OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY

INDUSTRY UPDATE

 

April 2018

McIlvaine Company

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

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Analog Devices’ New India Headquarters

Analog Devices, Inc., has unveiled its new India headquarters for the approximately 600 Bengaluru-based staff who make up ADI India. The new 175,000 square foot facility, which houses one of ADI’s top three global design centers, will focus on developing and selling cutting edge technologies and solutions for the global automotive, industrial, healthcare, consumer, Internet of Things (IoT), security, communications, and energy markets.

“We have created a culture of innovation, collaboration and engineering excellence at ADI, encouraging our engineers to explore, learn and share while giving them opportunities to work across teams and domains so they become well-rounded experts,” said Yusuf Jamal, Senior Vice President of ADI’s Industrial, Healthcare, Consumer, and IoT Solutions and Security Group. “We have been aggressively investing in our global facilities, including a recently announced U.S. expansion in Silicon Valley, to better attract and leverage local talent and skills and this investment in ADI India will better position us to accelerate growth and impact for ADI.”

Having started as a three-person product development center in 1995, ADI India’s headcount has grown by a factor of 200 over the last twenty years to support the evolving needs of ADI’s global customers. Mirroring ADI’s transformation from a manufacturer of modules and integrated circuits (ICs) to a provider of edge-to-cloud systems, and from a focus solely on hardware to one that includes software and data analytics, ADI India counts software, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), applications, product and test engineering, systems, and analog and mixed signal IC development among its broad suite of capabilities.

“ADI India has come a long way since its humble beginnings as an integrated circuit design center, having experienced an impressive expansion in the capabilities and range of functions being performed by our skilled employees here in Bengaluru,” said Sai Krishna Mopuri, Managing Director, ADI India. “As we move into this new facility, we plan to expand our university relations program work with reputed academic institutions, which includes fellowships, sponsorships and internship opportunities, through additional partnerships and talent acquisition from engineering colleges across the country.”

 

Nova China Subsidiary to Double Production Capacity

Taiwan-based Nova Technology, which specializes in services of water, gas and chemical process systems, has seen its China-based units run at full capacity utilization rates, according to industry sources.

Both Winmax Technology (Shanghai) and Suzhou Winmax Technology have enjoyed robust demand from China-based IC foundries, the sources said. Suzhou Winmax is also looking to double its production capacity between the third and fourth quarters of 2018.

Nova has seen as high as 70% of its overall orders on hand come from China's IC industry, the sources noted. The orders will enable the company to post sequential gross margin increases through the last quarter of 2018, the sources said.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International (SMIC), Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor and Xiamen United Semiconductor are reportedly among Nova's chip clients. Nova also supplies engineering equipment to the LCD panel sector with customers including China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) and China Electronics Panda Crystal Technology.

Nova is expected to enjoy another quarter of record-high revenues in the second quarter, according to the sources. The company's revenues for the first quarter of 2018 climbed 44% on year to NT$1.285 billion (US$43.3 million), a record quarterly high.

In response, Nova said it does not give financial guidance. The company also declined to comment on orders and customer status.

 

Columbia University Nano Initiative Cleanroom Renovation

Size: 5,000 sq. ft.

Project team: Protecs (construction management)

Columbia University recently completed the renovation and expansion of its existing clean micro and nano fabrication and characterization research laboratories. Replacing and improving lab utilities, such as air filters, gas piping, water cooling systems, and air handling units to allow for tight control on temperature, humidity, and particles in the new lab, almost doubled the previous space.

The cleanroom (Class 1,000 to Class 10,000) is open to researchers from inside Columbia University as well as from other academic and industrial institutes. The laboratory supports materials and device studies in physics, electrical engineering, applied physics, mechanical engineering, biology, chemistry, medicine, and more. A significant portion of the research done in the CNI cleanroom is interdisciplinary in its nature and involves collaboration between researchers from various fields on and off campus.

The new CNI Cleanroom is divided into 7 separate bays, each dedicated to a set of related fabrication processes consisting of many new and advanced micro and nanofabrication pieces of equipment:

Optical lithography bay consisting of dedicated fume hoods and spinners, two mask aligners (one for DUV applications), two mask fabrication systems: a manual Laser Writing and Mask Fabrication system (3µm resolution), and an automatic Laser Writer system with submicron resolution.

Wet chemical bay with an automatic RCA bench, Spring Rinse Dry (SRD) system for 4" wafers, general acid hood, and general base hood for wet chemical processes.

Plasma bay with Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) plasma processing based on chlorine and fluorine chemistries, as well as Deep RIE for silicon etching, and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) for Oxide and Nitride deposition.

Deposition bay including two sputtering systems (dedicated to metals and dielectrics respectively), an e-beam evaporator, Atomic Layer Deposition, and a thermal evaporator, all designed to grow high quality thin films.

Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) bay (with e-beam writing capabilities) with nanometric imaging capabilities.

Furnace bay with Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition (LPCVD) to grow: silicon oxide, nitride, carbide, and for thermal treatments.

Backend room consisting of a Dicing saw, Chemical Mechanical Polishing system for planarizing device surfaces, Wire bonders (Al and Au) for electrical connections to the device, a Parylene coater, and a Critical Point Dryer.

Completion date: Q3 2017

 

Finisar Making Progress on New Facility

Nearly three months after announcing plans to begin production of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers at its Sherman facility in 2018, Finisar Corp. has only hired around 40 of the more than 500 employees it is planning to add, but a company representative said things are proceeding well.

Finisar’s VCSEL production will provide Apple’s iPhone line with depth-sensing technology that helps power features such as Face ID, Animoji, portrait mode selfies and proximity-sensing capabilities. VCSELs are small semiconductor devices that emit light vertically and measure the depth at which that light is reflected.

Finisar Vice President Curt Barratt, who is the general manager of the company’s facility in Allen, said the electronic components manufacturer has three full-time recruiters working on finding new employees, but most of the current work at the Sherman facility is still centered on remodeling the building for production.

“The construction is going well,” Barratt said. “Most of the facility’s getting refurbished. and turned back on — boilers, chillers, recirculating cooling water, nitrogen, vacuum, all the things that are necessary to make the building work. And the building control system has been completely revived.”

Barratt said Finisar expects the building to be ready to house manufacturing equipment on April 30.

“We’ll bring them in and hook them up and commission them and then we’ll begin to do the initial production and the process integration,” Barratt said. “We’re hoping to get the first article out in August.”

Building manager Bruce Armstrong estimated that there are normally around 250 construction employees working on the building.

“That’s a normal day,” Armstrong said. “As the types of jobs change, it might fluctuate some, but I think it’s going to be plus or minus 250 (for the next couple of months).”

Armstrong said a lot of work is currently being done to convert space into clean rooms that will allow VCSEL production without the risk of any contaminants like dust or foreign substances.

“There will be more cleanroom spaces than there were before,” Armstrong said of the building’s former life as an MEMC facility. “While not everything is a high-level cleanroom now, there are more cleanroom space.”

Barratt said by the time production really ramps up in October and November, Finisar will have a “full complement of employees” at the Sherman facility, noting that will likely be 200 to 300 employees.

“Most of the employee head count will be hourly employees, called nonexempt employees, and that hiring won’t begin until we really occupy the building,” Barratt said. “The construction will be finished, the manufacturing assets will be on site to be hooked up and then obviously the hourly employees will have something to do. And that begins late April, early May and will proceed all the way through the summer. And we’ll be hiring throughout the capacity ramp, which goes on through summer of 2019. So it’s a dynamic process.”

McIlvaine Company

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