SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY FORECAST
UPDATE
February 2013
McIlvaine Company
Tera Xtal to Set Up Subsidiaries in China
India Government Plans Chip Fab
Zephyr Photonics Opens Semiconductor Fabrication and Foundry Services Unit
Notre Dame Joins Semiconductor Research Network
Focus Lightings to Double LED Production
Telefunken Semiconductors is expanding its manufacturing capacity at its facility in Roseville, Calif. The first phase expansion plan provides for a 100% increase in wafer processing capability (to 220,000+ 8 in wafers, or 5,500,000 mask layers per year). This expansion will make Telefunken's Roseville facility one of the largest U.S.-based semiconductor foundry service companies.
"Telefunken Semiconductors is excited to announce the expansion of our manufacturing facility here in the U.S.," says Roger Lee, president and CEO. "Growing our capacity with advanced silicon processing tools and offering a comprehensive suite of strategic foundry services at a competitive cost is an important part of our overall corporate mission. This expansion is a testimony of our strong commitment to, and profound belief in, the high-tech manufacturing and R&D which are so critical to our overall economic eco-system."
Telefunken Semiconductors is a specialty analog and mixed-signal foundry company with ISO Automotive and Industrial Class Certifications. The company offers contract semiconductor foundry services at their locations in California and in Heilbronn, Germany.
A new laboratory space at the University of Glasgow will help develop the next generation of the technology which found evidence of the existence of the elusive Higgs boson.
The university's $587,000 Glasgow Laboratory for Advanced Detector Development (GLADD) will help scientists develop novel semiconductor tracker and pixel detector technology for use in ATLAS upgrades and in other applications including medical imaging and airport security.
Particle physicists at the University of Glasgow were involved for more than 20 years in the development and construction of the semiconductor trackers in ATLAS, one of the detectors at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. Data from ATLAS, which tracks the particles resulting from the proton collisions created in the LHC, played a vital role in the discovery of the Higgs boson.
The new cleanroom laboratory in the university's Kelvin Building contains a suite of equipment including an ultrasonic fine pitch wire bonder to fabricate interconnects in electronic chips and a probe station to investigate the functionality of improved sensor designs. Just two other universities in the world – the University of California, Berkeley in the United States, and the University of Bonn in Germany – currently have access to the same probe technology.
Solar manufacturer 1366 Technologies has opened a 25 MW wafer manufacturing plant in Bedford, Mass. The facility is expected to employ 100 people in the commercial production of the company’s Direct Wafer technology.
The 42,000 sq. ft. pilot plant is the first of two planned by the company. Last year 1366 Technologies secured a $150 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to build a 1,000 MW facility employing 300 workers. The facility represents the final step in the path to commercialization of the company's Direct Wafer technology, a manufacturing process designed to produce "a uniformly better wafer at half the cost."
Within the next 12 to 18 months, Direct Wafer production will surge from thousands of wafers to millions, as the company's team of engineers and scientists fine-tune the process to where it can be transferred and replicated in future facilities.
Taiwan-based sapphire substrate maker Tera Xtal Technology will establish two subsidiaries in eastern China, each with investment of US$15 million. Sapphire substrate production at the subsidiaries will begin in the second half of 2013 at the earliest, according to the company.
Many LED firms have noted positive outlook for 2013. Tera Xtal said demand for sapphire substrates in January has been healthy and prices stable, and will continue to be so in February.
Tera Xtal recently announced plans to receive capital injection from a Hong Kong-based investment group through private placement. This investment group was established by Gong Shan Zhu, executive director, chairman, and CEO of China-based polysilicon provider GCL-Poly.
Tera Xtal stated it has signed no agreements with GCL-Poly yet. The deal is currently being reviewed by Taiwan's Investment Commission under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. If the deal obtains approval, the investment group will hold 15% of Tera Xtal shares and become the largest shareholder of the firm. It is also likely for the investment group to become a board member.
Sapphire substrate prices reached a peak in the second quarter of 2012 but as demand weakened, prices fell in the second half of 2012. According to statistics, the price for 2-inch sapphire substrates in the fourth quarter of 2012 was around US$7-7.5/unit while the prices for patterned sapphire substrates (PSS) fell from US$18/unit to US$13-14/unit.
Despite the fact that LED demand is expected to rise in 2013, industry sources pointed out that this is unlikely to help sapphire substrate prices to rebound significantly. Some sapphire substrate makers have been searching for other distribution channels such as those for handset and consumer electronics applications.
The Indian government is in talks with chip makers for setting up a high-tech semiconductor wafer fab in India this year, said Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal.
Sibal announced one year agenda for the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY).
As per the agenda, the government expects to attract investments of around Rs.25,000 crore under its Modified Special Incentive Package Scheme (M-SIPS), which aims to provide financial incentives to electronic manufacturing units.
"We expect an investment of Rs.25,000 crore in electronics sector this year, from around 100 units."
The government plans to set up 10 electronics manufacturing clusters (EMCs) across the country to promote setting up of state-of- the-art infrastructure facilities.
Sibal also spoke about plans for financial assistance for setting up of 31 electronics and ICT academies (one for each State) to promote development of faculty.
Zephyr Photonics, a U.S. developer of harsh environment, optical interconnect solutions for intelligence, defense, aerospace, energy and diverse industrial applications, has launched a Semiconductor Fabrication and Foundry Services (SFFS) business unit.
Among Zephyr Photonics’ resources is a 10,000 sq. ft. cleanroom at its Zephyr Cove, Nevada, U.S. facility, which includes a variety of growth, processing, testing and production equipment. The facility is accredited by DMEA as the only US Trusted optoelectronic foundry and IC supplier. It is ITAR compliant and ISO 9001:2008 certified.
“Our Semiconductor Fabrication and Foundry Services business unit was formed to match the growing demands of fabless semiconductor companies and semiconductor companies with our growth, fabrication, testing and production capabilities,” said Zephyr Photonics’ CEO Tom Steding. “Zephyr Photonics currently supplies time-critical device development, testing and production services for a number of key industry customers.”
Tim McAllister, Zephyr Photonics VP of Business Development, added: “Zephyr Photonics is excited about this opportunity to play a key fabrication role in the semiconductor industry, enabling our customers’ innovation, and improving their time to market by leveraging our experience, in-depth knowledge, process libraries, IP and extensive facilities.”
The University of Notre Dame has been selected to lead one of six new university microelectronics research centers that will share $194 million in funding from the Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to support the continued growth and leadership of the U.S. semiconductor industry.
Notre Dame's Center for Low Energy Systems Technology (LEAST) will explore new concepts for dramatically lowering the power requirements for electronics. Research for LEAST will take place in the cleanroom and other laboratories of Stinson-Remick Hall. The research team will consist of 26 researchers from Notre Dame as well as Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Penn State, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, UC San Diego, University of Texas at Austin, and UT Dallas. LEAST will build on research developed by the Notre Dame-led MIND (Midwest Institute for Nanoelectronics Discovery), a consortium designed to discover and develop the next nanoscale logic device, the basic building block of future computer technology. MIND was established in 2008 and was one of four centers supported by the SRC’s Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI).
SRC, a university-research consortium for semiconductors and related technologies, and DARPA as part of the Department of Defense, will administer the new Semiconductor Technology Advanced Research Network (STARnet) program. Over the next five years, $40 million will be dedicated annually to the program, with each center receiving about $6 million. The STARnet program also will include centers led by the Universities of Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois Urbana-Champaign, UCLA, and University of California Berkeley.
China’s Focus Lightings Tech Inc. has ordered a number of Aixtron CRIUS II-L systems for mass production of GaN LED epitaxial wafers.
The systems will be configured to handle up to 69 x 2-inch wafers per run.
The purchase was made in the fourth quarter of 2012. Shipment of the systems started in December 2012.
Huarong Pan, Chairman of Focus Lightings Tech, comments, “We eagerly await delivery of Aixtron’s latest CRIUS Close Coupled Showerhead (CCS) generation for our future mass production of white-light LEDs. With the system’s low cost of ownership and high productivity as well as Aixtron’s strong customer service in China, the CRIUS II-L systems will increase our competitiveness in the LED market.”
Tim Wang, General Manager at Aixtron China, adds “This new order from Focus Lightings Tech validates the production worthiness of the CRIUS II-L. I am convinced that Focus Lightings will soon benefit from the large production capacity and high throughput on a proven platform, along with the low cost of ownership, presently leading in the industry.”
The CRIUS II-L system allows easy process transfer from earlier CRIUS systems. What's more, the L equipment can be refitted for a new wafer size up to 8-inch diameter by a simple change of the carrier plate.
Focus Lightings Tech Inc., located in Suzhou High-tech Industry Park (SIP), Jiangsu province of China specializes in developing and manufacturing high quality LED semiconductor chips, LD laser chips, as well as in semiconductor Lightings and IC products.
At its new plant the company houses chip production lines for red, yellow, blue, green, and white LED lights, as well as an R&D centre that aims to realize 150 LM/W with proprietary technologies for mass production and to successfully step up chip production from two- to four-inch substrates.
McIlvaine Company
Northfield, IL 60093-2743
Tel: 847-784-0012; Fax: 847-784-0061
E-mail: editor@mcilvainecompany.com