OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
UPDATE
February 2010
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Compal, Inventec and Hon Hai Precision Plan Construction in Vietnam and China
Ontario Awards AMD $52.8 Million R&D Grant
Nano Centre Now Ready in Sri Lanka
Malvern Instruments Opens Third Centre of Excellence in India
Beilstein-Institut Funds Joint Research Project NanoBiC
Bayer MaterialScience Opens World's Largest Carbon Nanotube Pilot Facility
INIC (Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council) Funds Nanotech Researchers in Iran
Exide Technologies Opens New Global Technology Center
University College of London Poens Molecular Beam Epitaxy Facility
Next Generation Devices Get Boost from Penn State Research
Atomic Research in Baylor’s Multi-User Lab
With serious shortages of workers in China's coastal areas, Compal Electronics Inc., the worlds' largest contract manufacturer of NB PCs, will restart construction of a production base in Vietnam.
Compal expects the construction of the new production facility will be completed sometime in the second half of this year at the earliest. Another NB manufacturer-Inventec Corp. will begin construction of a production base in Chongqing of Sichuan Province, China after the Lunar New Year, which is expected to trigger a new wave of plant relocation in the NB sector.
Taiwan's NB sector has been growing since the beginning of this year. Compal scored NT$73.41 billion (US$2.29 billion) in consolidated sales in January, surging 161% year-on-year and up 2.4% from the preceding month. The company shipped between 4.3 million and 4.4 million NBs in January, standing firmly as the world's largest NB contract manufacturer.
Other leading contract manufacturers, including Quanta Computer Inc. and Wistron Corp., also saw substantial growth in shipment and sales in January. Quanta and Wistron shipped 3.5 million and 2.1 million NBs in January, respectively.
Compal president J.T. Chen said his company will expand production capacity in the Kunshan plant in Jiangsu province and, meanwhile speed up constructing a new plant in Vietnam. The company is now building a fifth NB plant in Kunshan which is expected to begin mass production sometime in the third quarter of this year.
Besides Compal, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the world's leading provider of electronic manufacturing services, has announced a US$200 million investment project to build a cell phone plant in northern Vietnam. The proposed plant is estimated to output 89 million cell phones per year.
On February 26, Inventec will break ground a new plant in Chongqing of Sichuan province. The new plant will roll out the NB models that have been marketed in China market.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc. has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, under which the Ministry will award a five-year grant of $56.4 million CAD ($52.8 million) to AMD Canada under Ontario's Next Generation of Jobs Fund.
The grant is expected to fund R&D activities by AMD's Markham-based engineers in the development of its upcoming AMD Fusion family of processors, related software infrastructure and integrated computing platforms. Ontario expects to make its initial investment of $11.2 million CAD ($10.65 million) to AMD upon signing the formal agreement, with periodic payments occurring thereafter throughout the grant period.
In turn, AMD will commit to substantially invest in AMD Fusion processor-related R&D activities in Markham, and retain and create hundreds of high-value R&D jobs during the grant time frame. AMD also plans to increase collaborative activities with local universities.
"With this partnership, Ontario will be at the forefront of helping to bring this game-changing technology to market, and will deepen the province's reputation as a seat of technology innovation," said Dirk Meyer, AMD president and CEO. "AMD Fusion technology is set to enable significant breakthroughs in personal computing and our R&D facility in Markham, Ontario is playing an instrumental role in creating this technology. AMD Canada is a critical part of our global footprint, and a wellspring of our technical innovation."
"Our support will help AMD to revolutionize how we use computers—by creating a new generation of "fusion" processors that will move the computing experience forward in powerful ways," Minister of Economic Development and Trade Sandra Pupatello said. "This project has our government excited, because AMD's innovations will be used in key sectors that we support, such as education, medicine and research."
AMD Fusion is the brand name for the AMD family of Accelerated Processing Units or APUs, a new generation of computing technology that combines the traditional processing power of the CPU with the breakthrough compute power of the GPU. AMD believes the transition to APUs is the next necessary step toward offering users solutions that are designed to deliver a superior experience across a broad range of graphically rich usage scenarios and software applications. AMD's first APU is codenamed "Llano," and systems based on this processor are planned to be available in 1H 11.
AMD's Canada operations are based in Markham, Ontario. As AMD's largest R&D center outside the United States, AMD Canada employs more than 1,600 people, including an average of 100 engineering student participants in its internship and co-op programs. During the past five years, AMD has invested more than $1 billion dollars in R&D activities in Canada.
A fully-fledged Nano Centre worth Rs 700 million at the Sri Lanka Institute of Nano Technology (SLINTEC) is now ready to give Sri Lanka a new competitive advantage as an emerging innovative industrial power by using research and development to infuse nanotechnology based solutions into local industries.
SLINTEC CEO, Ravi Fernando said that the Sri Lanka nano technology initiative was launched in 2007 with the setting up of a nanotechnology company NANCO with BOI status and NANCO will become a holding company in the proposed science park in Homagama on a 60 acre land where new nanotechnology inventions will be commercialized by interested private sector companies by 2012
He said that the modern laboratory equipment with state-of-the-art technology was installed recently at the Sri Lanka Institute of Nano Technology (SLINTEC) and this was possible
because the Government has identified Nanotechnology as a priority research area. He said that scientists can make a huge difference in national development by helping to exploit good technology.
Hence it should be implemented with care and synergy with the environment and a careful life cycle analysis of products.
SLINTEC is a private company set up jointly with 50 percent contribution by the Government and five joint venture partners namely Hayleys, MAS Holdings, Brandix, Loadstar and Dialog equally investing the rest.
The Ministry of Science and Technology is the focal point of the Government investment which will oversee the responsibilities through the National Science Foundation and SLINTEC will provide an industrial platform based on nanotechnology solutions within three years.
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of nano structured materials and these nano materials possess very different physical, chemical, electronic or optical properties compared to their bulk state.
Thus Nanotechnology provides the tools to do cutting edge research where it becomes an enabling technology encompassing chemistry, physics and biology, he said.
Located in Delhi, and designed to serve customers in the north and north east of India, the new centre of excellence houses laboratories that are equipped with a range of Malvern systems and staffed by a full time applications team. They will provide demonstrations and deliver training, applications and technical support as well as undertaking sample analysis.
Malvern Aimil Instruments Pty was formed in 2008, the result of a joint venture in India between Malvern Instruments and Aimil, the company's longstanding distributor in the region. Headquartered in Mumbai, Malvern Aimil Instruments has eight offices around India, and centers of excellence in Bangalore and Baroda, as well as the new facility in Delhi.
The effects of high-energy beam on nano components and human cells will be investigated in detail by scientists in Frankfurt and Darmstadt. One goal of the NanoBiC project is to construct - like craftsmen - functional elements on surfaces e.g. transistors, sensors, quantum dots or memory elements according to a building plan. A further aim is to acquire detailed knowledge of the effects of cosmic rays on human cells which is particularly important for manned space missions.
Over the next four years the Beilstein-Institut will fund the co-operation of the University of Frankfurt am Main, the Darmstadt University of Technology, the GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) with 3.7 million Euros.
"NanoBiC" stands for "Nano, Bio, Chemistry and Computing" and deals with procedures in molecular dimensions externally stimulated by focused particle beams. The joint research project focuses on the principles that determine the self-organization of matter at the tiniest dimensions after much localized external disturbance. "The driving forces in the development of nanotechnology", the spokesman for the research group Prof. Michael Huth, Institute of Physics, at the University of Frankfurt, describes the fundamental aspects of the research activities, "is the fascination of the very small and the realization that the assembly of even just a few atoms can lead to interesting properties."
One important research aim of NanoBiC is to decompose specifically molecules with electron or ion beams to place precisely residues or to trigger chemical modifications on surfaces. This takes place at magnitudes of about 1 nanometer up to 100 nanometers - as a comparison: the thickness of a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers. In technical applications ultrafine sensors, ultra high density data storage as well as novel micro-magnetic or light-emitting components could be created. An additional goal of NanoBiC is to understand the effects of ion and electron beams on living cells at nanoscale.
Under the Beilstein-Institut funding, grants will be awarded for 20 scientists - both at postgraduate or postdoctoral level - who will work on the project at the participating institutions. The Beilstein-Institut is a non-profit foundation for the advancement of chemical sciences located in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. NanoBiC complements the foundation's aim to support the field of nanotechnology. In addition to NanoBiC, the Beilstein-Institut will publish the "Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology" - an online open access journal. Moreover, in May 2010, the international Beilstein Symposium "Functional Nanoscience" will take place in Bozen, Italy.
For further information go to:
Beilstein-Institut: www.beilstein-institut.de
Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology: www.bjnano.org
GSI Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research GmbH: www.gsi.de
Bayer MaterialScience has opened a new pilot facility for the manufacture of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) at CHEMPARK Leverkusen. The company has invested some EUR 22 million in the planning, development and construction of the facility, which is the largest of its kind in the world and has an annual capacity of 200 metric tons.
By investing in one of the key technologies of the future, Bayer MaterialScience is looking to gain a head start in supplying the demand for a whole host of applications for multi-wall carbon nanotubes, which the company is marketing under the trade name Baytubes®. "Current forecasts predict an annual growth rate of 25 percent for carbon nanotubes. Within ten years, the market is expected to be worth US$ 2 billion," says Dr. Joachim Wolff, a member of Bayer MaterialScience's Executive Committee and head of the Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties segment. "We are also expecting nanotechnology to create a total of 100,000 new jobs in the German industry in the medium term," he adds.
North Rhine-Westphalia is one of the world's leading nanotechnology locations. By opening the new facility, Bayer MaterialScience is once again demonstrating its commitment to Leverkusen and the industrial location of North Rhine-Westphalia. "This project is evidence of the strength of our site here in Leverkusen. We have an outstanding infrastructure, easy access to raw material and power supplies, sophisticated waste management technology and a highly qualified workforce, including specialists," says Dr. Steffen Kühling, head of Production and Technology in the Coatings, Adhesives, Specialties segment of Bayer MaterialScience.
Bayer MaterialScience is one of the few companies capable of manufacturing CNTs of a consistently high quality on an industrial scale. It has been operating a pilot facility with an annual capacity of 60 metric tons in Laufenburg in the German state of Baden-Württemberg since 2007. CNTs are manufactured from ethylene in a reactor at an elevated temperature using a catalytic process. "Under the right conditions, the next few years will see nanotechnology becoming a powerful branch of industry in Germany, offering attractive job prospects, innovative products and competitive solutions," states Kühling.
Baytubes® are a highly innovative modification of carbon. They can be added to polymer matrices or metal systems as a filler or modifier to improve their mechanical strength and impart electrical properties. Potential applications for Baytubes® include thermoplastic and thermoset systems and coatings. When used in coatings for ships, Baytubes® ensure very high abrasion resistance. At the same time they reduce the flow resistance between the ship's hull and the water, resulting in a significant reduction in fuel consumption. Further applications for carbon nanotubes include rotor blades for wind turbines, and sports equipment such as skis, hockey sticks and surfboards.
"Nanotechnology is a cross-sectional technology which can play a role in a variety of different industries and application areas. Its potential uses range from industrial production to energy supply and storage, from information technology to intelligent surfaces, and also to some areas of medicine, like diagnosis or therapy," explains Wolff. Bayer is also playing a pioneering role when it comes to the safe usage of Baytubes® carbon nanotubes, with a comprehensive product stewardship program that supports the safe handling of Baytubes® from production through processing to application and waste management.
Accordingly, INIC has given financial aid to 1442 persons committed to science and research activities concerning nanotechnology since March 2004.
Researchers whose master degree/doctoral dissertations are related to nanotechnology or publish scientific papers in ISI indexed journals or give presentations in international nano-related conferences are competent to receive the funds.
Another supporting policy, which has been approved recently, entails funding Iranian patents that are filed in European countries and the US.
According the speakers of the Council, regarding the considerable amount of fundamental nano-related researches that have been conducted so far, INIC's strategic supporting plans target on commercialization.
All these supports/encouragements, worth $12 million up to now, have motivated a generation of young scientists to research and turn into nano science and technology.
INIC aims to offer supporting programs regarding Iranian students outside the country which will be fully announced (including all details and required forms) via the English version of INIC website.
The 20,000 square-foot technology center in Milton, GA is an important part of the Company's Global Research, Development and Engineering (Global RD&E) organization, and is one of three new or upgraded engineering centers dedicated to development of various forms of stored energy. Exide's two other laboratories are located in Azuqueca, Spain and Büdingen, Germany.
The new technology center includes analytical, electronics and prototype battery laboratories, world-class instrument rooms as well as a garage for hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) product development - an environment that enables advanced R&D surrounding emerging applications for stored electrical energy. In addition, the facility is designed with a number of environmentally-advanced technologies that enhance the Company's green profile. These include energy-efficient lighting, solar panels on the roof and a wastewater recycling system.
In addition to building and enhancing its R&D centers, the Company has added 60 science and engineering professionals - 40 positions in Milton alone - in design, process engineering, metals, carbons, ceramics and polymers and other disciplines.
"Exide is dedicating our new Global Technology Center at a pivotal time in our Company's history," said E.J. O'Leary, President and Chief Operating Officer of Exide Technologies. "Now, more than ever, global demand is increasing for innovative technologies designed to meet complex and environmentally-sound energy storage needs."
The Exide Global RD&E organization is dedicated to utilizing battery chemistries, including lead-acid, lithium ion and technologies across applications to maximize performance and accelerate the global growth of new products across multiple product lines and businesses. Specifically the organization is focused on engineering and product development in emerging renewable energy (solar and wind) with large storage applications as well as the development of batteries for HEV applications.
In lead-acid chemistry alone, Exide is exploring many areas, including improvements to Exide's spiral-wound technology and lead-carbon hybrid batteries; alternative electrode compositions, structures, substrates; and improvements to gel technology for solar power energy storage.
Exide announced last summer that it was awarded $34.3 million in federal funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for its proposal for the domestic manufacture of affordable lead-acid batteries incorporating advanced carbon technology. Exide's project involves two of its global technologies: a spiral wound absorbed glass mat (AGM) design and a flat plate AGM design.
"With this new facility and our external relationships, the Global Research, Development and Engineering organization at Exide Technologies is making important strides and exploring some exciting new dimensions - developing new materials, products and processes to build a solid technology foundation and infrastructure for the future," said Dr. Paul Cheeseman, Vice President, Global Engineering and Research of Exide Technologies. "Our team is working on the advancement of multiple technologies - those that may enable breakthrough products or significant new product platforms - for implementation during the next two to five years."
Exide has entered a number of Technology Partnerships to advance RD&E initiatives and provide opportunities to improve the competitiveness of its product portfolio for transportation, network power and motive power applications. The partnerships include:
Axion Power International, Inc., a developer of advanced batteries and energy storage products that incorporate patented lead-carbon battery technology (PbC Technology™). This collaboration provides a multi-dimensional structure of expertise that fuels Exide's ability to expedite the development of advanced lead-acid batteries and new chemistries for use in product development, broadening opportunities in transportation channels.
The U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and the University of Idaho. The alliance will help develop and commercialize improvements on lead-acid battery technology. The laboratory's scientists have recently developed unique glass microsphere technology now being considered and developed for a variety of commercial uses, including battery additives to enhance performance.
Nano-Terra, Inc., a leading surface engineering and nanotechnology co-development company. Nano-Terra will use its expertise in surface chemistry and surface engineering to create a number of innovative functionalities for stored energy solutions manufactured by Exide for motive power, network power and transportation applications.
"The Milton Global Technology Center, along with our other technology centers, mark a milestone in the 122-year history of Exide Technologies," said Gordon Ulsh, Chief Executive Officer of Exide Technologies. "Our renewed emphasis on R&D, new partnership initiatives and innovative products already on the market are preparing Exide to meeting the future as a strong, competitive provider of stored electrical energy technologies for a 21st century world that is increasingly mobile, energy-hungry and environmentally-sensitive."
Seagate Technology is to create 95 jobs at its Derry plant as part of an investment of almost €60 million.
Seagate, which makes hard disk drives and storage solutions, is investing about £47.3 million in research and development, with a further £12.7 million grant coming from Invest Northern Ireland.
The MBE facility at UCL has been officially opened, allowing it to start creating new and improved devices across a number of applications.
A new Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) facility at the University College London (UCL) has been opened by HRH The Princess Royal so it can officially start creating new and improved devices.
The new MBE system will further enhance UCL's reputation in photonics and nanotechnology, as well as its global competitiveness in semiconductor and optoelectronic science.
Special source arrangements have also been put in place to enable the production of complex III-V epitaxial structures which use a combination of phosphorus, arsenic and antimony crackers with indium, gallium and aluminum solid sources.
MBE allows compound semiconductor materials to be made with great precision. Materials are layered on top of the other to form lasers and transistors for applications including radar systems, solar cells, mobile telephones and fibre-optics.
"The supplying of high-quality low-dimensional semiconductor materials is one of the key limiting factors of semiconductor materials and devices in UCL," the university noted.
It has also been announced that Veeco Instruments has been awarded funding from the US Department of Energy to advance its metal organic chemical vapor deposition technology.
Veeco also develops MBE systems.
Researchers in the Electro-Optics Center (EOC) Materials Division at Penn State have produced 100 mm diameter graphene wafers, a key milestone in the development of graphene for next generation high-power, high-frequency electronic devices. Graphene is the two-dimensional form of graphite and consists of tightly bound carbon atoms in a hexagonal arrangement resembling chicken wire. With its remarkable physical, chemical and structural properties, graphene is being studied worldwide for electronics, displays, solar cells, sensors, and hydrogen storage.
Thanks to the ability of an electron to move at 1/300th the speed of light through graphene (significantly faster than silicon), graphene is a candidate material for many high-speed computing applications in the multibillion-dollar semiconductor device industry. Graphene has the potential to enable terahertz computing, at processor speeds 100 to 1,000 times faster than silicon.
The Penn State EOC is a leading center for the synthesis of graphene materials and graphene-based devices. Using a process called silicon sublimation, EOC researchers David Snyder and Randy Cavalero thermally processed silicon carbide wafers in a high temperature furnace until the silicon migrated away from the surface, leaving behind a layer of carbon that formed into a one- to two-atom-thick film of graphene on the wafer surface. The EOC wafers were 100mm in diameter, the largest diameter commercially available for silicon carbide wafers, and exceeded the previous demonstration of 50mm.
According to EOC materials scientist Joshua Robinson, Penn State is currently fabricating field effect transistors on the 100 mm graphene wafers and will begin transistor performance testing in early 2010. A further goal is to improve the speed of electrons in graphene made from silicon carbide wafers to closer to the theoretical speed, approximately 100 times faster than silicon. That will require improvements in the material quality, says Robinson, but the technology is new and there is plenty of room for improvements in processing.
In addition to silicon sublimation, EOC researchers Joshua Robinson, Mark Fanton, Brian Weiland, Kathleen Trumbull and Michael LaBella are developing the synthesis and device fabrication of graphene on silicon as a means to achieve wafer diameters exceeding 200mm, a necessity for integrating graphene into the existing semiconductor industry. With the support of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Crane, Ind., EOC researchers are initially focusing on graphene materials to improve the transistor performance in various radio frequency (RF) applications.
For a material that was first isolated only five years ago, graphene is getting off to a fast start
Zhenrong Zhang, a new assistant professor of physics from China, has begun work this semester to start a Scanning Tunneling Microscopy lab in the Baylor Sciences Building.
The lab will be equipped to obtain atomic resolution such that actual atoms and molecules can be seen on surfaces. Zhang also hopes to set up a program that will delve into environment and energy-related research.
"We had an opening in the department last year that we advertised for," says Greg Benesh, chairman of the physics department.
"We were looking for the best candidate, but we didn't specify a particular area and Dr. Zhang's name came to the fore, and this expertise in scanning tunneling microscopy really complements some of the existing strength in the department."
Plans for the STM lab have since been set into motion. The design is complete and is now out for bids to determine the cost. The lab will contain an Ultra High Vacuum Chamber, various surface science analysis tools and a Metal-Organic Oxide Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) system.
The MOCVD system was obtained by Zhang as a donation to Baylor.
"This piece of equipment [the MOCVD], gives us extended ability to synthesize thin film," Zhang says. "We are hoping that this could bring more research programs in the department and we hope other people could come and use this equipment to synthesize thin film."
Benesh says there are plans for the lab to be set up as a multi-user facility, and that hopefully it will gain funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the Robert A. Welch Foundation and others. At the earliest, the lab will open in July.
"Because of the accuracy of this technique with the STM, there are other interesting problems that people from neighboring universities or industry might have and they would love to see exactly what the reaction is that's taking place on the surface, or what the structure is, and so they can bring those samples in here. We can take a look and image them properly, so they'll be able to recognize what's happening," Benesh says. "And then with the MOCVD system we can deposit the layers that are required for other studies that people are interested in. We're hoping that her lab will be successful so she can track outside funding."
Along with the lab, Zhang hopes to set up a research program focused on environment and energy-related research that will provide opportunities for students and allow for collaboration with other faculty members.
"From the student point of view, it will provide the students the opportunity to do what we call the cutting-edge research," Zhang says.
"We really want to attract more funding, external funding, and to really strengthen the research program in the department."
Zhang believes both the STM lab and the research program will mesh with other research already being done in the department.
McIlvaine Company,
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel: 847-784-0012; Fax: 847-784-0061;
E-mail: editor@mcilvainecompany.com;
Web site: www.mcilvainecompany.com