also seeing a new wave of growth with the increase of dual-lens camera systems (using two sensors) for enhanced photography.  Cellular camera phones accounted for 62% of CMOS image sensor sales in 2017, but that marketshare is forecast to slip to 45% in 2022. Automotive CMOS image sensors are projected to grow the fastest among major end-use applications through the five-year forecast shown in the new O-S-D Report, rising by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.4% to about 15% of total CMOS image sensor sales in 2022 ($2.8 billion) while camera phone-generated revenues are expected to rise by a CAGR of just 2.2% to $8.6 billion that year.

SEMI Industry Research and Statistics, and Jan Vardaman, TechSearch International

The global semiconductor packaging materials market reached $16.7 billion in 2017. While slower growth of smartphones and personal computers – the industry’s traditional drivers – is reducing material consumption, the slowdown was offset by strong unit growth in the cryptocurrency market in 2017 and early 2018. Flip chip package shipments into the cryptocurrency market, while providing a windfall to many suppliers, are not expected to remain at high levels, SEMI, the industry association representing the global electronics manufacturing supply chain, and TechSearch International reported in The Global Semiconductor Packaging Materials Outlook.

The outlook shows that, despite growth in automotive electronics and high-performance computing, continuing price pressure and declining material consumption will constrain future material revenue growth to steady single-digits, with the materials market forecast to reach $17.8 billion in 2021. IC leadframes, underfill, and copper wire are among the materials segments that will see single-digit unit volume growth through 2021.

Laminate substrate suppliers participating in the sale of flip chip substrates for cryptocurrency saw volume increases in 2017, but this segment continues to be battered by increased use of multi-die solutions and the shift to wafer level packages (WLPs), including fan-out WLP, slowing growth. Wafer-level packaging (WLP) dielectrics and plating chemistry suppliers will experience stronger revenue growth as the adoption of advanced packaging continues.

Over the next several years, advances in the semiconductor materials market will present a number of opportunities driven by trends including:

  • Continued adoption of FO-WLP including FO-on-substrate solutions with high density geometries down to 2µm lines and spaces
  • Liquid crystal polymer (LCP) under consideration as a possible material option because of its good electrical performance and low moisture absorption, especially for mmWave applications such as 5G
  • Adoption of low-cost package solutions such as MIS and other routable-QFN technologies
  • PPF QFN volumes are rising with automotive applications, driving a requirement for roughened plating to deliver needed reliability
  • Expansion of photoresist plating capability for selective plating of leadframes
  • Thermally enhanced and high-voltage mold compounds for power and automotive devices
  • Thermally conductive die attach materials other than solder die attach for power applications

Report highlights include:

  • Laminate substrates represent the largest revenue segment of the materials market with more than $6 billion in sales for 2017.
  • Overall leadframe shipments are forecast to grow at a 3.9 percent CAGR from 2017 through to 2021, with LFCSP (QFN type) experiencing the strongest unit growth, an 8 percent CAGR.
  • Following five years of decline, gold wire shipments increased in both 2016 and 2017 though represent just 37 percent of the total bonding wire shipments in 2017.
  • Liquid encapsulant revenues totaled $1.3 billion in 2017 with single-digit expected through 2021. LED packaging applications are driving the revenue growth over the forecast period though downward pricing pressures are a constant in the market.
  • Die attach material revenues reached $741 million in 2017 with single digit growth to 2021. DAF materials will experience higher unit growth, though downward pricing trends continue.
  • Solder ball revenues reached $231 million in 2017. The revenue outlook depends on fluctuations in metal pricing.
  • The wafer-level plating chemical market was put at $263 million in 2017 with strong growth through 2021. RDL and Cu pillar will be the key growth segments.

SEMI and TechSearch International, Inc. teamed up again to develop the 8th edition of the Global Semiconductor Packaging Materials Outlook, a comprehensive market research study on the semiconductor packaging materials market. Interviews were conducted with more than 130 semiconductor manufacturers, packaging subcontractors, fabless semiconductor companies, and packaging material suppliers to gather information for the report. The report covers the following semiconductor packaging materials segments: substrates, leadframes, bonding wire, mold compounds, underfill materials, liquid encapsulants, die attach materials, solder balls, wafer level package dielectrics, and wafer-level plating chemicals.

For more information and to purchase the report, click here.