SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY UPDATE
March 2014
McIlvaine Company
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rubicon Reveals Sapphire Plans
International Rectifier Opens Ultra-Thin Wafer Processing Facility in Singapore
Vibration Isolation Facilitates Growth of Large Crystals
SunEdison Semiconductor Operations Expand
Prantij-in-Sabarkantha District to House New Semiconductor Unit
Market for Two India Semiconductor Chip Fabs
UMC Obtains Certification for Taiwan Facilities
Rubicon Technology is ramping up sapphire substrate patterning at its Malaysia plant to ease LED manufacture crunch by ramping patterned sapphire substrate production and more.
While industry players debate whether silicon or sapphire is the best foundation for the GaN LED, US sapphire substrate manufacturer, Rubicon Technology, has sold $28.2 million of common stock to fund expansion.
Developing sapphire substrate fabrication for LEDs is high on the company's investment list, chief financial officer, Bill Weissman, states. And plans are underway to do this soon.
The company will first extend sapphire substrate patterning facilities. Etching a nano-pattern onto the sapphire wafer eases epitaxial growth and reduces the light reflected back into the LED from the polished surface, boosting light output.
But according to Weissman, LED chip manufacturers are becoming more and more interested in outsourcing this production step. "We're seeing a real trend here," he says. "So a lot of the money we are raising is going into the expansion of our LED patterning operation.
The company started supplying 4 and 6 inch patterned sapphire substrates last year - Weissman reckons only Rubicon offers 6 inch wafers - and will now triple capacity in its existing cleanroom at its fabrication facility in Penang, Malaysia. Then, if demand for patterned sapphire substrates continues, construction of additional polishing and patterning facilities to this plant could follow by the end of the year.
"We don't think chip manufacturers are going to shut down their internal patterning operations, but we do think they will stop investing and expanding those capabilities, and so will outsource more and more," he says.
At the same time, Rubicon is eyeing other LED opportunities, including aluminum nitride on sapphire templates. Here the company would deposit an AlN layer onto its patterned 4 and 6 inch sapphire substrates, onto which chip manufacturers could then directly grow GaN layers.
Kyma, for one, has demonstrated 10 inch diameter AlN on sapphire templates for LED growth and alongside the likes of Azzuro Semiconductors and Translucent, is also working on 300mm (12 inch) AlN on silicon templates.
"Templates could be a next potential step downstream for us," says Weissman. "The jury is still out on whether chip manufacturers are interested in this product - issues include contamination for example - but this is something we're looking at as an additional product within the LED market."
But while Rubicon executives grow their LED materials empire aren't they concerned about a potential industry transition from sapphire to silicon substrates?
Only late last year, business analyst IHS, forecast that come 2020, GaN-on-silicon LEDs will increase market share from today's 1 percent to 40 percent, mostly at the expense of GaN-on-sapphire devices. This forecast lies at the extreme end of the predictions for silicon success, but nonetheless indicates a rising interest in growing LED structures in depreciated CMOS facilities.
But Weissman says the company isn't worried and he doesn't expect GaN-on-sapphire LEDs to lose market share to silicon-based alternatives in the near future. Many organizations have been developing methods to circumvent the dramatically different GaN and silicon coefficients of thermal expansion, but he asserts: "No-one has really demonstrated a solution that works well in the production of high brightness LEDs."
"Toshiba recently bought Bridgelux but to my knowledge is not selling any meaningful volumes into the high brightness LED market," he adds. "I think in time we may see some of the LED market convert to silicon substrates but this is years away and will probably only be for a limited market."
In the meantime, Rubicon will continue to build its product base. Since its inception in 2001, the company has focused on developing a highly vertically integrated business for a range of markets. From processing of alumina to wafer polishing, and now patterning, Rubicon claims to have the most vertically integrated business model in the sapphire industry.
But it’s not all about LEDs. Right now, the company is developing large rectangular optical sapphire windows for defense and medical applications and exploring how to cut the costs of sapphire cover glass for smartphone camera lenses and other applications.
Still, LEDs remains its number one market. "MOCVD tool utilization rates are now very high and LED manufacturers want to find ways to extend throughput without extending footprint; moving to larger substrates is a great way to do this," says Weissman.
"We believe strongly that LED manufacturers are going to move to 6 inch substrates soon," he adds. "We've always had a strong leadership in larger diameters and I think we're going to reap the benefits of this in the next few years."
International Rectifier, IR, announced that the company has commenced initial production at its new ultra-thin wafer processing facility in Singapore (IRSG).
Wafer thinning, metallization, testing and additional proprietary wafer level processing are undertaken at the new 60,000 square foot manufacturing site which receives processed wafers from IR’s internal fabs and foundry partners. The facility, which will employ approximately 135 people in the initial phase, will process a variety of products, including the company’s latest generation power MOSFETs and IGBTs.
“IRSG will help improve IR’s flexibility and production cycle time by providing advanced wafer processing for wafers manufactured internally or at our foundry partners. Furthermore, IRSG will allow IR to consolidate final wafer processing in close proximity to our major assembly locations,” stated IR’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Oleg Khaykin.
“IRSG is a welcome addition to Singapore’s power electronics industry, which continues to be a key growth area. Beyond being a trusted manufacturing location in Asia, IRSG will be able to tap on Singapore’s strong base of talent and reputable research institutes and for R&D collaboration opportunities,” said Terence Gan, Director for Electronics, Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB).
International Rectifier Corporation is a developer of power management technology. IR’s analog, digital, and mixed signal ICs, and other advanced power management products, enable high performance computing and save energy in a wide variety of business and consumer applications.
At Kansas State University, a unique facility is dedicated to the research and development of new and innovative radiation detector technologies. The Semiconductor Materials and Radiological Technologies (SMART) Laboratory is the largest university-based radiation detection laboratory in the country. It focuses on the detection of neutrons and gamma-rays, primarily those from special nuclear material (SNM) for homeland security applications. SMART Lab investigates and fabricates a variety of detectors which include compact low-power neutron detectors, high-resolution room-temperature-operated semiconductor gamma ray spectrometers, pixelated devices for gamma ray or neutron imaging, and miniaturized gas-filled detectors. The laboratory builds detectors from start to finish in readily deployable packages for use in better securing our borders from nuclear materials such as plutonium and uranium.
The gamma ray detection aspect of the laboratory’s research is focused on the discovery and development of new dense, high-Z semiconductor materials, such as cadmium zinc telluride (CdZnTe or CZT) and mercuric iodide (HgI2), and several scintillator materials including lanthanum tribromide (LaBr3) and cerium tribromide (CeBr3). Research conducted on large crystal growth with high-Z semiconductor and scintillator materials has produced large crystal ingot yields. (The atomic number which uniquely identifies a chemical element is represented by the symbol Z. Also known as the proton number, it is the number of protons found in the nucleus of an atom and identical to the charge number of the nucleus.)
Gamma rays are electromagnetic radiation of high frequency (very short wavelength) that are produced by sub-atomic particle interactions such as electron-positron annihilation, radioactive decay, fusion, and fission. Gamma radiation is highly penetrating photons, extremely energetic. To directly detect them is very difficult—a material with a high-Z number is needed, representing a high number of neutrons and protons in the nucleus. Those nuclei tend to stop gamma rays much better than other elements such as hydrogen or helium, for example. A crystal with a high-Z number converts the gamma rays from electromagnetic waves to excited electrons. The electrons move through the crystal or create light—one or the other— and produce something that is possible to be detected. If a crystal is very uniform and very homogeneous, it can be determined that a gamma ray interacted in the crystal by the effect that is observed in it.
At the SMART Laboratory, crystals of CdZnTe and the scintillator materials are grown via a vertical Bridgman furnace. In this process, molten material is directionally solidified from one end to the other to produce a large-volume ingot that is a single crystal. Methods to grow CdZnTe for gamma-ray spectrometers have been explored since the early 1990s, yet a reliable system to produce large crystals at an economical cost has not been achieved until relatively recently.
Conventional vertical Bridgman furnace use to grow the semiconductor material cadmium zinc telluride (CZT).Higher ingot yields enable smaller, faster, and more accurate sensors, and allow gamma-ray detectors to be more economical and field-portable—benefits that can have a significant impact on national security objectives. Radiation detectors using CZT can operate in direct-conversion (or photoconductive) mode at room temperature.
Essentially, SMART Lab researchers encapsulate the material to be grown inside of a quartz ampoule under vacuum. The quartz tube is put inside the furnace vertically bringing the material to a molten state between 500° to 1,100° C. Then they very slowly freeze the material from bottom to top. If the thermal gradients are correctly performed, a large crystal will develop. Once the crystal is grown, it is extracted from the tube, trimmed to size with a diamond wire saw, and polished to produce a detector.
Critical to maximizing ingot yield is maintaining a stable crystal growth process through the elimination of external vibrations.
“The general consensus within the crystal growth community is that uncontrolled vibrations can destabilize the growth interface,” says Professor Mark Harrison with SMART Lab. “As the material is freezing from bottom to top, there is an interface between liquid and solid, and it sets up a natural convection flow that is ideal for growing a big, single crystal. If a vibration disturbs the liquid directly above the forming crystal solid, it can change the convection patterns and multiple crystals will form from the previous single crystal. Which is contrary to our purpose of growing large, single crystals.”
“We looked into various active and air table vibration handling systems, and eventually selected negative-stiffness vibration isolation,” continues Harrison.
Negative-stiffness mechanism (NSM) isolators have the flexibility of custom tailoring resonant frequencies vertically and horizontally. They employ a completely mechanical concept in low-frequency vibration isolation. Vertical-motion isolation is provided by a stiff spring that supports a weight load, combined with a NSM. The net vertical stiffness is made very low without affecting the static load-supporting capability of the spring.
Beam-columns connected in series with the vertical-motion isolator provide horizontal-motion isolation. The horizontal stiffness of the beam-columns is reduced by the “beam-column” effect. A beam-column behaves as a spring combined with a NSM. The result is a compact passive isolator capable of very low vertical and horizontal natural frequencies and very high internal structural frequencies.
Vibration transmissibility with negative-stiffness is substantially improved over air systems, which can make vibration isolation problems worse since they have a resonant frequency that can match that of floor vibrations. Transmissibility is a measure of the vibrations that transmit through the isolator relative to the input vibrations. The NSM isolators, when adjusted to 0.5Hz, achieve 93 percent isolation efficiency at 2Hz; 99 percent at 5Hz; and 99.7 percent at 10Hz.
Looking down a quartz-lined furnace at 1100° C.NSM transmissibility is also improved over active systems. Because they run on electricity, active systems can be negatively influenced by problems of electronic dysfunction and power modulations, which can interrupt crystal growth continuity. Active systems also have a limited dynamic range—which is easy to exceed—causing the isolator to go into positive feedback and generate noise underneath the equipment. Although active isolation systems have fundamentally no resonance, their transmissibility does not roll off as fast as negative-stiffness isolators.
“One of the concerns we had was surface waves coming across the ground, which induced vibration in the crystal growth system,” explains Harrison.
“We are located in a basement,” Harrison says. “Before we got the NSM system, I could actually see somebody walking down the stairs through the walls with a seismometer. With the negative-stiffness system in place, I can’t even tell when they are shelling at the nearby Fort Riley military base.”
Gamma ray detectors have been around for years, but they are either very low efficiency, poor performance, or they require liquid nitrogen cooling such as those employing germanium. Imagine the difficulty required to take liquid nitrogen into a remote desert searching for special nuclear material.
“What we are trying to do at SMART Lab is make it more feasible, more economical for these detectors to be put in place at every critical check point, at every airport and shipping port,” Harrison says. “This will increase the possibility of detecting and intercepting shipments of special nuclear material, should they occur.”
SunEdison, Inc. announced that it will indefinitely close its shuttered polysilicon manufacturing facility in Merano, Italy immediately. This is the conclusion of a process that began with the previously announced 2011 global restructuring plan.
The Merano polysilicon facility was shuttered in December of 2011 as part of a restructuring plan to better align the business with current and expected market conditions and improve overall cost competitiveness. For the past two years SunEdison explored various options to improve the cost effectiveness of the Merano polysilicon facility. Ultimately, the identified cost reductions were not enough to sustain the economic viability of the plant in the current market environment. The indefinite closure will affect approximately 200 employees at the Merano polysilicon plant. In connection with the closure, the associated electronic grade TCS (trichlorosilane) operation, which employs approximately 35 people, will be closed over the next 12 months. As a result of the decision to indefinitely close the polysilicon manufacturing facility and TCS operation, we expect to record approximately $37 million of fixed asset impairments for the year-ended December 31, 2013.
SunEdison will also commence a plan to consolidate its semiconductor crystal operations. The consolidation will include the transitioning of small diameter crystal activities in its St. Peters, Missouri facility to its other crystal facilities in Korea, Taiwan and Italy. The crystal manufacturing consolidation will affect approximately 100 employees in St. Peters and will be implemented over the next 12 months.
"We never take actions like these lightly. However, in light of current market conditions, today's announcement is necessary to preserve our strong competitive position and strengthen our future. We will make every effort to provide the necessary assistance to our affected employees," said Shaker Sadasivam, Executive Vice President and President of Semiconductor Materials. "The decision to close the Merano polysilicon and TCS operations and to transition crystal operations is the result of our continuous efforts to improve the performance of our business through solutions that will keep these facilities economically strong."
Sadasivam also noted, "We appreciate all the support provided by the Bolzano Province and by the Italian Government in helping achieve lower power rates. We look forward to continuing to work with them during the transition to help make our Italian operations more competitive. We are focused on maintaining competitive costs across our global footprint, including Italy. This includes continuing to take strategic steps aimed at improving all aspects of our operations including cost, quality and productivity. This will enable us to enhance our business globally and to support our goal of maintaining a strong presence in Italy."
Prantij in Sabarkantha district has been picked as the location for setting up of a new semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB) manufacturing facility in the state. Additional chief secretary of the state's industry department said that the facility is expected to attract more than Rs 22,000 crore investments in the region. Of this, Rs 6,000 crore will be invested by the central government.
"The Union government has selected 1,000 acre of land for setting up the manufacturing facility in Prantij, 15 km from Ahmedabad and project will begin soon," Sahu said, speaking on the sidelines of the launch of Gujarat Knowledge Application And Facilitation Centre by Confederation Of Indian Industries (CII) in partnership with the Gujarat government and Gujarat NRE Coke at CII building.
The Government of India had approved setting up of two semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB) manufacturing facilities in the country in September last year. One of the units was proposed to be set up in Gujarat. These FAB facilities are expected to provide big boost to the electronics system design and manufacturing eco-system in the country.
At the recently held India Electronics and Semiconductor Association event, DR. M J Zarabi, an India semiconductor fab expert, who is part of empowered committee for identifying technology and investors for setting up of Semiconductor Wafer Fabrication (Fab) Manufacturing Facilities in the country, was confident of some ground breaking of semiconductor fab construction happening with-in next 3-4 months. If that happened, we can see Made-in-India chips with in the end of 2016 or early 2017.
Semiconductor is a fast changing tech. If not the advancement of lithography, there are various other areas such as 450mm, 3D IC, III-IV compound semiconductor, and even disruptive nanotube and Graphene or something totally new moving into production stage from lab is always a high possibility. There is too much innovation happening in this. Semiconductor is the area which files maximum number of patents globally. Most of the patents are owned by selected few multi-national companies.
We can easily estimate India importing close to US$ 2 Billion worth of ICs in 2013 which are made in nodes such as 90nm and bigger. So these fabs immediately have a market of $1Billion each per year. That's not bad. And when there is wafer fab in India, the local manufacturing is only expected to not just grow, but even at a triple digit rate. There are examples of such growth in Asia when local fab started making chips. With Government's preferential market access policy, IC made by Indian semiconductor fabs are preferred over others. It’s a great beginning for these lucky two investors. Empowered Committee has given a chance to more semiconductor vendors to invest, they have not shown interest and they mostly have missed the bus.
To give you info on the fabs which are going to be set up in India, one is going to be established near Noida, U.P. is proposed by Jayprakash associates in partnership with IBM and TowerJazz. Technology nodes proposed by this group are 90, 65 and 45 nm nodes in Phase I, 28 nm node in Phase II with the option of establishing a 22 nm node in Phase III.
The other fab that is going to come up near Gandhinagar, Gujarath is proposed by Hindustan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation in partnership with ST Microelectronics and Silterra. Technology nodes proposed by this group are 90, 65 and 45 nm nodes in Phase I and 45, 28 and 22 nm nodes in Phase II.
If somebody wondering there is elections coming up and this projects may be scrapped, its not going to be so, because, in this nationally important project, there looks to be consensus among the major political parties.
However the other established chip makers may offer cheaper foundry services, filing patent violation cases, consuming Indian VLSI design talent, creating new environment regulations, creating new common standards, making some technologies obsolete, bringing out some hidden technologies (which might be now operating in stealth mode), giving turnkey design support to product OEMs, and leveraging any such India's semiconductor fabs weak points. The two years’ time from the breaking-ground to chips making, gives these two players time to start working on designing of products and strategies to manage the competition with lesser difficulty. Partnership with eco-players and prospects is essential. They can do lot of parallel work while the facility is under construction.
There are very less chances for these fabs to fail, but sustaining them for long time becomes a challenge if enough in-house R&D is not done.
United Microelectronics Corporation announced that all eight of its Taiwan-based fabs have passed the Cleaner Production Assessment Method Evaluation conducted by the Industrial Development Bureau (IDB) of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOE).
With this certification, UMC becomes the only semiconductor manufacturer in Taiwan to obtain cleaner production certification for all its local manufacturing facilities. Fabs 8A and 12A earned the Green Factory Mark in November 2012, while Fabs 6A, 8C, 8D, 8E, 8F, and 8S recently followed with their own green certifications.
According to Po-wen Yen, UMC CEO and head of the company's Corporate Sustainability committee, "Green production and environmental protection are core concepts for UMC to realize sustainable operations, and serve as a pillar for us to better support customers. Since the initial planning of UMC's cleaner production assessment system, we have aggressively helped the government to establish related systems and continuously realized them in practice, illustrated by UMC's fabs successfully obtaining cleaner production certification. Of particular note is Fab 6A, which has been operating for a quarter century and passed this demanding certification only after continuous improvement efforts, thus showing our determination to pursue excellence. These results also prove our ability to help customers produce green products with cleaner processes that meet environmental protection and sustainable development standards."
UMC integrates environmental protection, energy saving, and carbon reduction with the company's process, product, and service strategies. Internally, it has established indicators that covers energy and water saving, waste reduction, and low carbon, with inter-fab competitions held to enhance efficiency and continuously improve. In the future, UMC will implement green building design and cleaner production management for all its new fabs to provide customers with solid technical and environmental protection support when manufacturing their products.
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