“Monthly billings of North American equipment manufacturers registered their first year-over-year increase since October 2018 and are at their highest level since December of last year,” said Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI. “Equipment billings are accelerating on the strength of memory inventory drawdowns and foundry investments in leading-edge equipment.”
Cree and STMicroelectronics Expand and Extend Existing Silicon Carbide Wafer Supply Agreement
Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE) and STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), a global semiconductor leader serving customers across the spectrum of electronics applications,announced today the expansion and extension of an existing multi-year, long-term silicon carbide (SiC) wafer supply agreement to more than $500 million. The extended agreement is a doubling in value of the original agreement for the supply of Cree’s advanced 150mm silicon carbide bare and epitaxial wafers to STMicroelectronics over the next several years. The increased wafer supply enables the semiconductor leaders to address the rapidly growing demand for silicon carbide power devices globally, particularly in automotive and industrial applications.
SEMI, Partners Launch Largest Microelectronics Education Initiative Co-Funded by Erasmus+ Program
SEMI and 19 partners from 14 countries today launched an initiative to fill the skills gap and boost workforce diversity by tightening collaboration between the microelectronics industry and education providers. The project, dubbed METIS – Microelectronics Training, Industry and Skills – will focus on the skills and related training needed to support emerging verticals such as artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous driving and Industry 4.0. A Sector Skills Alliance co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program, METIS is designed to overcome the skills shortage in the electronic components and systems value chain. Under METIS, SEMI and the partner organizations will establish a Microelectronics Observatory and Skills Council consisting of representatives from industry, academia, NGOs, think tanks and government.
Clean Carbon Nanotubes with Superb Properties
Single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) have found many uses in electronics and new touch screen devices. Carbon nanotubes are sheets of one atom-thick layer of graphene rolled up seamlessly into different sizes and shapes. To be able to use them in commercial products like transparent transistors for phone screens, researchers need to be able to easily test nanotubes for their materials properties, and the new method helps with this. Professor Esko I. Kauppinen’s group at Aalto has years of experience in making carbon nanotubes for electronic applications. The team’s unique method uses aerosols of metal catalysts and gasses containing carbon. This aerosol-based method allows the researchers to carefully control the nanotube structure directly.
Kick-Starting Moore’s Law? New ‘Synthetic’ Method for Making Microchips Could Help
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a new method for producing atomically-thin semiconducting crystals that could one day enable more powerful and compact electronic devices. By using specially-treated silicon surfaces to tailor the crystals’ size and shape, the researchers have found a potentially faster and less expensive way to produce next-generation semiconductor crystals for microchips. The crystalline materials produced this way could in turn enable new scientific discoveries and accelerate technological developments in quantum computing, consumer electronics, and higher efficiency solar cells and batteries.
SEMICON Korea 2020 to Showcase AI, Smart Mobility and Manufacturing, MEMS and Sensors, Talent
With Korea the world’s largest manufacturer of memory semiconductors and leading in 300mm fab construction in 2019, the region is paving the way to SEMICON Korea 2020 as more than 500 companies and 55,000 visitors are expected to gather February 5-7 at the COEX in Seoul for the latest microelectronics developments, innovations and trends powering the next wave of industry growth. Registration for SEMICON Korea, the premier event in Korea for electronics manufacturing, is now open.
MEMS and Sensors Fuel Intelligence Movement – Part 2
To be sure, low power is king when bringing machine learning to the sensor edge. Battery-powered, always-on sensing devices require it since frequent recharging is the death knell of any electronic product. That’s why semiconductor companies are offering new ways to conserve power.
Intel to Reclaim Number One Semiconductor Supplier Ranking in 2019
IC Insights’ November Update to the 2019 McClean Report, released later this month, includes a discussion of the forecasted top-25 semiconductor suppliers in 2019 (the top-15 2019 semiconductor suppliers are covered in this research bulletin). The Update also includes a detailed five-year forecast of the IC market by product type (including dollar volume, unit shipments, and average selling price) and a forecast of the major semiconductor industry capital spenders for 2019 and 2020.
Cree and ABB Announce Silicon Carbide Partnership to Deliver Automotive and Industrial Solutions
Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE), the global leader in silicon carbide technology, and ABB’s Power Grids business have announced a partnership to jointly expand the rollout of silicon carbide in the rapidly-growing high-power semiconductor market. The agreement incorporates the use of Cree’s Wolfspeed® silicon carbide-based semiconductors into ABB’s comprehensive product portfolio, enabling Cree to broaden its customer base while accelerating ABB’s entry into the fast-expanding EV sector. Cree’s products will be included as part of ABB’s power semiconductor product portfolio, across power grids, train and traction, industrial and e-mobility sectors. Specifically, Cree’s industry-leading silicon carbide devices will be assembled into ABB power modules.
Rational Transparent Conductor Design Provides a Boost to Carbon Nanotubes Application
An international team of scientists led by researchers from the Laboratory of Nanomaterials at the Skoltech Center for Photonics and Quantum Materials (CPQM) have rationally designed a novel p-type flexible transparent conductor using single-walled carbon nanotubes. This opens new avenues for its applications in next generation opto-electronics and energy technologies. The results of the study were published in the prestigious international journal Nano Energy. Most of the optical and electronic devices encountered daily are constituted of transparent conductors. However, all the presently available transparent conductors are n-type semiconductors, thus restricting technological advancement. The emergence of carbon nanotubes as p-type transparent conductors has been promising. Its further development will be tremendously instrumental for various opto-electronics and energy technologies.
