080121: SMC highlights PV, LED, and packaging materials
Ed’s Threads Musings by Ed Korczynski on January 21, 2008[Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr.!]
SMC highlights PV, LED, and packaging materials
Last week saw hundreds of microelectronics industry executives gather at ISS and SMC. The conventional forecasts for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials have been covered by previous WaferNEWS stories. SMC showed truly amazing perspective on new electronic materials markets of gigantic scales like photo-voltaics, high-efficiency lighting, and advanced 3D and WLP packages.
Solar is hotter than the sun these days, and Craig Hunter of Applied Materials provided a great overview of the whole market and his company’s leading position in offering turn-key fabs. The photo shows an Applied Materials’ SunFab PECVD 5.7 and those really are full size people standing next to a multi-chamber deposition system for PV on huge glass panels.
The global market in 2007 for PV panels was reportedly 4.8 GW, up ~50% from 2006. The current approximate cost to install a rooftop solar PV system is US$0.25-0.30/kWhr (absent incentives). However, nearly all PV manufacturers show near-term roadmaps to cut PV fab costs in half, and there are additional innovations possible in installation of modules, so it seems likely that price could drop to US$0.10-0.12/kWhr for large scale installations without any incentives. With demand forecasted to be extremely elastic to price, and with total global energy use growing at 2%/year on the scale of TeraWatts, PV will likely remain <1%> The future of mega-fabs for PV panels includes integrated supply-chain campuses like the classic old Ford Rouge Plant in the 1920s. The thin-film PV fab of the future will be more efficient when if has a dedicated float glass plant for the substrate, a line for the thin-film encapsulant formation, and even packaging of the junction-boxes for the final modules. Each of these may be owned by a different company, but for economies of scale and manufacturing efficiency they’ll be adjacent to each other. Process gases such as hydrogen, silane, etc. account for ~17% of final panel costs, so long-considered innovations such as silane reclamation make be used in manufacturing In general it seems that the main scientific breakthroughs in PV have been made, and now the best engineers will win the race to fab profits. “People ask me all the time where I would locate a PV fab if I had to chose,” opined Hunter. “I think there’s a big opportunity for someone to put a factory in New Mexico, Arizona, or Texas.” George Craford, CTO of Philips Lumileds Lighting Company, discussed the immanent “Revolution in lighting, high power LED technology.” As a demonstration, Buckingham Palace has been externally lit by LEDs at a cost of US$0.45/hr. The theoretical light output limit for an LED is 300 lumens/Watt, but the best in production is ~100 lumens/W, with 150 lumens/W on a roadmap. The plan is for high-power LEDs to be 1-3 per replacement bulb.
From the 1960s through the 1990s the LED brightness evolved at a fairly constant rate, though this was based on driving the same size chips with the same power. Starting ~10 years ago, the industry began to work with new packages to allow driving higher current-densities and resulting higher outputs for applications include automotive, flashlights, and projectors.
Why aren’t white LEDs everywhere? Quite simply the cost has been too high. For the same 1000 lumens output (60-100W incandescent bulb equivalent) the indandescent bulb costs $0.40, fluorescent tube $0.60, compact fluorescent $2, and white LED $10. Lumileds researchers seem confident that they can improve the basic Internal Quantum Efficiency (IQE) from ~45% today to ~90% tomorrow, and with higher drive current (700 mA to 2A) and lower chip and packaging costs the cost could be ~$1.
The energy savings with LEDs is truly impressive: 1000 lumens Input Power Energy cost/yr COO for 5 yrs
Incandescent 60W $48 $240
Fluorescent 20W $18 $90
Comp.Fluor. 14W $13 $85
White LED 6W $5 $26
Control of manufacturing is a concern since the variation in blue wavelength crossed with the yellow phosphor materials distribution creates variation in the color of white. The human eye is sensitive to subtle color variations and tight matching is needed for LEDs in the same room. Off-grid applications can be valuable using a single LED with a solar array or a bicycle generator…for example Light Up The World foundation has been installing LEDs around the world to allow children to be able to study schoolwork at night. China estimates that by changing to LED lighting it will save them as much electricity as the maximum planned output of the Three Gorges Dam. “They are going to dominate conventional illumination, it’s only a matter of time,” said Craford.
Packaging technology for ICs continues a steady evolution, with few examples more telling than the wirebonder. Wirebonders have periodically been considered as limited, but they evolve and now can go to 5 or even 8 levels of silicon useing new materials for dielectrics and interposers. FlipChip—which has been used almost exclusively for MCUs—is finally moving into the mainstream in combination with wirebonding and leadframes to allow for many efficient high-volume packages.. But SIP and SOC will continue to coexist in many possible variations using flipchip and wirebonding. PoP approaches also remain competitive, with variations using thinned silicon, recessed-cavities, and fan-in routing.
—E.K. Labels: electronic, LED, materials research, packaging, photovoltaic, PV, solar
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080121: SMC highlights PV, LED, and packaging materials
080101: 2007 odds and ends
Ed’s Threads 080101 Musings by Ed Korczynski on January 01, 20082007 odds and ends
High- k (HK) and metal-gates (MG) for CMOS transistors are real and here now, with Intel deciding on HK-first but MG-last for process integration. What is the temperature limit for MG processing such that the HK remains amorphous in this flow, and how many other elements are alloyed with hafnium and oxygen in the final film? IBM and SEMATECH and most of the rest of the world seem to be working on HKMG-first integration. IBM in the US has sold 45nm bulk silicon manufacturing technology to SMIC in the P.R. China. I remember being in Shanghai in 1995 when people in China talked about getting 250nm (then “quarter micron”) technology from US companies, and it was then deemed too powerful to let go; now such technology sells for pennies on the ever depreciating dollar. Meanwhile, Intel is reportedly still on schedule to open a 90nm logic fab in China. Indian semiconductor fab plans seem to lack the political will needed to become real. An anonymous comment left on my prior blog entry about India's plans for its "Fab City" stated, “so far nothing happened. no electrical infrastructure and no water pipes. government is only fooling to promote the nearby real estate ventures.” Informal discussions with Indian expatiates at IEDM last month seem to confirm this perspective. The official Web site for the government now lists "Nano-Tech Silicon India Ltd." (NTSI) as a solar fab to be built -- just seven months ago the government insisted that it would soon be a 20K wafer starts/month IC fab. Despite delays in infrastructure, companies seem willing to try to start-up photovoltaic fab lines in India along with the rest of the world (scroll halfway down the page to see the list of promised PV projects). With the price of oil nearly at US $100/barrel (less in other currencies), most of the world has decided that solar energy might be worth investing in for a while. Applied Materials continued to acquire its way into OEM dominance, while Oerlikon did a spin-out and acquired a top executive. (I recently talked shop with top PV execs at both AMAT and Oerlikon about their respective strategies.) Meanwhile, subsystems suppliers like Advanced Energy and Edwards have shifted resources to follow the PV money. Nanosolar printed its first CIGS thin-film PV cells at its new line in San Jose, CA. HelioVolt announced its first fab to produce printed CIGS cells. Dick Swanson of SunPower gave a great presentation at IEDM ( Session 14.1) on development of silicon solar cells, showing that manufacturing efficiency increases should cut final installed PV system costs 50% by 2012. Never trust a semiconductor process engineer who isn't a great cook. It's all about recipes either way, and I've come to the unreasonable conclusion that all good process people like to play in the kitchen too. Baking holiday cookies reminds me of systematic yield losses and design-for-manufacturing (DFM) pattern-centric solutions -- in both cases you need uniform distribution of features across the surface to ensure uniformity. The more narrow the process window, the more you have to control repeatability across the cookie sheet (or silicon wafer). From the wonderful people at the Annals of Improbable Research we get the yearly Ig Nobel Awards . My personal favorite award for 2007 -- due to love of Toscanini's Ice Cream -- is the award in chemistry given to Mayu Yamamoto of Japan's International Medical Center, for developing a way to extract vanillin from cow dung (REFERENCE: "Novel Production Method for Plant Polyphenol from Livestock Excrement Using Subcritical Water Reaction," Mayu Yamamoto, International Medical Center of Japan.) Moreover, kudos to Toscanini’s for creating a new ice cream flavor and introducing it at the Ig Nobel ceremony, called "Yum-a-Moto Vanilla Twist." Speaking of twists, 2007 was also another year of consolidation across various equipment/process segments ( Lam/SEZ, KLA-Tencor/ Therma-Wave/ FabSolve, Aixtron/Nanoinstruments, MKS/Yield Dynamics, and TEL/Epion to name just a few). Notable deals happened in the intersection of litho and design ( Cadence/Invarium, Blaze/Aprio, and in late 2006 ASML/Brion), as well as test ( Teradyne/Nextest, Verigy/Inovys, Rudolph/Applied Precision). Also, private equity had a major presence in the industry, particularly early in the year, in deals for Edwards' vacuum/equipment biz, backend firms STATS ChipPAC, UTAC, and UK dep/etch firm STS. And even AMD looked overseas for much-needed external funds. One surprising end to 2007 was the Republic of Lakotah formally withdrawing from all treaties with the United States of America, and reclaiming sovereignty as a nation and over its traditional grounds. Maybe someone can build an IC fab there. After Motorola's advanced fabs became Freescale and then moved R&D to France and then New York, and after Texas Instruments decided to end R&D at 45nm, and after the Silicon Valley Technology Center (Cypress’ former R&D fab) bought the Advanced Technology Development Fab, it’s time to pause for a moment of silence. SEMATECH in Texas is dead; long live SEMATECH in New York! — E.K.Labels: CMOS, consolidation, Fab City, HK+MG, photovoltaic, SEMATECH
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080101: 2007 odds and ends
071130: PV perspective: Interview with AMAT's solar technology expert
Ed’s Threads 071130
Musings by Ed Korczynski on November 23, 2007
PV perspective: Interview with AMAT's solar technology expert Dr. Charles F. Gay, currently VP and GM of Applied Materials’ solar business group, is a renowned expert in PV technology and business, having been president of Arco Solar, Siemens Solar, and ASE Americas, as well as director of the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. He found time in his busy schedule to talk with me about the incredible growth in solar business, and to explain recent changes in the photovoltaic (PV) technology landscape. “The speed of innovation has ratcheted up quite rapidly, and there are two themes that have affected the industry over the last several years,” explained Gay. One is the scale of the industry, growing at over 40% over the last decade. This has created a dynamic where a company like Q-Cells can just show up in the market and rapidly rise to be No.2. Suntech at No.3 was virtually nonexistent three years ago. Secondly, as the business has grown, so has the scale of manufacturing. Until recently, crystalline PV lines mainly ran old 150mm wafer equipment obsoleted from IC lines by newer 200mm tools. Less than a decade ago, a world class PV line was capable of producing fewer than 5MW/yr of cells, while today Sharp alone has over 700 MW/year of total fab capacity. Typical PV lines today are 50-100 MW, and a company wanting additional capacity builds multiple lines on site, or starts locating lines around the world depending upon customer demand. A 100 MW/year line needs to process such a large area of material that equipment from industries other than IC manufacturing, like FPD or architectural glass, have come into mainstream use. “The process control was there, the history of making machines was there, and the expertise enabled thin-films to come onstream just when the lack of silicon had been threatening a delay in continued growth,” Gay said. Control of uniformity over large areas allows for potential cost-reduction in thin-film PV lines. Thin-film PV panels have been able to capture an increasingly larger piece of the market. While still only ~10% of the total, it is expected to grow at a faster pace due to sheer economies of scale using large glass panels. Secondarily, thin-film lines may take extra market share while crystalline silicon line production is limited by the near-term global poly-silicon shortage. Some crystalline solar manufacturers have responded with innovative materials engineering and supply-chain management. Using gettering, diffusion, and blanket etching of a top sacrificial layer, a PV line can essentially pull most of the impurities into a top skin that is removed. This adds fab cost, but allows for the use of less expensive "six-nines" [99.9999%] pure starting silicon that is not in short supply. “People thought maybe we can make silicon from dirty quartz using direct reduction, and maybe the silicon only needs to be six-nines pure, instead of nine-nines,” Gay said. He added that cell efficiency for single crystal is ~22% for the very best quality starting material and fab process, ~18% is a general capability for single crystal silicon, and ~16% for high-purity multicrystalline silicon.
Another example of clever materials engineering in PV is tuning the sheet resistance of the silicon using phosphorous (P) diffusion that is pattern dependent. The spacing of topside aluminum lines is determined by the sheet-resistance of the silicon after P diffusion, but P dopants interfere with the short-wavelength absorption of light. An optimization can be found by tuning the P to be higher under the lines (for reduced contact resistance) and lower between the lines (increasing conversion efficiency).
“Innovation has been happening at a faster pace due to the increased scale,” said Gay. “The size of the market is enabling additional R&D in academia, industry, and government, and also allowing for leaps in manufacturing efficiencies.” An example of manufacturing efficiency increasing with scale is the production of “water-white” glass panels for thin-film PV. Water-white glass has low concentration of Fe2O3 which increases optical transmittance, and results in ~2% more light transmission, explained Gay. However, the global demand for this specialized glass was relatively small, so it was only made in relatively expensive batch furnaces. A few years ago, based on solid demand forecasts for thin-film PV panels, architectural glass companies such as Pilkington, PPG, Cardinal Glass, Asahi, etc. started retrofitting continuous float-lines for water-white production. Glass companies can sell “water-white” glass for a premium over standard green soda-lime, while still offering a cost reduction that could be cents per square foot compared to batch processing.
“All the way across the value chain, from basic science to the infrastructure for installation, there is tremendous activity in solar,” observed Gay. “It’s multiplied to the stage in Germany today there are almost as many jobs in solar as there are in automotive. Solar and wind represent for the first time in history the opportunity for job creation.” With the global terawatt challenge remaining ahead of us, there’s lots of work to be done.—E.K. Labels: business, energy, manufacturing, photovoltaic, solar
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071130: PV perspective: Interview with AMAT's solar technology expert
070420: Solar cheerleading for fun and profit
Ed’s Threads 070420 Musings by Ed Korczynski on April 20, 2007Solar cheerleading for fun and profit
Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials (AMAT), is a great solar cheerleader, and he rightly urges us to consider the energy future for our children and grandchildren. In a recent presentation organized by the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley, he stumped for US government tax incentives for solar energy investments, and proposed that 25% of new government demand for electricity should be met by renewable sources such as photovoltaic (PV) panels. Splinter is not merely a visionary altruist in these matters, since thin-film PV represents the next major growth opportunity for his company. As the IC manufacturing industry has matured, AMAT’s previous 20% annual growth has slowed to ~10% and new high-growth markets are needed to increase growth forecasts back to historic “outperform” levels. AMAT has made significant investments over the last decade to acquire companies with technologies that support general manufacturing: metrology, gas-effluent abatement, and computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM) software and manufacturing execution systems (MES) for managing lots of substrates and shuttling lithographic reticles around. In addition, AMAT built the “Mayden Technology Center” as a showcase for selling special integrated process recipes in addition to the free general recipes included with all new hardware. Semiconductor manufacturing fabs want to control their own technologies and supply chains, so they’ve paid for processes from other fabs but almost never from an equipment supplier. Solar cell manufacturing lines require relatively less technology but more classic industrial engineering, and buying an integrated and committed process along with a turn-key physical production line makes a lot of sense. In addition to general thin-films manufacturing technology, AMAT has deep experience with handling the largest FPD substrates in the world through its subsidiary Applied-Komatsu Technology (AKT). “The latest generation of our tools can pattern six 50” TVs on a glass substrate,” almost the size of a garage door, Splinter told the Commonwealth Club audience. “With innovation we can provide an inflection point for solar energy, to make solar competitive with all other sources of electricity generation,” he championed, and suggested that his company’s technologies may lead to 2x-4x cost-reductions in thin-film PV manufacturing. Solar sources currently provide <0.1% of the 5 TeraWatts of energy used globally each year. A trillion US$ will be spent on new electricity generation capacity worldwide in 2007, and an average 1GW-capacity coal plant emits as much CO2 as 1 million cars. Today in the US, all renewable energy is only 2% of the total. “The planet’s clock is ticking, and I hope that that ticking is the heartbeat of the planet and not something much worse,” said Splinter. AMAT is working to set up solar panel fabs for customers in China, India, and Spain, which together represent 20% of the world’s new PV manufacturing capacity. In 2006, the solar manufacturing industry added 2GW capacity to bring the world up to 8GW total; by 2010, a $50B forecast annual investment should build total manufacturing capacity to 25GW. If just 5% of the new demand forecast for electricity worldwide would be met by solar, it would require a total $150B investment. All forecasts for future PV demand are “insatiable” for both the near- and long-term. If you're looking to invest a billion dollars somewhere, a turn-key thin-film PV manufacturing line from AMAT seems like it would provide a solid return on investment (ROI). Specific public policy changes to help solar investment include extending the home income-tax credit, establishing a net metering law at the federal level, and mandating that 25% of electricity consumption by governments should be from renewable sources. “America is behind the rest of the world in solar energy adoption, and that’s just not acceptable. What are we waiting for?” asked Splinter, “I think you’ll agree that we have to stop making excuses.” — E.K. Labels: electricity, energy, manufacturing, photovoltaic, PV, solar, thin-film
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070420: Solar cheerleading for fun and profit
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Ed's Threads is the weekly web-log of SST Sr. Technical Editor Ed Korczynski's musings on the topics of semiconductor manufacturing technology and business. Ed received a degree in materials science and engineering from MIT in 1984, and after process development and integration work in fabs, he held applications, marketing, and business development roles at OEMs. Ed won editorial awards from ASBPE, including interviews with Gordon Moore and Jim Morgan, and is not lacking for opinions.
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