Worldwide silicon wafer revenues improved by 2 percent in 2011 compared to 2010, according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its year-end analysis of the silicon wafer industry. Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments decreased by 3 percent in 2011 when compared to 2010 area shipments.

Silicon wafer area shipments in 2011 totaled 9,043 million square inches (MSI), down from the 9,370 million square inches shipped during 2010. Revenues reached $9.9 billion up from $9.7 billion posted in 2010.

“While the recovery from the 2009 downturn continued into early 2011,” said Kazuyo Heinink, chairwoman of SEMI SMG and vice president, MEMC. ”Silicon shipments lost momentum as global economic uncertainty increased during the second half of the year.”

Annual Silicon* Industry Trends

*Shipments are for semiconductor applications only and do not include solar applications

By David Lammers

Within the last two months, modular automation vendor Crossing Automation Inc. (Fremont, Calif.) has begun to see “real money being spent” on 450mm automation equipment, which marketing vice president May Su said signals “very much the first phase” of spending by equipment vendors on 450mm sorters, Equipment Front End Modules (EFEMs), and load ports.

Crossing Automation, which bought the atmospheric (non-vacuum) automation portion of Asyst Technologies two years ago, today introduced its 450mm development platform and the Crossing Certon 450 Loadport. The loadports are expected to ship in December, with the development platform shipping in Q1 2012.

May Su

Crossing has “multiple units” of its loadport installed. Su said the equipment is relatively lightweight, at 80 kg., which allows a single installer to tilt it into place and install it at four fastening locations. “A single person can tilt it without falling over,” said Su. The end effector design is another unique feature. And it includes a horizontal door closing mechanism that the company said “ensures proper closing to prevent wafer damage and particle generation.”

After proving out the loadport design at the ISMI 450 program, Crossing has sold it to several equipment suppliers, which Su said are “paying customers.”

The first phase of 450mm equipment development is underway at the major equipment vendors, who have stepped up their development efforts recently. While significant revenues will come in the first phase, the majority of the automation revenues will come when volume chip manufacturing gets underway.

“We have been very busy lately, hosting lots of visitors. We have real POs, with real dollars changing hands. But there won’t be major revenues until Samsung, TSMC, Intel and the others begin to build fabs, and that may not happen for a few more years,” she said.

Crossing Automation's 450mm Development Platform

Crossing’s development platform is aimed at the equipment vendors which concentrate on their process chamber development, offloading the gas and automation interfaces to Crossing. Large equipment companies develop their own EFEMs and equipment platforms, but Su said Crossing has “unique technology which will allow the smaller suppliers to work with Crossing Automation.”

The company said its Crossing 450mm Development Platform is a “low-cost, small footprint system that allows OEMs to reliably move wafers in and out of process chambers.”

This single FOUP EFEM “accelerates OEMs’ 450mm development efforts by eliminating the need to spend engineering time on platform development” and “allows OEMs to easily migrate to high-volume production without software and hardware interface changes.”

In late September of this year, Crossing Automation introduced its 450mm wafer sorter, the Spartan 450, and said it has an order for the new sorter from a semiconductor manufacturer. The platform is scheduled to ship in Q1 2012.

Spartan 450 Sorter

The Spartan 450 sorter incorporates features required to interface with a fab’s  manufacturing execution system (MES). Initially targeting the 22nm technology node, it is extendible to 7nm technology, the company said. The 450mm sorter is designed as a single, integrated unit to enable faster installation and tool hookup, easier tool moves for increased flexibility, and a faster ramp to production, Su said.

Worldwide silicon wafer area shipments increased 5 percent during the second quarter 2011 when compared to first quarter 2011 area shipments according to the SEMI Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) in its quarterly analysis of the silicon wafer industry.

Total silicon wafer area shipments were 2,392 million square inches during the most recent quarter, a 5 percent increase from the 2,287 million square inches shipped during the previous quarter. New quarterly total area shipments are 1 percent greater than second quarter 2010 shipments.

“Silicon shipments increased during the most recent quarter,” said Volker Braetsch, chairman of SEMI SMG and corporate vice president of Siltronic AG. “It is notable how well silicon suppliers were able to support the overall semiconductor industry in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and ensuing tsunami in Japan.”

Quarterly Silicon Area Shipment Trends
Semiconductor Silicon Shipments* – Millions of Square Inches

*Shipments are for semiconductor applications only and do not include solar applications
All data  is inclusive of polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers, and non-polished silicon wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.

The Silicon Manufacturers Group acts as an independent special interest group within the SEMI structure and is open to SEMI members involved in manufacturing polycrystalline silicon, monocrystalline silicon or silicon wafers (e.g., as cut, polished, epi, etc.). The purpose of the group is to facilitate collective efforts on issues related to the silicon industry including the development of market information and statistics about the silicon industry and the semiconductor market.

By David Lammers

Shortages of wafers, chemicals, and other essential semiconductor-manufacturing materials are likely to persist if Japan’s power-generation capabilities remain impaired, IHS iSuppli analysts said Friday (April 1).

Analyst Len Jelinek said “the most overwhelming issue we’ve run into is the issue of power. If rolling brownouts continue for suppliers such as Shin Etsu Handotai (SEH), the impact of the quake will continue longer than expected,” he said.

Source: IHS iSuppli

“At this point, TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is not discriminating between industrial and residential customers,” Jelinek said. With TEPCO’s power generating capacity down 30 percent in the cool spring season, the hot summer may result in rolling brownouts that could impact the return to production of facilities key to the semiconductor production supply chain.

The main worry is the silicon wafer suppliers, though key chemicals are not far behind on the list of concerns. SEH has the world’s largest integrated wafer manufacturing facility in the quake-affected region, and two other major suppliers of wafers also are being impacted. SEH performs the entire wafer manufacturing cycle — from crystal growth through final epitaxial deposition — at its Kamisu and Nishigo facilities. Together, they account for 20 percent of the world’s 300-mm wafer supply.

The wafer-production process requires a clean, uninterrupted supply of power to operate, and any power outages could result in a shortage. “Supplies may be tight,” Jelinek said, adding that “other wafer suppliers are ramping as hard as they can. Customers are scrambling right now to qualify their suppliers.” Most chip manufacturers have a three to four week supply.

“If we run the timeline through, we can count on three to four weeks of limited production, during which companies will be able to procure additional supplies from competitors to SEH,” he said.

SUMCO, another major wafer supplier, has suffered “a minimal amount of damage” at its Yonezawa plant, and is getting ready to restart. SUMCO is shifting wafer production to other plants that were not damaged, he added.

MEMC’s Utsunomiya wafer production facility takes in ingots grown in Taiwan, slices and polishes them in Japan, and does some epitaxial deposition. “Epitaxial manufacturing requires clean power,” Jelinek said, adding that MEMCO could be “one of the key suppliers to recapture some of the lost capacity taken offline by SEH. But MEMC must have a clean, reliable power source.”

Jelinek said chemicals are another key concern, particularly BT resin production needed by the packaging sector, and hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) needed for wafer cleaning.

“The real issue is that about 60 percent of the BT resin comes from Mitsubishi Gas and Chemical’s Electrotechno facility in Fukushima. They believe they can get 25 percent of their facilities up and running in the first part of April, and be in full production in May. The customers have a few months supply, so there may be minimal impact on the BT resin supply,” he said.

The Yonezawa Daiya Electronics facility making BT resin in Yamagata is impacted by power outages, as is the Kashima Corp. facility in Ibaraki.

However, the supply of hydrogen peroxide is less assured. A Mitsubishi Gas and Chemical facility in the Fukushima region supplies roughly half of the world’s production of hydrogen peroxide. “The problem is that they need power and raw materials,” Jelinek said. Two other hydrogen peroxide manufacturers are based in Japan, which, together with the Mitsubishi facility, account for 75 percent of the world supply. Akeda-Fuji Corp. produces about 50,000 tons of H₂O₂ per year. Nippon Peroxide’s facility in Koriyama is out of operation currently.

The supply of hydrogen peroxide is “rapidly turning into a very concerning issue. The question is: How quickly can these Japan facilities come back online?” he said.

Dale Ford, manager of the semiconductor industry group at IHS iSuppli, said the March 11 quake has had “the biggest impact on the supply chain in the history of the electronics industry,” exceeding the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the Taiwan quake in 1999. “None of them were as broad in their impact as the effect the Japan quake has had. I would argue this is the most significant supply chain incident ever,” Ford said.

IHS iSuppli reported that the Japanese earthquake has resulted in the suspension of one-quarter of the global production of silicon wafers used to make semiconductors.

Manufacturing operations have stopped at both the Shin-Etsu Handotai (SEH) Shirakawa facility and the Utsunomiya plant of MEMC Electronic Materials Inc., which together account for 25 percent of the global supply of silicon wafers used to make semiconductors.

The SEH Shirakawa facility produces 300mm wafers used mainly for DRAM and NAND memories, resulting in a larger impact on memory production than other types of semiconductors.

Shin-Etsu’s Shirakawa plant is responsible for 20 percent of the global silicon semiconductor wafer supply. Shin-Etsu reported that there has been damage to the plant’s production facilities and equipment. To compensate for the lost manufacturing, Shin-Etsu said it would set up production systems at other facilities. However, the company warned it was unclear how long it would take to restore the damaged facilities and equipment.

MEMC said it evacuated employees and suspended operations at its Utsunomiya plant after the earthquake. The Utsunomiya facility accounts for 5 percent of worldwide semiconductor wafer supply. MEMC said it expects that shipments from this facility will be delayed during the near term.

In another development, two Japanese companies announced they have stopped production that amounts to 70 percent of the worldwide supply of copper-clad laminate (CCL), the main raw material used to make printed circuit boards (PCBs). Mitsubishi Gas Chemical Company Inc. and Hitachi Kasei Polymer Co. Ltd., said they will resume CCL production within two weeks.

With current inventory levels, IHS iSuppli said it believes that there likely is a sufficient supply of finished PCBs and raw CCL material to keep electronics production lines running at global electronics manufacturers, as long as the interruption doesn’t last significantly longer than two weeks.

Elpida Memory Inc. said its semiconductor assembly facility in Yamagata has been damaged. The company also said a lack of electricity is impacting production, keeping the Yamagata facility’s utilization rate at less than 50 percent.

Confirming what IHS iSuppli noted in a previous release, AKM Semiconductor said its fab producing electronics compasses for the iPad 2 has not been damaged, as previously reported. The main fab for the production of the compass is located in Nobeoka, in southern Japan, and did not suffer damage or power disruptions.

The earthquake has damaged about 40 percent of the total wafer capacity of Renesas Electronics Corp. The company has stopped production at its Tsugaru fabs producing analog and discrete devices, at its Naka facility making system-on-chip and microcontroller devices, and at its Takasaki and Kofu fabs making analog and discrete parts.

Half of the total wafer capacity at Fujitsu has been damaged. While the company’s fabs and wafer equipment are intact, the shortage of electricity, gas and wafers means it will take three or four weeks for the company to recovery production, IHS iSuppli reported.