OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY
INDUSTRY UPDATE
September
2017
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Samsung Electronics to Invest Billions in Xian Factory
Expansion
Samsung Electronics revealed in an official announcement on August 28 that the
company plans to invest $7 billion over the next three years to expand Samsung
Semiconductor’s NAND flash memory factory in Xian, China. The decision was made
to “respond to growing demand for NAND flash drives over the mid-to-long-term,”
according to the company.
On July 4, Samsung Electronics began operating its semiconductor plant in
Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, while also announcing that the company was
considering expanding its production facilities in Xian. The first Xian
production line was completed in 2014 and is currently operating at full
capacity.
Samsung’s expansion of the factory is a strategic move that will allow for
greater economies of scale and production to meet the needs of the Chinese
market, which has the highest demand for NAND flash drives in the world. Despite
concerns that the large-scale investment decision would be postponed as Samsung
Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong was sentenced to prison, the company has decided to
push ahead with the plan as a way to respond to growing demand.
In an executive meeting of Samsung Electronics’ management committee which was
held the same day, a loan of $2.3 billion to Samsung Semiconductor was approved.
The new facility is expected to serve as a dedicated production hub for V-NAND
flash drives.
Comet Group to Open Silicon Valley Office
COMET Group, a global provider of high-quality systems, components and services
such as x-ray, ebeam and radio frequency technologies, announced the opening
of Lab One, its customer-centric technology and application center in San Jose,
CA.
Scheduled to open October 4th, Lab One will bring Comet Group’s three core
technologies under one roof for the first time:
RF power – Comet Plasma Control Technologies (PCT) designs and manufactures the
technology used to make semiconductors and is used by leading chip manufacturers
that power the industry’s most popular mobile devices (e.g. Apple, Samsung) and
electronics (e.g. flat panel displays)
X-ray – Yxlon’s industrial X-ray and computed tomography – systems and services
enable customers to improve the quality of their products and processes by
non-destructive testing, measuring and decision support in industries such as
electronics, automotive, aerospace, medtech, science and new technologies. They
are based on highly compact Comet x-ray components and sources
ebeam – ebeam technology inactivates harmful pathogens that can cause food borne
illnesses and provides safe, environmentally friendly packaging materials that
reduce waste and improve food security
The working Lab and testing environment will act as an extension to many leading
Silicon Valley businesses – providing access to a variety of testing and
inspection services, as well as opportunities to collaborate with Comet Group’s
industry experts, who will be available for consultation, brainstorming and
problem solving.
“Our new Lab One facility can save local businesses time by providing local
inspection services, save them money by finding costly flaws, and solve their
logistic inspection services headaches with quick answers to their
non-destructive test needs,” said Paul Smith, Sr. Vice President at Comet
Technologies USA. “It’s a place where ideas are jointly transformed into
solutions and solutions into business success.”
With pioneering solutions for a wide range of industries, Comet Group will
support its clients by bringing greater safety and security, mobility,
sustainability and efficiency to numerous areas of life.
Building a Cleanroom in an Old Gold Mine
To help scientists uncover the secrets of dark matter, architects and engineers
with LEO A DALY are heading a mile underground, retrofitting part of an
abandoned gold mine into one of the most specialized cleanrooms on earth.
The Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) is a sprawling complex of
underground labs that occupies the former Homestake gold mine in Lead, South
Dakota. Here, shielded by a mile of rock from the interfering radiation that
bombards the earth, chemist Ray Davis, Jr., performed the first solar neutrino
experiments. These experiments, conducted from 1970 to 1994, earned Davis a
share of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.
That same cavern—located 4,850 feet underground—is now part of the Davis Campus,
and is being adapted to conduct the next generation of dark matter experiments.
In an unprecedented collaboration known as LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), a consortium of 250
scientists and 37 institutions will use the most sensitive detector on earth and
20 percent of the world’s annual production of liquid xenon to directly detect
Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs). Scientists believe these
hypothetical particles could help explain the nature of dark matter, which
comprises about 85 percent of the mass in the Universe.
Dark matter is so named because it does not emit or absorb light. However, it
leaves clues about its presence via gravity. It can be observed affecting the
orbital velocities of galaxies in clusters, and distorting light emitted from
background objects in a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. WIMPs pass
through ordinary matter leaving hardly a trace, but under the right
circumstances, they may affect observable changes in noble elements such as
xenon.
The LZ experiment will take place in a tank full of 10 tons of liquid xenon.
Theoretically, as an impinging flux of dark matter particles (WIMPs) pass
through the tank, the xenon nuclei will recoil in response to collisions. A
recoiling xenon nucleus causes a flash of scintillation light, liberating a
charge that causes electroluminescence when extracted from liquid into xenon
gas. In the LZ’s Time Projection Chamber (TPC), these flashes of light will be
detected by 494 photomultiplier tubes, deployed above and below the liquid
xenon. These photomultipliers convert the flashes of light to data so they can
be observed by scientists.
To control for unwanted particle signals, the TPC is surrounded by a tank of
gadolinium-doped scintillator fluid, and housed in another 8 x 6 meter-high
water shield containing 70,000 gallons of purified water. This will further
reduce external background signals to the detector, particularly neutrons and
gammas.
A three-year run of the experiment will achieve a sensitivity close to the
fundamental limits from the cosmic neutrino background.
“When completed, the LZ experiment will be the world’s most sensitive experiment
for WIMPs over a large range of WIMP masses,” said Harry Nelson, physicist at
the University of California, Santa Barbara.
To get the LZ assembled, moved underground and working, LEO A DALY is designing
two highly specialized controlled environments—one above ground for the unit’s
assembly, and one below ground in the Davis Campus.
Cleanrooms are necessary in astrophysical research because the detectors are so
sensitive. Even a tiny amount of dust, airborne microbes, aerosol particles or
chemical vapors may alter the results or damage the equipment. A typical
cleanroom uses special air handlers equipped with HEPA filters of a certain
tolerance, and change the air a certain number of times per hour, depending on
the needs of the environment. The cleanrooms used for the LZ experiment are
rated as class 1,000 cleanrooms, meaning there should not be more than 1,000
particles greater than .5 microns in any given cubic meter of air. The air
handler is calibrated to change the room’s air between 150 and 480 times per
hour. For comparison, a house has an air exchange rate of .5 to 2 air exchanges
per hour.
What is unusual about the LZ’s cleanroom is that its design also keeps out
radon, a radioactive noble gas that naturally leeches out of the ground. The
sensitive nature of the LZ experiment requires an environment free of radon, and
required the design team to create an extremely rare radon-elimination system.
Working with a specialized cleanroom designer, the team devised a two-step
approach to keeping the radon out: 1) all air that is pumped into the cleanroom
goes through a radon filtration system before entering the room, and 2) the
cleanroom’s walls are lined with metal sheeting to reduce radon coming from the
walls.
Once the cryostat has been assembled above-ground, the challenge is to
coordinate a perfectly timed method of delivering construction materials, and
the detector, piece by piece, so they can be assembled in the limited space
available.
The Davis Campus is accessed via the Yates Shaft, a tunnel that descends
vertically from the above-ground headframe to the 4,850 level. The 14,000-pound
“cage”—a 4.5 x 12.5 feet elevator car—travels through the shaft at about 500
feet-per-second, for a door-to-door travel time of 10 minutes. Anyone entering
the underground must wear a utility suit and carry an emergency breathing
apparatus, a hardhat with light, and a brass tag that contains a unique number.
The brass tag system, left over from mining days, allows SURF to keep count of
the 20 to 50 scientists who work underground on any given day. In an emergency
situation they will search for a missing person who has not “tagged out.”
Bringing construction equipment, materials and the cryostat underground requires
a well-coordinated process. First, all construction materials have to be
palletized and vacuum packed to maintain their cleanliness. The area underground
is damp, windy and dusty, so no chances are taken in potentially contaminating
the materials. Next, each piece of equipment is conveyed underground in a rigid,
just-in-time sequence. There is very little room for storage, and no opportunity
to “run and grab something” that has been forgotten above ground.
Leo Daly has worked on three projects so far on the SURF campus. Four years ago,
working with the University of Notre Dame, the firm designed a space for the
Compact Accelerator System Performing Astrophysical Research experiment. This
experiment, which will soon be underway, seeks to understand the processes in
stars that produced half of the elements in the universe. Later, the firm was
tapped to create an underground cleanroom for Black Hills State University to
perform low background radiation studies.
Once complete, the LZ project, which is expected to be fully operational in
2020, will take us one step closer to understanding the secrets of the universe.
As engineers and architects with a keen and constant desire to understand how
things work, these are projects of a lifetime.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel:
847-784-0012; Fax:
847-784-0061
E-mail:
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