OTHER ELECTRONICS & NANOTECHNOLOGY

INDUSTRY UPDATE

 

June 2018

McIlvaine Company

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

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Chengdu Xingu to Be Built as Green, Livable IC Industry Complex

While devoted to developing semiconductor ecosystems in Chengdu Xingu Industrial Parks, a mega complex sitting in the Shuangliu District of the largest city in the midwestern area of China, the developer of the complex will focus more on realizing the concept of city-industry integration, seeking to provide businesses with good investment and operating environments while also building a humanistic, livable ecosystem, according to He Haihua, president of Chengdu Xingu Industrial Parks Development.

 

Engineering Building, Brown University, Providence, R.I.

Cost: $90,000,000

Size: 80,000 sq. ft.

Project team: RFD (laboratory planners), Kieran Timberlake (architects)

The building provides flexible space to support high-end research needs within the Brown School of Engineering. The building includes approximately 18,000 sq. ft. of flexible research laboratory space; an imaging suite to house Titan-Class TEMs; a nano-fabrication microelectronics cleanroom; and new entry, lobby and classroom facilities.

The cleanroom includes 3,000 sq. ft. of filtered space within a 5,000 sq. ft. total area. The cleanroom suite is positioned to be highly visible from the building exterior and main entry. A three-bay cleanroom supports micro-electronics and material sciences applications. An additional dedicated bay is provided for nano-biotechnology work related to implantable devices and materials.

RFD provided full cleanroom design services including tool fitout design. The project was delivered using an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) process—partnering the design team, the contractor, subcontractors and the owner in a project delivery team.

Completion date: 2017

 

SATO UK Makes £7 Million Investment

SATO UK has invested £7 million in a new state-of-the-art production facility adjacent to its existing premises in Harwich, England. The British branch of the Tokyo-based auto-ID solutions provider caters to the UK retail, food and drink, industrial and healthcare sectors with labelling and auto-identification solutions.

The new 376,600 sq. ft. (35,000 sq. m) site houses a modern office space for the company’s customer service, purchasing and logistics teams, as well as extensive manufacturing and warehousing facilities.

The production floor is now a temperature and humidity controlled cleanroom with a positive pressure to minimize contaminants.

SATO UK said the carefully controlled environment and improved lighting will ensure production "of only highest quality labels, tickets and tags". An improved waste management system will further improve productivity and reduce the environmental footprint.

Jason Wise, general manager of SATO UK, explained: “SATO UK has seen significant expansion in its hardware and consumables sales in recent years and this investment reflects our commitment to further growth in the UK. We have over 80 employees here in Harwich and are delighted that we can now offer them a contemporary up to date working environment, as well as facilitate our further manufacturing growth to be a trusted partner addressing the diverse tagging needs of customers.”

SATO UK serves a diverse range of customers with hardware and software solutions, combined with comprehensive label and consumables portfolio, to connect people, goods and information.

The company works with a range of partners in the UK to supply the latest print and label solutions driving operational efficiency and sustainability for clients.

 

NC State University’s Transparent Engineering Building

NC State University has officially broken ground on Fitts-Woolard Hall, a new $150 million engineering building on Centennial Campus. The 250,000 sq. ft. facility was designed by Clark Nexsen and will feature a transparent design that puts “engineering on display.”

The building’s main entry is flanked by a structural testing lab, senior student project space, and a large scale driving simulator that are all visible on the exterior and interior of the building.

Collaboration and interaction will be supported throughout the four-story building in high degrees of transparency. Stairs at the end of the building will act as connecting threads between floors and reveal the building’s structural and mechanical systems as an additional instructional tool. An outdoor terrace, interspersed seating, and an open, collaborative space on the second floor known as “the hearth” will promote socialization and interaction between students.

The third and fourth floors, which will be contained in a floating volume, will house faculty offices, graduate student space, and additional classrooms and research labs. Overall, Fitts-Woolard Hall will contain over 100 classrooms and laboratories and house the Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering and the Fitts Department of Industrial and System Engineering.

Skanska is the project’s general contractor.

Silvaco Announces Relocation of Headquarters Within Santa Clara

Silvaco, an EDA and IP provider of software tools, announced that it has moved into new corporate headquarters at 2811 Mission College Boulevard on the sixth floor of one of the towers of the Mission Corporate Center in the heart of Silicon Valley in Santa Clara.

After 34 years, Silvaco moved from its company-owned Patrick Henry campus, where it occupied 5 buildings to a state of the art facility with workspace for all employees under one roof.

“This is an exciting time for Silvaco and marks a huge milestone for the company, aligned with our progress in our leadership for Advanced Nodes, Power and Display. The new layout allows for a modern-style collaborative working environment to help accelerate our pace of innovation,” said Dave Dutton, CEO of Silvaco. “I am confident that this move will allow us to accommodate our future growths plans.

Silvaco, Inc. is a leading EDA and IP provider of software tools used for process and device development and for analog/mixed-signal, power IC, and memory design. Silvaco delivers a full TDAD-to-sign-off flow for vertical markets including displays, power electronics, optical devices, radiation and soft error reliability, and advanced CMOS process and IP development

 

Sitime Opens New Center of Excellence in Michigan

SiTime Corporation announced it has expanded its global footprint to support its rapid growth with the opening of a new Center of Excellence in Michigan.

“SiTime’s mission is to solve the most difficult timing challenges for our customers,” said Rajesh Vashist, CEO of SiTime. “To fulfil our mission, SiTime’s strategy is to deliver leading-edge solutions by employing the best talent in communities that offer the highest quality of life. Our Michigan Center is near many world-class universities. The rich talent pool in the region, especially in engineering, will help us accelerate our product development. Additionally, Michigan is at the forefront of connected and autonomous vehicle innovation, which is of strategic importance to SiTime. Our proximity and collaborative cooperation with the industry will extend our leadership in automotive timing solutions. We look forward to SiTime Michigan becoming a key contributor to our success.”

By combining unique MEMS and analog technology with a fabless semiconductor model and significant knowhow, SiTime has transformed the timing industry over the past decade. Today, SiTime sets the benchmark in performance, reliability, size, and flexibility, and is the preferred timing supplier for high-performance electronics. SiTime has cumulatively shipped 1 billion units since 2005 and has 90% share of the MEMS timing market. To support this rapid global growth and fuel innovation, SiTime has a significant presence worldwide, including China, Japan, the Netherlands, Russia, Taiwan, and Ukraine.

In Michigan, to assist with office space location, new talent acquisition, and business support services, SiTime collaborated with Ann Arbor SPARK, a non-profit economic development organization.

“The Ann Arbor region is a unique place where business intersects with advanced research, out-of-the-box thinkers, abundant financial resources, vibrant economic development and an immense talent pool,” said Paul Krutko, president/CEO, Ann Arbor SPARK. “We are thrilled to work with SiTime to help them get settled and to find the talent that will fuel their continued growth, while further energizing our technology sector.”

 

Center for Neovation, Osceola County, Florida

Cost: $75 million

Size: 109,000 sq. ft. total; Class 100 cleanroom: 30,000 sq. ft.; Class 10,000 cleanroom: 10,000 sq. ft.

Project team: Osceola County (owner); BRIDG (operator, under agreement with the University of Central Florida); Skanska (contractor); ZHA International (program manager); HOK (lead architect): Abbie Gregg Inc. (cleanroom/lab planning and design (arch + MEP)); Vanderweil Engineers (MEP engineering); Walter P Moore (structural engineering); Hanson, Walter & Associates Inc. (civil engineering); NFC Landscape Architects (landscape architect); Affiliated Engineers (commissioning agent); Terracon (environmental consultant); Colin Gordon & Associates (acoustic and vibration consultant); VitaTech Electromagnetics, LLC (EMI consultant); Jensen Hughes (fire protection engineering)

Located at NeoCity—a 500-acre master-planned intuitive community of innovation in Osceola County, less than 20 minutes from the Orlando International Airport and within a mile of the Florida Turnpike— BRIDG is a unique public-private partnership at the heart of a technology-based economic transformation taking place in Central Florida.

As an industry-led, not-for-profit organization for advanced sensors, semiconductors, photonics and other advanced nanoscale systems, BRIDG provides research and development capabilities and infrastructure for manufacturing processes and materials geared toward system miniaturization and smart sensor innovation.

BRIDG operates a highly versatile 200mm microelectronics fabrication facility—

a 109,000 sq. ft. building with nearly 60,000 sq. ft. of laboratory/manufacturing space that includes two cleanrooms; one operating at Class 100 standards and the other at Class 10,000.

Focused on the innovative manufacturable processes, materials and equipment for next-generation sensors and future high-tech products, BRIDG serves as the catalyst to bring high-value, quality jobs to Florida.  As companies get products through development cycles, BRIDG provides the necessary infrastructure (talent, equipment, background/foreground IP, etc.) to test ideas and concepts, acting as the bridge to product commercialization. BRIDG is the state-of-the-art “boutique” lab/fab facility open and flexible enough to keep up with the ever-evolving pace of technology with space to accommodate a variety of partner-funded activities.

Completion date: April 2017

 

Kingfield Electronics Upgrades Cleanroom

British company has installed an ISO Class 8 cleanroom in response to increasing demand for assembly services

Kingfield Electronics has installed an ISO Class 8 cleanroom at its plant in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, in the UK. Kingfield is a contract electronics manufacturing (CEM) solutions provider that caters to companies operating in a variety of high reliability, high quality, function critical markets including scientific and laboratory, defense and aerospace.

This new addition to its capability enables Kingfield to offer a total contract electronics manufacturing solution to those companies looking to manufacture products which are sensitive to particulate contamination.

In a statement, the company explained: “Following a number of enquiries for cleanroom assembly services, our state-of-the-art Chesterfield manufacturing facility has been further upgraded to include a bespoke ISO class 8 cleanroom compliant to BS EN 14644-1:2015.”

The new ISO Class 8 cleanroom would allow Kingfield the facility to manufacture a wide range of products for companies in the medical, scientific instrumentation, optics, nanotechnology and micro-mechanical industries.

 

Unitysc Opens New Asia Entity

UnitySC, a developer of advanced inspection and metrology solutions, announced the opening of its Asia subsidiary, Unity Semiconductor Limited Company (UnitySC Asia). The entity was established to deliver enhanced customer support for UnitySC’s growing installed base of inspection and metrology tools throughout the region. UnitySC Asia is headquartered at Tai-Yuan Hi-Tech Industrial Park, Jubei City, Hsinchu, Taiwan, and has field offices in Singapore, Korea, and Shanghai, as well as a presence in Japan.

“Asia is experiencing very strong growth in the semiconductor industry,” said Kamel Ait-Mahiout, CEO, UnitySC. “We’re seeing customers ramp up new advanced packaging technologies in their factories to meet the demands of multiple market drivers. It is evident that being local is quickly becoming a requirement, so that we can provide application development along with our existing customer support capabilities. UnitySC Asia is a key piece of our growth strategy, following the recent acquisition of HSEB GmbH, which broadened our process control portfolio.”

Seventy percent of UnitySC’s global customer installed base is located in Asia. The region’s rapid growth is driven by expanding markets: wireless and connectivity, as well as automotive, which includes electric vehicles and autonomous driving. These trends are fueling increased demand for advanced packaging, power devices and sensors.

“While UnitySC has long maintained a customer service presence in Asia, growth in the region calls for a local sales force as well as experienced application engineers who can respond to complex process questions quickly,” said Patrick Desjardins, general manager, UnitySC Asia. “Moreover, as our installed base of tools grows in the region, we will be able to provide the high-quality support our customers have come to expect directly from our local offices.”

UnitySC is growing in the Asia Pacific region and is staffed to support all areas of service. The local team includes engineers, experienced application engineers and customer service personnel, and also offers on-site customer support and assistance.

 

U.S. Army Research Laboratory to Be Built at Northeastern

 With the promise of the high-tech era giving rise to innovations once considered limited to the pages of science fiction lore, the country's top military brass and homeland security experts say laboratory researchers in rogue nations could easily tip the balance of world power.

But on a 14-acre parcel off South Bedford Road, situated not far from the Woburn line and just a few miles away from the Burlington Mall, the U.S. Army's best and brightest intend to wipe away any and all enemy advantages by creating the world's most formidable technological partnership.

Earlier, a host of dignitaries descended upon Northeastern University's George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security to formalize a unique collaboration between academia, tech companies, and the defense department's U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL).

Within the secretive 70,000 square foot facility, where researchers are already experimenting with drones, explosive and force-resistant building materials, and nanotechnology or microscopic robotics and electronics, the ARL plans to house its northeastern regional partnership headquarters.

In the undertaking, staff from the ARL's 3,000-plus strong civilian and military workforce will labor directly alongside some of the state's preeminent university and corporate researchers to move innovations in the laboratory directly to those serving on the battlefield.

Already, the U.S. military has inked similar agreements, which are expected to bring millions of dollars in research funding, with three other universities as part of a larger mission to coordinate similar partnerships in all regions of the United States.

"I'm honored to be here and represent the Army as we develop the newest regional partnership. The character of war is changing, and the pace and speed of technology has a lot to do with that," said Maj. General Cedric T. Wins, the commanding officer of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

"We work on a wide-range of national security and Homeland Security issues, from cyber-at-the-tactical edge, to advanced materials and manufacturing, to the development of state-of-the-art mobile commands," later commented David Lozzi, Northeastern University's provost for research and development. "Today's most forward-looking government laboratories, research universities, and corporations recognize that going it alone doesn't get it done anymore."

Governor Charles Baker, who attended the ceremony alongside U.S. Senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Congressman Seth Moulton, recognized the promise of Northeastern's Kostas Institute for Research shortly after the three-story building opened its doors in 2013.

Funded through a $12 million donation from the late Northeastern University alumnus George Kostas, a one-time synthetic rubber researcher who worked for the U.S. Government during World War II, the facility last year received a $3 million state grant for work in advanced nano manufacturing.

Already, those in the nanotechnology field have created a second-generation 3D printer capable of manufacturing biosensors, medical implants, and electronics that in one application, were deemed capable of measuring sugar levels in athletes sweat.

The secure research facility also features a one-of-a-kind lab and innovation center, in which model buildings and structures - standing up to 20-feet tall and weighing 40,000 pounds — can be dropped on four-foot thick, reinforced concrete floors with anchors that can withstand forces in excess of 200,000 pounds.

The specialized quarters are utilized to test building materials and products capable of withstanding blasts and other natural forces.

"If you take a look at the arc of all the work that's been done in supplying our military and warfighters, nobody plays more out of their weight class than Massachusetts," said Baker.

To the envy of its neighbors, Burlington, once known for its mall site and a few mid-sized office parks, has lured wave after wave of software, defense, biomedical and advanced technology firms to its borders, including MilliporeSigma, Oracle, Nuance Communications, Booz Allen Hamilton, and BAE Systems.

Around those industry anchors, developers have subsequently poured millions of dollars into further office park expansions, as well as investments for new hotels, apartment complexes, and high-end shopping centers and restaurants to serve that clientele.

In many ways, Burlington's exponential growth has marked a revitalization of the larger Route 128 corridor, which through the high-tech sector, has rebounded after long-being known as one of the nation's original computer technology hubs.

During the recent ceremony to mark the town's latest partnership between Northeastern University and the U.S. Army's Research Laboratory, members of the state's congressional delegation were quick to boast of Burlington's growing clout along Route 128 and Route 3's "high-tech corridor".

"We're right here on America's technology highway, and Burlington is the belt-buckle of that highway," quipped Markey, a proud Northeastern University alumnus.

"The challenges we face around the globe today are coming in the innovation space, and we have to stand up and meet them. That begins right here," Moulton said in separate remarks.

While neighboring communities often cite Burlington's growth as a model to be emulated, its economic boon has come with some drawbacks, including increased strain on town infrastructure and friction between town residents and the community's corporate interests.

Northeastern's George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security, situated on a 13.5-acre parcel off of South Bedford Road, is no exception, as it is situated near the 200-acre Mary Cummings Trust Park and by the heavily trafficked intersection of South Bedford, Cambridge, and Bedford Road.

Less than a decade ago, the parcel housed a little-noticed suburban college campus in an underutilized two-story concrete building, but in 2011, the Boston-based university celebrated the construction of its first 70,000 square foot research and office building.

In August of 2013, during what was considered one of the first partnerships of its kind, Northeastern University joined with the Rogers Corporation, a publicly-traded electronics and advanced materials manufacturer, to open a 4,000 square foot innovation center at the flagship Kostas Research Institute.

The innovation center, which blends together academic and corporate level research interests from the initial design to commercial rollout phase, established the model now being utilized by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

"Northeastern was prepared to change the traditional sponsored research model by including friendly intellectual property rights and processes, allowing the co-location of industry and academic researchers, and allowing industry to have input into hiring new talent," said Rogers Corp. spokesman Bob Daigle.

"There's now 17 active partners on this campus, but Rogers was the first. And the fruits of this collaboration are beginning to be introduced to the market," he added.

In recent months, after Burlington officials granted Kostas Research Institute officials permission to construct a 150-by-200 foot exterior net for drone research, Northeastern University has been seeking permission to erect a new three-story, 104,000 square foot research facility.

If approved, the building would become the fourth on the campus, but with the newest structure being proposed for the southwestern portion of the site, the endeavor has drawn criticism from Burlington residents and Mary Cummings Trust proponents like Monte Pearson and Jonathan Sachs.

The parkland, technically under the jurisdiction of the City of Boston, is the 10th-largest conservation land spaces within Greater Boston and one of the last significant, unprotected open green spaces in Burlington, where some 60-acres of the land are considered delicate habitats for rare and endangered species.

“I want people to know not to mess with [Mary Cummings Park]. You are going to be able to see the building from [Mary Cummings Park vista], which is one of the most beautiful vistas in town," said Sachs, during a Planning Board meeting on the expansion in March. "If you force this through, you are going to take one of the two open meadows left in all of Burlington and put in a huge building.”

“I do not see any value of putting this building in. [Northeastern] does not pay any taxes and there is no special provision for Burlington residents to use the campus. We should not be cow-towing to them just because they want to do research,” Pearson later commented.

The Planning Board, though conceding there's likely little they can do to block the expansion from moving ahead, has also cited concerns about traffic by South Bedford and Cambridge Road, which is currently the site of constant commuter-hour gridlock.

Northeastern consultants have proposed a $1.4 million fix of the crossroads, but have not committed to footing the bill for those improvements, which would add new traffic signals, dedicated turning lanes, and pedestrian safety enhancements.

 

NYU Tandon Welcomes Brooklyn’s First Cleanroom for Advancing Technology

Located in Rogers Hall at 6 MetroTech Center, the incredibly sterile 2,300-square-foot laboratory will allow researchers to develop nanotechnology and other electronics so sensitive that even a dust particle could render them defective.

The NanoFab CleanRoom, as it has been named, will be key in the development of solar cells, hack-proof hardware and even devices that can identify cancer at the cellular level.

A cleanroom fabrication facility is essential to experiments in nanotechnology, quantum computing, and minute biosensors that could revolutionize medicine, ultra-fast electronics, hardware that is secure from hackers, and much more.

To build the cleanroom, Tandon received a $2.5 million grant from the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York in addition to $1 million in funding from the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President Eric. L Adams.

“Any new young mind who’s trying to develop their skills want[s] to go to an environment that’s going to cover their development, and there’s no greater level of encouragement than showing that you are invested in the technology that is needed to grow,” Adams said to WSN. “We just upped the notch on Tandon, what Tandon has to offer, and we’re going to be like a magnet. We’re going to draw some of those young scholars here to this school.”

The space is three years in the making, and using it will cost between $20 and $200 per hour, depending on the equipment needed, according to News 12 Brooklyn.

Adams, President Andrew Hamilton, Tandon Dean Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, Chair of Tandon’s Board of Overseers Chandrika Tandon, DASNY President and CEO Gerrard P. Bushell and others gathered for the opening of the room on Friday, April 27.

The room is rated Class 1000, meaning the number of particles larger than 0.5 microns must stay below 1000 for every 1 million particles in the room. Typical rooms, for perspective, usually fall under Class 1,000,000.

To maintain this stringent level of cleanliness, the room utilizes high-efficiency particulate air filters. It also has higher air pressure than most rooms, pushing dust and floating particles near doors out of the room into surrounding areas of lower air pressure. Finally, visitors in the cleanroom must wear protective gear such as gloves, hair nets, shoe covers and body suits to reduce the amount of particulate matter they bring into the lab.

James Burnette, Tandon’s manager of Cleanroom and Shared Instrumentation Facilities, stressed the importance of keeping even the smallest, most seemingly harmless particulate matter away from the technology being developed in the room.

“If you have a bunch of small particles floating around and you’re trying to make an electronic device, say a chip or something like that, those particles are very small, and they’re going to stick because of electrostatic interaction between the particles and the surface of whatever you’re trying to make,” Burnette said. “Once they stick, it’s impossible to remove them.”

Adams hopes the cleanroom will be the first of many in Brooklyn.

“The goal is to start out with one room and once people see the benefits of it, then you continue the evolution for more cleanrooms and you continue to grow,” he said.

Dean Sreenivasan said the fact that Tandon was chosen to be the home of Brooklyn’s first cleanroom was only natural.

“NYU is a research university, and a good research university always has cleanrooms,” Sreenivasan said. “Now, students and faculty can do things that they were previously unable to do.”

The facility is expected to open for full operations by the end of June.

The 2,300 sq. ft facility will provide fabrication equipment and instruments in a nearly dust-free environment for researchers throughout New York University, as well as other local universities and industry. New York's burgeoning tech-startup community is expected to benefit in particular, through access to instruments that small companies could never afford.

"NYU Tandon is proud to bring this vital research and education facility to the University and our community," said Katepalli R. Sreenivasan, NYU Tandon's dean and a physicist. "It will open as-yet unimagined opportunities to students, faculty, our Future Labs' entrepreneurs, and innovators throughout Brooklyn and New York.

"Fabrication labs are becoming essential to discovery at leading science and engineering universities, and our professors are poised to conduct important research here, as well as to educate students about cutting-edge fabrication processes. We have taken a first important step in this direction," he concluded.

The NYU Tandon NanoFab Cleanroom adds to the network of facilities in the city that are enabling innovative research throughout the city. It was designed from the start to complement cleanrooms at Columbia University and the City University of New York's NanoFabrication Lab, both in Manhattan.

NYU teams already conducting research at the Columbia and CUNY cleanrooms are expected to transfer some of their work to the NYU Tandon site, and researchers from those universities and others will be invited to make use of the NanoFab Cleanroom.

A key instrument in the NYU Tandon NanoLab Cleanroom is the Electron Beam Resist Spin Coater, which fabricators can use to spincoat electron beam resist onto substrates in preparation for electron-beam lithography. Photo NYU Tandon/Andrew Chavez

The first teams scheduled to use the NanoFab CleanRoom from NYU will include researchers in biomedical, chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering; medicine; and physics.

The lab contains state-of-the-art microelectronics processing equipment and atomic force microscopy for a wide range of research activities including spintronics, nanoelectronics, biosensors, lab-on-a-chip technology, energy devices such as solar cells and batteries, biotechnology, microelectronics, and telecommunications.

As a single example of its potential, researchers will be able to build and test prototypes as they develop biomedical sensors that are small, flexible, able to transmit data at high speeds, and use little power – suitable for advancing understanding of the brain, perhaps, or to diagnose from afar. Other researchers will be testing devices to search for cancer at the cellular and molecular levels.

Construction of this facility was funded in part with $1 million from the City of New York Office of the Brooklyn Borough President as well as a $2.5 million grant awarded by the Higher Education Capital Matching Grants Program administered by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY).

McIlvaine Company

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