OTHER ELECTRONICS &
NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
November/December 2017
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cleanroom
Constructor UIS Seeing Orders Swell
Samsung
Electronics Invests More than the Intel-TSMC Combined
New Facility for
Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies
BASF Expands
Production Facilities in S. Korea
GE Healthcare Buys
Nanofiber Purification Tech Firm Puridify
Alberta Aims
to Become Quantum Nanotechnology Research Hub
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Cleanroom Constructor UIS Seeing Orders Swell
Taiwan-based cleanroom maker United Information Systems (UIS) has seen its backlog of orders reach NT$17.67 billion (US$588.92 million), according to a report by Taiwan's Central News Agency (CNA).
The ramp-up of orders will buoy UIS' revenues for 2018 with EPS expected to surpass NT$8, the report quoted market watchers as saying. Among the orders received so far, about NT$7.06 billion worth of orders were placed for fab construction projects in Taiwan while NT$8.37 billion worth of orders were for those in China, the report indicated.
UIS is reportedly among the beneficiaries of new fab projects of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), Micron Technology and Winbond Electronics which will be implemented in Taiwan. In China, the cleanroom constructor is involved in the ongoing construction of new LCD fabs in Xianyang and Chengdu, according to the report.
UIS has also landed NT$2.24 billion worth of orders for a large-scale semiconductor project in Singapore, the report noted.
UIS' revenues
for the first three quarters of 2017 decreased 13.5% from a year earlier to
NT$9.92 billion, while net profits fell 14.7% on year to NT$971 million. EPS for
the nine-month period came to NT$4.08.
Samsung Electronics Invests More than the Intel-TSMC
Combined
Samsung Electronics’ investments in semiconductor facilities this year are larger than that of the world’s largest system semiconductor producer and the world’s biggest foundry chipmaker TSMC combined. As Samsung Electronics has made the largest facility investment ever in its history, there is growing concern over an oversupply of memory chips. Market watchers say Samsung is changing its strategy that focuses mainly on profitability to that expands a memory market share through the so-called “chicken game.”
According to market research firm IC Insights on November 15, Samsung Electronics’ investments in its semiconductor facilities will reach US$26 billion (28.81 trillion won) this year. This is more than twice the figure of US$11.3 billion (12.52 trillion won) last year. During the 2017 Q3 conference call, Samsung Electronics announced to inject 29.5 trillion won (US$26.62 billion) into the semiconductor sector alone this year. IC Insights forecasts that the total amount of facility investments in the semiconductor industry will come to US$90.8 billion (100.61 trillion won) this year, up 35 percent from last year. Samsung is expected to account for 28.6 percent of the total.
The market research firm says Samsung will inject US$14 billion (15.51 trillion won) in 3D NAND flash, US$7 billion (7.76 trillion won) in DRAM and US$5 billion (5.54 trillion won) in foundry and others this year. The company is expected to make the investment to increase the production capacity at its new Pyeongtaek plant in the 3D NAND flash sector, upgrade the process node and prevent a wafer input loss in the DRAM sector, and expand 10-nm production in the foundry sector.
IC Insights said, “Samsung’s large-scale investment will cause the oversupply of 3D NAND flash chips. It can also instigate the investment of its competitors such as SK Hynix, Toshiba, Micron and Intel.” It means that Samsung’s move can either increase the total investment or lose a market share.
Samsung’s huge investments will deflate the hopes of Chinese firms that seek to push into the NAND flash and DRAM memory markets, according to the market research firm. It said, “Considering Samsung’s investments this year, Chinese memory chip start-ups will not be able to compete with Samsung on the same basis unless they establish a joint venture with existing memory chip makers.”
IC Insights focused on more the 3D NAND flash sector. However, Taiwan-based market research company TrendForce said there are concerns over the excessive supply in the DRAM market as well citing ET News’ report on Samsung Electronics’ expanding DRAM supply on October 30.
TrendForce said, “Samsung is trying to boost the production of DRAM chips in order to raise the barrier to market entry. This is to prevent further price increases.” Samsung Electronics has decided to convert some space of 16 lines in Hwaseong into DRAM production lines and produce DRAM chips on the second floor of the new Pyeongtaek plant. Merrill Lynch also said in its report published earlier this month that Samsung Electronics’ monthly DRAM production capacity will increase more than 20 percent in the next two years.
There is consensus in the industry that the memory boom will last until the first half of next year and droop from the second half. The general opinion is that it face difficulties in 2019. Samsung Securities and KB Investment & Securities have recently downgraded their investment opinions on SK Hynix from “buy” to “neutral.”
However, Kim
Young-woo, a senior analyst at SK Securities, said, “The Taiwanese market
research firm forecasted that there would be an oversupply earlier this year as
well but the forecast is wrong when it comes to results. There will be no
excessive supply because the amount of production will not dramatically increase
even with larger investments than past as DRAM and 3D NAND flash chips have a
higher level of process difficulty. In addition, there is a greater demand for
memory chips in cloud infrastructure. Samsung cannot afford to boost the output
while reducing its profits.”
New Facility for Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies
Clegg Construction has completed work on a major redevelopment and refurbishment project for the UK University.
The £4.5million contract involved the remodeling of existing under-utilized space and transforming it into new laboratories for the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, for its ongoing research into fiber optic communication.
Works included internal demolition, stripping out of existing services and the creation of new rooms and lab spaces, including a cleanroom. Laser safety systems, a smart lighting system, air conditioning and ventilation systems were also installed.
The works were part of a wider multi-million pound redevelopment of the entire estate at Aston University.
The scheme was challenging as we had to work within the live environment and had to minimize disruption to both students and the conferencing facility, which we were working directly underneath.
Ian Oldacre,
Aston University's Director of Estates, said: "The scheme to remodel part of one
floor of our Main Building has greatly improved facilities for our School of
Engineering and Applied Science. It was a challenging brief because we needed to
incorporate a high density of services, delivered in difficult logistics. That
Clegg Construction was able to successfully main a quality finish to schedule is
a credit to the company."
BASF Expands Production Facilities in S. Korea
BASF, the world's leading chemicals company, has expanded its production facilities in South Korea to meet growing demand in the domestic and Asian markets, the company said.
The German chemicals company has just started operation of a new electronic materials plant in Yeosu, 455 kilometers south of Seoul, to produce ultra-pure NH4OH, or electronic-grade ammonia water, used in the semiconductor and display manufacturing processes, BASF said in a statement.
BASF plans to further expand the mainstay Yeosu plant in line with aggressive facility investment by its Korean customers such as Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc. and LG Electronics Co., Boris Jenniches, vice president in charge of BASF's electronic materials business in the Asia-Pacific region, said in a press conference held in Seoul.
In 2017, when
the semiconductor market is expected to grow 15 percent from a year earlier, he
forecast Samsung Electronics will exceed Intel Corp. in terms of sales and
investment in production facilities.
In the past four years, BASF has set up an "ecosystem" ranging from research and development to production so it can continue to grow in the Korean and Asian markets, the vice president said.
"Korea is a strategically important market for advanced electronic components, especially semiconductors and displays. The production facility ideally complements our local R&D presence in Korea, where we develop next-generation technologies in close partnership with our customers," Lothar Laupichler, senior vice president at BASF Electronics Materials, said in the statement.
BASF, which already runs seven plants in Korea, aims to further strengthen its production capabilities through the new electronic materials plant, it said. The new plant is an expansion of the existing seventh production facility in Yeosu.
The senior vice president said the latest investment will "ensure fast-track ramp-up of chemical solutions from lab-scale to mass production, provide reliable supply, and deliver consistent product quality that meets the ever-increasing purity requirements for next generation semiconductor and display technologies."
In South Korea,
which is home to the world's leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics Co. and SK
Hynix Inc., BASF set up the Electronic Materials Asia Pacific Regional
Headquarters in Seoul in 2013 and the Regional Electronic Materials R&D Center
Asia in Suwon, just south of Seoul, in 2014.
GE Healthcare Buys Nanofiber Purification Tech Firm Puridify
GE says it will continue to invest in Puridify’s early-stage FibroSelect technology to bring it to full commercialization.
GE Healthcare announced the acquisition of Puridify –a spin-out from University College London, UK – for an undisclosed fee, bringing it the early-stage purification tech platform FibroSelect.
“Our technical evaluation shows this could be a strong complement to GE’s bead resins and chromatography membranes used in the downstream bioprocessing, promising faster mass transfer, scalability and ease of use in certain application areas,” said Jan Makela, GM of BioProcess at GE Healthcare Life Sciences.
The platform consists of a nanofiber-based material to which ligands are attached to activate the platform for purification. “For example, Protein A is used as ligand in the capture step of monoclonal antibodies, but other ligands may be used depending on the application needs,” he added.
Puridify – which
has an ongoing R&D deal with Big Biopharma firm GSK – claims the open structure
of the nanofiber matrix can deliver high capacity and high flowrate, overcoming
limitations often seen with packed bed chromatography purification. At a
research and pilot scale, the firm has demonstrated it can operate at 50x
throughput, achieving 10-50 fold productivity improvements in the purification
process.
Commercialization
And now GE is looking to develop the platform to reproduce this output on a commercial scale, Makela said.
“We will be developing this exciting new platform technology, to fit logically alongside GE’s existing range of consumables and hardware. This may include common ligands to simplify process scale up, for example, or common hardware architectures to enable FlexFactory system integration.
“We will be investing further in Puridify’s early-stage platform to bring it to full commercialization, working with the Puridify team as they transition to GE.”
All 17 Puridify
employees will be integrated into the company and continue to work from
Stevenage, UK, which will become a small research hub for GE’s Bioprocess
business.
GE’s bio push
The Puridify acquisition is the latest investment in its bioprocessing business by GE Healthcare. Over the past year, the firm has invested in automation firm Zenith Technologies, launched a new chromatography resin and expanded facilities in both Massachusetts, US and Uppsala, Sweden.
“Our strategy is to make the whole biopharmaceutical manufacturing process more efficient for our customers, and we are open to look at different technical solutions in this space both in upstream and downstream,”said Makela. “This [latest] investment shows that GE continues to re-invest, to drive market-leading innovation around the capture and purification process steps.”
He added: “We
maintain continual focus on driving productivity, quality and security of supply
for our customers, and so we actively review our BioProcess product portfolio on
an on-going basis to ensure that we are focusing our investment in priority
areas.”
Alberta Aims to Become Quantum Nanotechnology Research Hub
Physicists at the University of Alberta are hoping to emulate the success of their artificial intelligence studying counterparts in establishing the city and the province as the nucleus of quantum nanotechnology research in Canada and North America.
Google’s
artificial intelligence research division DeepMind announced in July it had
chosen Edmonton as its first international AI research lab, based on a
long-running partnership with the U of A’s 10-person AI lab.
Retaining the brightest minds in the AI and machine-learning fields while enticing a global tech leader to Alberta was heralded as a coup for the province and the university.
It is something U of A physics professor John Davis believes the university’s new graduate program, Quanta, can help achieve in the world of quantum nanotechnology.
The graduate
program is geared towards developing soft skills in entrepreneurship and
understanding business skills like how to start a company or protect and market
their intellectual property.
“Physicists are good at doing science, but we are generally scared of doing business,” he said.
Twenty-five students are currently enrolled in the program, but that could double next fall. The program is a collaboration between the U of A and University of Calgary.
The field of
quantum mechanics had long been a realm of theoretical science based on the
theory that atomic and subatomic material like photons or electrons behave both
as particles and waves.
“When you get right down to it, everything has both behaviors (particle and wave) and we can pick and choose certain scenarios which one of those properties we want to use,” he said.
But, Davis said,
physicists and scientists are “now at the point where we understand quantum
physics and are developing quantum technology to take to the marketplace.”
“Quantum computing used to be realm of science fiction, but now we’ve figured it out, it’s now a matter of engineering,” he stated.
And because of
the very nature of the quantum world, each discovery that is made will require
the development and creation of little pieces of hardware that must be designed
by the rules of quantum mechanics.
Quantum computing labs are being bought by large tech companies such as Google, IBM and Microsoft because they realize they are only a few years away from having this power, he said.
Those making the groundbreaking developments may want to commercialize their finds and take the technology to market and that is where Quanta comes in.
“We are trying
to push science forward, push technology forward and then enable these amazing,
highly trained, highly educated people to stay in Alberta,” he said.
“We don’t want to build them up and ship them off to Silicon Valley.
“We want to
train these people and get them to stay here, build businesses here and build
our economy.”
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