SEMICONDUCTOR
UPDATE
November 2008
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
NXP Semiconductors Selects ATREG to Sell IPD Business and 150mm Fab in France
Cypress to Build Lab with Indian University
India Expanding Semiconductor Business
French Soitec Opens 300-mm Fab in Singapore
Pac Tech Packaging Technologies Opens in Malaysia
Washington University Plans New Labs
IQE Formally Opens New Singapore Facility
LG Turns Panel Plant to Solar Cell Production Line
NXP Semiconductors, which develops and fabricates semiconductor solutions, announced on October 29 that it has retained ATREG, the semiconductor sales division of Colliers International, to sell its Integrated Passives Device business (IPD) and related operational 150mm semiconductor manufacturing facility in Caen, France.
The offering involves a full array of proven patents and IP, the existing business and technology development team, and the R&D excellence center.
Cypress Semiconductor Corp. and Anna University Chennai, India announced an agreement to set up a joint programmable system-on-chip (PSoC) laboratory in the Department of Electronics and Communications Engineering, College of Engineering Guindy Campus.
The PSoC lab will be a platform for providing technical training, development of intellectual property and embedded systems in the vibrant and growing embedded system design community at Anna University Chennai.
As part of the agreement, Cypress will provide hands-on training to the faculty and students of Anna University Chennai, in addition to free hardware kits and software tools valued at over Rs.1.00 crore ($200,000 USD). Anna University Chennai will provide the facilities for the laboratory.
The Government has received proposals from corporate giants such as Reliance Industries and Videocon Industries for incentives under Special Incentive Package Scheme (notified last year to encourage investments for semiconductor fabs and eco-system units).
While Videocon Industries plans to set up LCD fab (Rs 8,000 crore), Reliance Industries is planning a semiconductor wafer fab (Rs 18,521 crore). Proposals pertaining to solar PV include Moser Baer PV Technologies (Rs 6,000 crore), Titan Energy Systems (Rs 5,880 crore), KSK Energy Ventures (Rs 3,211 crore), Signet Solar (Rs 9,672 crore), Reliance Industries (Rs 11,631 crore), Phoenix Solar India (Rs 1,200 crore), Tata BP Solar India (Rs 1,693 crore), Solar Semiconductor (Rs 11,821 crore), and TF SolarPower (Rs 2,348 crore). Besides this, the Centre has recently received applications from EPV Solar, Vavasi Telegence and Lanco Solar for setting up PV projects.
Under SIPS, the Centre would provide incentive of 20 per cent capital expenditure during the first 10 years for the units in SEZs and 25 per cent of the capital expenditure in non-SEZ units. Any unit can claim incentives in the form of capital subsidy or equity participation.
French silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer supplier Soitec SA (Bernin, France) has inaugurated its 300-mm fab wafer fab in Singapore. It is in line with the group's investment plan to expand worldwide production capacity and forge closer relationships with customers worldwide.
Located in Pasir Ris Wafer Fab Park, in Singapore, Soitec's Singapore fab, dubbed Pasir Ris 1, is the company's first manufacturing facility in Asia. It aims to supply SOI wafers for the game console chips manufactured in the region and to support the region's use of SOI wafers in other high-volume consumer products, Soitec stated.
Built on a 2.7-hectare site, Pasir Ris 1 has over 43,040 sq. ft. (4,000 square meters) of clean-room space. Total investment is expected to amount to 350 million Euros at full capacity.
The fab currently employs about 100 people. Upon the market's upturn, Soitec said the fab is designed to facilitate a swift ramp up to a final capacity of one million wafers per year and a workforce of 500 people.
When work on the 300-mm fab started in August 2006, Andr-Jacques Auberton-Herv, Soitec president and CEO, said the fab construction was scheduled to wind up in the third quarter of 2007, but wafer production would not start before mid-2008. About 500 workers would not be hired until 2009.
Soitec is headquartered in Bernin (Grenoble), France, where it has two high-volume fabs on-site (Bernin I and Bernin II), as well as advanced R&D facilities. The new Singapore fab, known as Pasir Ris 1, is Soitec's first manufacturing facility in Asia.
Two other divisions, Picogiga International (Les Ulis) and Tracit Technologies (Bernin), complete the Soitec Group. Picogiga focuses on delivering advanced substrates solutions, including III-Vs epiwafers and gallium nitride (GaN)-based wafers, to the compound material world for the manufacture of high-frequency electronics and other optoelectronic devices. Tracit, on the other hand, focuses on thin-film layer transfer technologies used to manufacture advanced substrates for power ICs and microsystems, as well as generic circuit transfer technology for applications such as image sensors and 3D-integration. Shares of the Soitec Group are listed on Euronext Paris.
Pac Tech Packaging Technologies, held their grand opening celebration for their new Pac Tech Asia facility. The new 55,000 square foot facility is located in Penang, Malaysia. Pac Tech also conducted an advanced packaging technical symposium on September 19.
The opening celebration was attended by the Chief Minister of Penang, a number of the local government officials, business leaders, engineers and managers from some of the world’s leading electronics companies.
The advanced packaging symposium included a full day of presentations on both business and technology trends within the packaging industry, including WLCSP, flip-chip, and 3D packaging. Over 200 people from around the world attended the symposium. Based on the success of this event, the second of what is hopped to be an annual symposium is being planned for next year. Next year the format will expand to include additional topics related to wafer-level packaging trends and applications.
The new facility is designed to encompass advanced production floor space, including cleanroom area. Both are equipped with the latest generation equipment for 300mm wafers. There is 55,000 square feet of state-of-the-art wafer bumping, electroless nickel and gold under bump metallization, wafer sawing, wafer thinning, die sorting and assembly equipment and backend processing capabilities for semiconductor companies within the Pacific Rim.
The new facility is designed and laid-out to accommodate prototyping and mass-production quantities up to 600,000 wafers per year. Pac Tech Asia will provide a variety of special applications designed to enhance and support the Asian semiconductor manufacturing community. The applications supported will include: electroless Ni/Au under-bump metallization for copper and aluminum devices, solder-paste stencil printing for flip-chips, solder-ball placement for wafer-level CSPs down to 200µm ball diameters, and micro solder-ball placement for fine-pitch applications down to 80µm. More advanced applications include: Ni/Pd/Au metallization for today’s power MOSFET devices and gold wire bonding, tall Ni/Au bumping for RFID applications. The facility offers up to 300mm wafer processing capability.
Pac Tech, Packaging Technologies, founded 1995 with facilities in Santa Clara, California, Nauen, Germany, and now in Penang, Malaysia is a world-leader in low-cost wafer bumping processes specializing in electroless nickel under-bump metallization. Pac Tech also designs and manufactures advanced packaging equipment for electroless nickel under-bump metallization and solder-jetting using laser heating.
A midsummer 2009 construction start is expected for two Washington State University Vancouver buildings that would house academic programs and labs to help regional technology firms flourish.
The combined $59.4 million in projects will add more than 71,600 square feet of classroom and lab space to WSUV’s Salmon Creek campus by 2011. WSU is developing a $42.6 million, four-story Applied Technology Classroom building, planned for the north end of campus. An adjoining two-story facility, the $16.8 million Semiconductor Component Testing Laboratory, will be developed by the Washington Technology Center, a statewide economic development organization.
Project funding rests in the hands of state legislators, who are set to review the request early next year.
The agency plans to leverage federal and private funding to purchase equipment worth between $2 million and $4 million for the laboratory. The lab will be a one-of-a-kind facility focused on the development of semiconductors, the brains of all high-tech electronic devices, from personal computers to cell phones.
In the meantime, the pace of construction at WSUV has brought a new building to the campus every other year since the university’s groundbreaking in 1995. Construction work continues on a $28 million classroom building, set to open in mid 2009.
Future campus plans call for a four-story business classroom building, a health sciences building, additional roads, parking and a possible student recreation center.
IQE, a leading global supplier of advanced semiconductor wafer products and wafer services to the semiconductor industry, is pleased to announce formal opening of its new facility in Tampines, Singapore, following the relocation of its Asia manufacturing facility.
The new plant will continue to produce advanced semiconductor wafers for wireless applications such as mobile phones and WiFi devices but will also provide capacity for new products such as materials for advanced electronics and high-efficiency solar cells (photovoltaics).
During the last year, IQE's MBE Technology subsidiary has been relocating its manufacturing operations from a site at the Singapore Science Park that it has occupied since its formation in 1993, to a new, state of the art facility within Singapore's newest industrial development area in Tampines.
The new, purpose-built, high-tech 91,460 sq. ft. (8,500 square meters) facility houses over 21,520 sq. ft. (2,000 square meters) of specialized cleanroom and will allow for significant future expansion of IQE's manufacturing capacity in the Far East.
In addition to the relocation of manufacturing tools from the original Singapore site, equipment has also been transferred from other parts of the group, particularly from the sister operation in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The carefully orchestrated relocation of manufacturing tools has been carried out in a way that has caused minimal disruption to existing production capacity.
IQE operates six manufacturing facilities located in Cardiff (two) and Milton Keynes in the UK; in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Somerset, New Jersey in the USA; and Singapore. The Group also has 11 sales offices located in major economic centers worldwide.
LG Electronics will convert its A1 plasma panel-manufacturing line in Gumi, Korea, into solar cell production lines.
The company plans to invest $152.7 million by 2010 to establish two production lines. The company expects that the first line will be able to begin mass production from Q1 10, with the second line beginning full operations in the Q1 11. Both lines will manufacture crystalline silicon solar cells and modules with a capacity of 120MW each.
LG currently operates a solar cell business team under its chief technical officer. The company has also progressively accumulated R&D knowledge to further expand its business into the solar energy industry as a new growth engine. As a part of this strategy, LG acquired solar cell business by transfer from its sister company, LG Chem Ltd, in June 2008.
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