semiconductor materials needed to manufacture display screens factory

Technology trends in backplane technology are driving higher gas demand in display manufacturing. Specific gas requirements of process blocks are discussed, and various supply modes are reviewed.

Since its initial communalization in the 1990s, active matrix thin-film-transistor (TFT) displays have become an essential and indispensable part of modern living. They are much more than just televisions and smartphones; they are the primary communication and information portals for our day-to- day life: watches (wearables), appliances, advertising, signage, automobiles and more.

There are many similarities in the display TFT manufacturing and semiconductor device manufacturing such as the process steps (deposition, etch, cleaning, and doping), the type of gases used in these steps, and the fact that both display and semiconductor manufacturing both heavily use gases.

However, there are technology drivers and manufacturing challenges that differentiate the two. For semiconductor device manufacturing, there are technology limitations in making the device increasingly smaller. For display manufacturing, the challenge is primarily maintaining the uniformity of glass as consumers drive the demand for larger and thinner displays.

While semiconductor wafer size has maxed because of the challenges of making smaller features uniformly across the surface of the wafer, the size of the display mother glass has grown from 0.1m x 0.1m with 1.1mm thickness to 3m x 3m with 0.5mm thickness over the past 20 years due to consumer demands for larger, lighter, and more cost-effective devices.

As the display mother glass area gets bigger and bigger,so does the equipment used in the display manufacturing process and the volume of gases required. In addition, the consumer’s desire for a better viewing experience such as more vivid color, higher resolution, and lower power consumption has also driven display manufacturers to develop and commercialize active matrix organic light emitting displays (AMOLED).

In general, there are two types of displays in the market today: active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD) and AMOLED. In its simplicity, the fundamental components required to make up the display are the same for AMLCD and AMOLED. There are four layers of a display device (FIGURE 1): a light source, switches that are the thin-film-transistor and where the gases are mainly used, a shutter to control the color selection, and the RGB (red, green, blue) color filter.

The thin-film-transistors used for display are 2D transitional transistors, which are similar to bulk CMOS before FinFET. For the active matrix display, there is one transistor for each pixel to drive the individual RGB within the pixel. As the resolution of the display grows, the transistor size also reduces, but not to the sub-micron scale of semiconductor devices. For the 325 PPI density, the transistor size is approximately 0.0001 mm2 and for the 4K TV with 80 PPI density, the transistor size is approximately 0.001 mm2.

Technology trends TFT-LCD (thin-film-transistor liquid-crystal display) is the baseline technology. MO / White OLED (organic light emitting diode) is used for larger screens. LTPS / AMOLED is used for small / medium screens. The challenges for OLED are the effect of < 1 micron particles on yield, much higher cost compared to a-Si due to increased mask steps, and moisture impact to yield for the OLED step.

Mobility limitation (FIGURE 2) is one of the key reasons for the shift to MO and LTPS to enable better viewing experience from higher resolution, etc.

The challenge to MO is the oxidation after IGZO metalization / moisture prevention after OLED step, which decreases yield. A large volume of N2O (nitrous oxide) is required for manufacturing, which means a shift in the traditional supply mode might need to be considered.

Although AMLCD displays are still dominant in the market today, AMOLED displays are growing quickly. Currently about 25% of smartphones are made with AMOLED displays and this is expected to grow to ~40% by 2021. OLED televisions are also growing rapidly, enjoying double digit growth rate year over year. Based on IHS data, the revenue for display panels with AMOLED technol- ogies is expected to have a CAGR of 18.9% in the next five years while the AMLCD display revenue will have a -2.8% CAGR for the same period with the total display panel revenue CAGR of 2.5%. With the rapid growth of AMOLED display panels, the panel makers have accel- erated their investment in the equipment to produce AMOLED panels.

There are three types of thin-film-transistor devices for display: amorphous silicon (a-Si), low temperature polysilicon (LTPS), and metal oxide (MO), also known as transparent amorphous oxide semiconductor (TAOS). AMLCD panels typically use a-Si for lower-resolution displays and TVs while high-resolution displays use LTPS transistors, but this use is mainly limited to small and medium displays due to its higher costs and scalability limitations. AMOLED panels use LTPS and MO transistors where MO devices are typically used for TV and large displays (FIGURE 3).

This shift in technology also requires a change in the gases used in production of AMOLED panels as compared with the AMLCD panels. As shown in FIGURE 4, display manufacturing today uses a wide variety of gases.

These gases can be categorized into two types: Electronic Specialty gases (ESGs) and Electronic Bulk gases (EBGs) (FIGURE 5). Electronic Specialty gases such as silane, nitrogen trifluoride, fluorine (on-site generation), sulfur hexafluoride, ammonia, and phosphine mixtures make up 52% of the gases used in the manufacture of the displays while the Electronic Bulk gases–nitrogen, hydrogen, helium, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and argon – make up the remaining 48% of the gases used in the display manufacturing.

The key ga susage driver in the manufacturing of displays is PECVD (plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition), which accounts for 75% of the ESG spending, while dry etch is driving helium usage. LTPS and MO transistor production is driving nitrous oxide usage. The ESG usage for MO transistor production differs from what is shown in FIGURE 4: nitrous oxide makes up 63% of gas spend, nitrogen trifluoride 26%, silane 7%, and sulfur hexafluoride and ammonia together around 4%. Laser gases are used not only for lithography, but also for excimer laser annealing application in LTPS.

Silane: SiH4 is one of the most critical molecules in display manufacturing. It is used in conjunction with ammonia (NH3) to create the silicon nitride layer for a-Si transistor, with nitrogen (N2) to form the pre excimer laser anneal a-Si for the LTPS transistor, or with nitrous oxide (N2O) to form the silicon oxide layer of MO transistor.

Nitrogen trifluoride: NF3 is the single largest electronic material from spend and volume standpoint for a-Si and LTPS display production while being surpassed by N2O for MO production. NF3 is used for cleaning the PECVD chambers. This gas requires scalability to get the cost advantage necessary for the highly competitive market.

Nitrous oxide: Used in both LTPS and MO display production, N2O has surpassed NF3 to become the largest electronic material from spend and volume standpoint for MO production. N2O is a regional and localized product due to its low cost, making long supply chains with high logistic costs unfeasible. Averaging approximately 2 kg per 5.5 m2 of mother glass area, it requires around 240 tons per month for a typical 120K per month capacity generation 8.5 MO display production. The largest N2O compressed gas trailer can only deliver six tons of N2O each time and thus it becomes both costly and risky

Nitrogen: For a typical large display fab, N2 demand can be as high as 50,000 Nm3/hour, so an on-site generator, such as the Linde SPECTRA-N® 50,000, is a cost-effective solution that has the added benefit of an 8% reduction in CO2 (carbon dioxide) footprint over conventional nitrogen plants.

Helium: H2 is used for cooling the glass during and after processing. Manufacturers are looking at ways to decrease the usage of helium because of cost and availability issues due it being a non-renewable gas.

N2 On-site generators: Nitrogen is the largest consumed gas at the fab, and is required to be available before the first tools are brought to the fab. Like major semiconductor fabs, large display fabs require very large amounts of nitrogen, which can only be economically supplied by on-site plants.

Individual packages: Specialty gases are supplied in individual packages. For higher volume materials like silane and nitrogen trifluoride, these can be supplied in large ISO packages holding up to 10 tons. Materials with smaller requirements are packaged in standard gas cylinders.

Blended gases: Laser gases and dopants are supplied as blends of several different gases. Both the accuracy and precision of the blended products are important to maintain the display device fabrication operating within acceptable parameters.

In-fab distribution: Gas supply does not end with the delivery or production of the material of the fab. Rather, the materials are further regulated with additional filtration, purification, and on-line analysis before delivery to individual production tools.

The consumer demand for displays that offer increas- ingly vivid color, higher resolution, and lower power consumption will challenge display makers to step up the technologies they employ and to develop newer displays such as flexible and transparent displays. The transistors to support these new displays will either be LTPS and / or MO, which means the gases currently being used in these processes will continue to grow. Considering the current a-Si display production, the gas consumption per area of the glass will increase by 25% for LTPS and ~ 50% for MO productions.

To facilitate these increasing demands, display manufacturers must partner with gas suppliers to identify which can meet their technology needs, globally source electronic materials to provide customers with stable and cost- effective gas solutions, develop local sources of electronic materials, improve productivity, reduce carbon footprint, and increase energy efficiency through on-site gas plants. This is particularly true for the burgeoning China display manufacturing market, which will benefit from investing in on-site bulk gas plants and collaboration with global materials suppliers with local production facilities for high-purity gas and chemical manufacturing.

Semiconductor devices are built up in a series of nanofabrication processes performed on the surface of substrates made from highly pure single crystal silicon. These substrates are usually known as wafers.

Commonly used wafers include the 300 mm type, which offers the advanced miniaturization required for cutting-edge devices, and 200 mm type, which is better suited to the mixed, small lot production needed for devices for the Internet of Things (IoT).

The silicon wafers forming the base of the semiconductor are cleaned. Even slight contamination of a wafer will cause defects in the circuit. Therefore, chemical agents are used to remove all contamination, from ultra-fine particles to minute amounts of organic or metallic residues generated in the production process, or unwanted natural oxide layers generated due to exposure to air.

There are a variety of ways to form these thin films, including "sputtering", in which a target material, such as aluminum or other metal, is bombarded with ions, which knocks off atoms and molecules that are then deposited on the wafer surface, "electrodeposition", which is used to form copper wire layers (copper interconnect), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), in which special gases are mixed to cause a chemical reaction that forms a vapor containing the desired material, and then the mole-cules generated in the reaction are deposited onto the wafer surface to form a film, and thermal oxidation, in which the wafer is heated to form a silicon oxide film on the wafer surface.

Minute particles adhering to the wafer after the film deposition are removed using brushes or Nanospray with deionized water, or other physical cleaning methods.

The wafer surface is coated with resist (photosensitive chemical). Then the wafer is spun, causing a uniform layer of resist to be formed on the wafer surface by centrifugal force.

The wafer is exposed using short wavelength deep ultraviolet radiation projected through a mask on which the circuit pattern has been formed. Only the areas of the resist layer that are exposed to the light undergo a structural change, thereby transferring the pattern to the wafer. There are a variety of exposure units, including steppers, which expose several chips at a time, and scanners, which expose the wafer using a slit through which light is projected onto the wafer.

Developer is sprayed onto the wafer, dissolving the areas exposed to the light and revealing the thin film on the wafer surface. The remain-ing resist areas that are not exposed at this point become the mask for the next etching process, and that resist pattern becomes the pattern on the layer below.

In wet etching, the exposed thin film on the surface layer is dissolved using chemicals, such as hydrofluoric acid or phosphoric acid, and removed. This forms the pattern. There is also a dry etching method in which the wafer surface is bombarded with ionized atoms to remove the film layer.

Heat processing is performed using flash lamps or laser radiation to activate the doped ions implanted in the wafer. Instantaneous activation is required to create the micro transistors on the substrate.

The wafer is separated into individual chips (dicing), the chips are connected to a metal frame called a lead frame using metal wire (wire bonding) and then enclosed in epoxy resin material(packaging).

Today, semiconductor and LCD panel manufacturing equipment is essential for the production of all kinds of electric and electronic appliances, including PCs, cell phones and flat-panel televisions. Advances in this equipment promote enhancements to PC performance and cell phone functions, and enrich people"s lives by reducing the cost of flat panel TV sets. THK"s products can meet this kind of high-technology need for fine movement control.

Compact ball screws and Caged Ball LM Guides exhibiting very smooth movement are used in highly efficient production systems used for LCD panels for car navigation systems and mobile tools.

To transfer large crystal glass substrates over long distances quickly, high speed, superb accuracy and the ability to track even when long strokes are necessary. A combination of LM Guides and linear motor driving systems can deliver this.

In order to test the electrical characteristics of LCD panel substrates, the measuring instrument must be capable of positioning the substrates accurately over a wide area. LM Guides and ball screws, machined to a high level of accuracy, can provide this tracking control and contribute to efficient manufacturing even as the size of the substrates increases.

Dicing saws cut and separate each IC chip from its larger wafer. Laser cutting devices and very thin radial blades at the end of high-speed rotating spindles are used to accurately cut out the IC chips. LM Guides and Ball Screws are used in the guidance and driving sections, which must always operate with a high level of accuracy and stability. THK’s ultra precision technologies excel in this technology.

The LM Guide (Linear Motion Guide) is our main product, incorporating a part with a linear rolling motion into practical usage for the first time in the world.

A semiconductor chip is an electric circuit with many components such as transistors and wiring formed on a semiconductor wafer. An electronic device comprising numerous these components is called “integrated circuit (IC)”. The layout of the components is patterned on a photomask (reticle) by computer and projected onto a semiconductor wafer in the manufacturing processes described below.

The thin film is coated with photoresist. The circuit pattern of the photomask (reticle) is then projected onto the photoresist using Photolithography technology.

With this, one layer of the circuit is formed. The transistors are formed on the lowest layer. Similar process is then repeated, and many layers of circuits are formed on top of one another.

In the process of the integrated circuit creation, there are inspection and measurement steps to check whether or not the patterns are fabricated as designed. If defects are found, the fabrication will be interrupted to remove the defects from the process and to make small changes in the fabrication conditions for correction purposes. More than one hundred semiconductor dies are fabricated on a single wafer. At present, the largest silicon wafer is 300mm in diameter. Semiconductor manufacturers are looking into 450mm diameter silicon wafers for use in the future.

Semiconductor devices are completed through the front-end process (wafer processing operation) and the back-end process (assembly process) described below.

The finished semiconductor devices have been used in a variety of products such as personal computers, smartphones and cars in everyday life (see also “Semiconductors in everyday life”).

The manufacturing of semiconductor wafers and flat panel glass substrates takes place in very tightly controlled environments. As such, the equipment used in the making of these products necessitates the highest quality materials.

Constellium’s extended experience in semiconductor and flat panel display equipment combined with world class manufacturing capabilities make it the ideal partner to manufacturers – both for functional parts (vacuum process and transfer chambers, vacuum valves and pumps, load locks, etc.) and consumable parts (showerheads, diffusers, etc.)

Exceptional dimensional capabilitiesin width and thickness – to meet increasing demand for larger machinery. Constellium operates some of the largest manufacturing assets worldwide for casting, rolling and stretching plates

Tightly controlled casting for optimum metal cleanliness and reduced porosity in thick plates, thus contributing to minimum outgassing issues and faster pump-down cycles

Enhanced rolling practices provide the ideal scenario to physically work the center of the plate and eliminate residual porosity from casting as much as possible

Right after the pandemic hit, I bought a new vacuum cleaner. I wanted to step up my housecleaning skills since I knew I’d be home a lot more. I was able to buy mine right away, but friends who wanted new appliances weren’t so lucky. My relatives had to wait months for their new refrigerator to arrive. And it wasn’t just appliances. New cars were absent from dealership lots, while used cars commanded a premium. What do all these things have in common? Semiconductor chips.

The pandemic disrupted the global supply chain, and semiconductor chips were particularly vulnerable. The chip shortage delivered a wakeup call for our country to make our supply chain more resilient and increase domestic manufacturing of chips, which are omnipresent in modern life.

“To an astonishing degree, the products and services we encounter every day are powered by semiconductor chips,” says Mike Molnar, director of NIST’s Office of Advanced Manufacturing.

Think about your kitchen. Dishwashers have chips that sense how dirty your loads are and precisely time their cleaning cycles to reduce your energy and water bills. Some rice cookers use chips with “fuzzy logic” to judge how long to cook rice. Many toasters now have chips that make sure your bread is perfectly browned.

We commonly think of chips as the “brains” that crunch numbers, and that is certainly true for the CPUs in computers, but chips do all sorts of useful things. Memory chips store data. Digital cameras contain chips that detect light and turn it into an image. Modern TVs produce their colorful displays with arrays of light emitting diodes (LEDs) on chips. Phones send and receive Wi-Fi and cellular signals thanks to semiconductor chips inside them. Chips also abound on the exteriors of homes, inside everything from security cameras to solar panels.

The average car can have upward of 1,200 chips in it, and you can’t make a new car unless you have all of them. “Today’s cars are computers on wheels,” an auto mechanic said to me a few years ago, and his words were never more on point than during the height of the pandemic. In 2021, the chip shortage was estimated to have caused a loss of $110 billion in new vehicle sales worldwide.

The chips in today’s cars are a combination of low-tech, mature chips and high-tech, state-of-the-art processors (which you’ll especially find in electric vehicles and those that have autonomous driving capabilities).

Whether mature or cutting-edge, chips typically need to go through a dizzying series of steps — and different suppliers — before they become finished products. And most of this work is currently done outside this country. The U.S., once a leader in chip manufacturing, currently only has about a 12% share in the market.

To reestablish our nation’s leadership in chip manufacturing, Congress recently passed, and President Joe Biden recently signed into law, the CHIPS Act. The CHIPS Act aims to help U.S. manufacturers grow an ecosystem in which they produce both mature and state-of-the-art chips at all stages of the manufacturing process and supply chain, and NIST is going to play a big role in this effort.

Silicon is the most frequently used raw material for chips, and one of the most abundant atomic elements on Earth. To give you a sense of its abundance, silicon and oxygen are the main ingredients of most beach sand, and a major component of glass, rocks and soil (which means that you can also find it in actual, not just metaphorical, dirt).

Silicon is a type of material known as a semiconductor. Electricity flows through semiconductors better than it does through insulators (such as rubber and cotton), but not quite as well as it does through conductors (such as metals and water).

But that’s a good thing. In semiconductors, you can control electric current precisely — and without any moving parts. By applying a small voltage to them, you can either cause current to flow or to stop — making the semiconductor (or a small region within it) act like a conductor or insulator depending on what you want to do.

The first step for making a chip is to start with a thin slice of a semiconductor material, known as a “wafer,” often round in shape. On top of the wafer, manufacturers then create complex miniature electric circuits, commonly called “integrated circuits” (ICs) because they are embedded as one piece on the wafer. A typical IC today contains billions of tiny on-off switches known as transistors that enable a chip to perform a wide range of complex tasks from sending signals to processing information. Increasingly, these circuits also have “photonic” components in which light travels alongside electricity.

Manufacturers typically mass-produce dozens of ICs on a single semiconductor wafer and then dice the wafer to separate the individual pieces. When each of them is packaged as a self-contained device, you have a “chip,” which can then be placed in smartphones, computers and so many other products.

Though silicon is the most commonly used raw material for chips, other semiconductors are used depending on the application. For example, gallium nitride is resistant to damage from cosmic rays and other radiation in space, so it’s commonly the material of choice for electronic devices in satellites. Gallium arsenide is frequently employed to make LEDs, because silicon typically produces heat instead of light if you try to make an LED with it.

Non-silicon semiconductors are used in the growing field of “power electronics” in vehicles and energy systems such as wind and solar. Silicon carbide can handle larger amounts of electricity and voltage than other materials, so it has been used in chips for electric vehicles to perform functions such as converting DC battery power into the AC power delivered to the motors.

Diamonds are semiconductors too — and they have the greatest ability to conduct heat of any known material. Artificial diamonds are currently used as the semiconductors in chips for aerospace applications, as they can draw heat away from the power loads generated in those chips.

Measurement science plays a key role in up to 50% of semiconductor manufacturing steps, according to a recent NIST report. Good measurements enable manufacturers to mass-produce high-quality, high-performance chips.

NIST has the measurement science and technical standards expertise that is needed by the U.S. chip industry, and our programs to advance manufacturing and support manufacturing networks across the U.S. mean we can partner with industry to find out what they need and deliver on it.

NIST researchers already work on semiconductor materials for many reasons. For example, researchers have developed new ways to measure semiconductor materials in order to detect defects (such as a stray aluminum atom in silicon) that could cause chips to malfunction. As electronic components get smaller, chips need to be increasingly free of such defects.

“Modern chips may contain over 100 billion complex nanodevices that are less than 50 atoms across — all must work nearly identically for the chip to function,” the NIST report points out.

NIST researchers also measure the properties of new materials that could be useful for future inventions. All of the semiconductor materials I mentioned above are brittle and can’t be bent. But devices with chips — from pacemakers to blood pressure monitors to defibrillators — are increasingly being made with flexible materials so they can be “wearable” and you can attach them comfortably to the contours of your body. NIST researchers have been at the forefront of the work to develop these “flexible” chips.

Researchers are also studying materials that could serve as “printable” chips that would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Instead of going through the complicated multistep process of making chips in a factory, we are developing ways to print circuits directly onto materials such as paper using technology that’s similar to ink-jet printers.

And while we’ve lost a lot of overall chip manufacturing share, U.S. companies still make many of the machines that carry out the individual steps for fabricating chips, such as those that deposit ultrathin layers of material on top of semiconductors. But what if, instead of these machines being shipped abroad, more domestic manufacturers developed expertise in using them?

To support this effort, NIST researchers are planning to perform measurements with these very machines in their labs. They will study materials that these machines use and the manufacturing processes associated with them. The information from the NIST work could help more domestic manufacturers develop the know-how for making chips. This work can help create an ecosystem with many domestic chip manufacturers, not just a few, leading to a more resilient supply chain.

“Reliance on only one supplier is problematic, as we saw with the recent shortage in baby formula,” NIST"s Jyoti Malhotra pointed out to me. Malhotra serves on the senior leadership team of the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP). MEP has been connecting NIST labs to the U.S. suppliers and manufacturers who produce materials, components, devices and equipment enabling U.S. chip manufacturing.

Last but not least, an area of major excitement at NIST is “advanced packaging.” No, we don’t mean the work of those expert gift-wrappers you may find at stores during the holiday season. When we talk about chip packaging, we’re referring to everything that goes around a chip to protect it from damage and connect it to the rest of the device. Advanced packaging takes things to the next level: It uses ingenious techniques during the chipmaking process to connect multiple chips to each other and the rest of the device in as tiny a space as possible.

But it’s more about just making a smartphone that fits in your pocket. Advanced packaging enables our devices to be faster and more energy-efficient because information can be exchanged between chips over shorter distances and this in turn reduces energy consumption.

One great byproduct of advanced packaging’s innovations can be found on my wrist — namely, the smartwatch I wear for my long-distance runs. My watch uses GPS to measure how far I ran. It also measures my heart rate, and after my workouts, it uploads my running data wirelessly to my phone. Its battery lasts for days; it had plenty of juice left even after I ran a full marathon last month.

Twenty years ago, running watches were big and clunky, with much less functionality. My friends and I had a particular model with a huge face and a bulky slab that fit over the insides of our wrists. When a friend and I opened up his watch to replace his battery, we saw that the GPS receiver was on a completely separate circuit board from the rest of the watch electronics.

Under the small and thin face of my current watch you will find all its electronics, including a GPS sensor, battery, heart-rate monitor, wireless communications device and so many other things.

Further development of advanced packaging could produce even more powerful devices for monitoring a patient’s vitals, measuring pollutants in the environment, and increasing situational awareness for soldiers in the field.

Advanced packaging is also a potential niche for domestic manufacturers to grow global market share (currently at 3% for this part of the chipmaking process). Chips are becoming so complex that design and manufacturing processes, once separate steps, are now increasingly intertwined — and the U.S. remains a world leader in chip design. NIST’s measurements to support advanced packaging in chips and standards for the packaging process could give domestic manufacturers a decisive edge in this area.

All the NIST experts I’ve spoken to talk about a future in which chip manufacturers work increasingly closely with their customers, such as automakers. The benefit of closer relationships would mean that customers could collaborate with manufacturers to create more customized chips that bring about completely new products.

And as we’ve seen, incorporating chips into existing products tends to make them “smart,” whether it’s an appliance figuring out how long to bake the bread, or solar panels that maximize electricity production by coordinating the power output from individual panels. With more domestic manufacturers on the scene, there are more opportunities to incorporate chips into products — that could also be manufactured in the U.S.A.

I first encountered semiconductor chips in the 1970s, when the U.S. was a dominant force in chip manufacturing. Inside a department store with my mom, I saw pocket calculators on display, and they fascinated me. You could punch their number keys and they would instantly solve any addition or multiplication problem. As a 6-year-old, I thought that they had little brains in them!

Since then, semiconductor chips have been a big part of my life. And after the pandemic, I realize I can’t take them for granted. I’m glad to be part of an agency that is working to create a more resilient supply chain — and bring back chip manufacturing in this country.

Transistor: Simple switch, made with a semiconductor material, that turns on or off depending on changes in voltage and can combine with other transistors to create complex devices

Chip: Self-contained piece including the semiconductor surface and integrated circuit, independently packaged for use in electronics such as cellphones or computers

Our ozone generators and extra-pure water supply equipment supplemented with ozone are being used for advanced processes for manufacturing materials used in electronic devices such as semiconductors, flat panel displays, and functional materials.

We have been responding to the ever-increasing demand for removal of particles and impurities and to requests for higher ozone concentrations through ongoing efforts to develop new products. Our high-concentration ozone generators are world leaders in this market and have been chosen by our customers for applications such as new oxide film deposition processes (such as ALD) and environment-friendly cleaning and photoresist stripping processes featuring reduced consumption of chemical solutions and ultra pure water.

The market for LCD displays is undergoing rapid growth centered on notebook computers, cellular phones and LCD televisions. LCD televisions, in particular, are becoming larger and less expensive thanks to technological innovations and the ramping up of mass production. With the appearance of 8K TV sets etc, the consumer appetite for LCD televisions is growing, so demand is expected to continue to expand going forward. CoorsTek provides a variety of materials that are essential to the LCD display manufacturing process and help raise production efficiency.

CoorsTek has developed and supplies a variety of fine ceramic products that are needed to manufacture semiconductors, including quartz glass, carbon products, and silicon carbide products. The purification, processing and evaluation technologies we have developed out of this are highly competitive when applied to the manufacturing process for LCD displays as well, which is quite similar.

We provide a diverse array of materials for the manufacturing processes to help rationalize and streamline LCD production. Products that have earned a strong reputation with our customers include synthetic quartz photomask substrates, a strategic product that improves the exposure precision of micro-circuitry, vacuum breaking filters and silicon carbide materials sintered under atmospheric pressure.

As LCD displays have become larger in recent years, the glass substrates that make up the displays have been growing in stride. Around 2000, the 730 x 920 mm size, called the fourth generation, was mainstream. By 2005, mass production had been initiated for the seventh generation (1,870 x 2,200 mm) and, in 2006, mass production began on 2,160 x 2,400 mm displays, the eighth generation, as the move to larger sizes has accelerated.

In conjunction with this evolution, greater precision and proprietary expertise has come to be required for materials production as well. We already have a system in place to accommodate growth in the size of photomask substrates thanks to our synthetic quartz purification and polishing technologies and unique know-how in the area of mass production, so are ready to meet the rising demand to come.

These current control filters for vacuum breaking*1 use the pressure buffering effects possessed by porous ceramics. They render unnecessary the slow vents*2 that used to be required for vacuum breaking and are effective in reducing particles and preventing particle outbreaks. This product is used not only in the deposition step, but also in the exposure and etching steps.

This ceramic material is next in hardness to diamonds while also being lightweight. It is highly regarded as a material for ultra-flat, lightweight platforms that do not bend or warp, making possible accurate exposure.

This product is used as a roller to convey TFT array substrates. Using highly pure silica glass serves to prevent metallic contamination and damage from particles. For this reason, it is also used for conveyance in the manufacture of sheet glass for flat panel displays (FPD).

Quartz chambers are used as batch furnaces inside heat treatment systems for thin film transistor (TFT) array substrates, which are main type of LCD display using the active matrix method. Compared to metal, quartz is capable of restricting the occurrence of particles to an absolute minimum and it helps prevent metallic contamination.

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SCREEN Holdings will make another key investment in its Hikone Plant site centering on the construction of a new factory. Named S3-4 (S-Cube 4), the facility will be based on the company’s Hikone Grand Design Plan, a medium- to long-term project intended to develop its production capacity. The new factory is currently expected to start operation in January 2023.

SCREEN initially formulated its Hikone Grand Design Plan in 2018 and has since been implementing the medium- to long-term development project to improve both its production capacity and efficiency. As part of this initiative, the company has now decided to accelerate the facility investment measures laid out in the plan. Total construction costs are likely to reach around 10 billion yen.

As well as constructing the new factory, SCREEN will expand facilities to accommodate the increases in personnel and waste liquid treatment required by its higher production capacity. The company also plans to undertake other work such as refurbishing existing plant and building new welfare-related facilities. S3-4 will be the first factory SCREEN has constructed as part of its semiconductor production equipment business since completing S3-3 (S-Cube 3) in January 2019.

S3-4, the core of the planned expansion, is to be connected to S3-3, the main factory for the production of SCREEN’s SU series of single wafer cleaning equipment. S3-4 will be used to improve pre-shipment cleaning processes for equipment and units manufactured at S3-3, enabling the company to achieve a far more efficient workflow from the start of production through final shipment compared to its previous system.

Demand for semiconductor devices has increased on a global scale in recent years, mainly due to the widespread adoption of 5G-compatible smartphones and the growing requirements of data centers accompanying the digital transformation (DX) currently occurring worldwide. This shift has also been driven by the increasing demand for in-vehicle systems needed for electric and self-driving cars as well as the mainly industrial devices required to support the rapid expansion of IoT infrastructure. Given these trends, a high level of capital investment is expected to continue among major device manufacturers.

Amid these strong market conditions, SCREEN is focused on maintaining a stable supply of equipment to device manufacturers based on its Hikone Grand Design Plan. It remains dedicated to achieving SBT* through promoting energy-saving investments, such as the adoption of renewable energy and the renewal of air conditioning facilities.

It’s an obvious thing to say, but the semiconductor industry is all about semiconductor materials. However, due to its excellent chemical, mechanical, electrical, and optical properties, glass applications are constantly evolving. Glass is therefore playing an increasingly important role in the semiconductor market, adopting various functions in integrated circuit (IC) semiconductor devices.

Consequently, we at Yole Développement expect the glass wafer market to have a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through to 2022. By that time it will be shipping the equivalent of around 14 million 8-inch glass wafers, and revenues will exceed $594 million. This growth rate is much higher than the semiconductor market as a whole. The new Yole report “Glass Substrate Manufacturing in the Semiconductor Field” provides more details about the evolution of glass materials in the semiconductor industry.

Some IC device applications using glass are already mature, such as infra-red cut filters in CMOS image sensors (CIS), microfluidics, and actuators and sensors. In those cases, the glass material growth rate is linked to the growth of these markets, languishing at 5-8% per year. The glass material market’s ascent will be more due to the fast growth of glass carriers for FOWLP, actuators and sensors. Other applications, like through glass via (TGV) interposers, are still in the development phase. However, Yole expects adoption for production by 2019-2020.

FOWLP is very interesting as glass substrates are used as temporary materials for manufacturing. Investment from TSMC and of the major outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) companies supports this growth, which remains the driver for the whole industry.

Glass material used in semiconductors typically comes in two formats: wafer and panel. Panels are increasingly important. IR cut filters, implemented in the CIS camera modules, as well as CIS proximity sensors using glass are already manufactured on panels. IR cut filters are already well- established and represent a huge business in the glass substrate market. Yole now expects other devices, like FOWLP and radio-frequency (RF) devices, to use glass panel substrates. This is partly because glass is already available in panel sizes and has been adopted for large-volume manufacturing in the display and touch-panel areas. That makes transitioning from glass wafers to panels easier, since it’s possible to use existing glass manufacturing processes and tools. Going from wafer to large-panel format will offer a path to scalability, delivering a lower-cost process compared to glass wafers.

Yole estimates that panel demand will reach 28 million mm² in 2017, 100% of which is for existing CIS applications. Demand is expected to exceed 46 million mm² by 2022, driven by FOWLP applications. Although it is difficult to predict the success of glass panel-based advanced packaging, we expect the first glass panel activities by 2019, mainly driven by FOWLP and RF device applications. These semiconductor devices will be respectively fueled by glass carrier and TGV interposer functionalities.

Additionally, some firms have already invested in a panel line for FOWLP, integrating the glass-carrier panel format into their process flows due to its desirable mechanical properties and ease of thickness control. FOWLP is becoming the main platform for many devices, as Yole has described in its reports “Equipment and Materials for Fan-Out Packaging 2017” and “Status of the Advanced Packaging Industry 2017”.

The semiconductor glass material market is shared amongst suppliers from different categories. Manufacturers like Schott, Corning, and AGC provide glass raw materials and blank wafers or sheets. These companies have limited wafer-processing capabilities.

In the next link of the supply chain, glass processors and structured substrate manufacturers like PlanOptik and Tecnisco can pattern and structure glass wafers from these raw materials. These companies typically purchase wafers from raw-glass material suppliers and then design and create products from the raw material.

Then, structured and patterned glass wafer manufacturers operate mainly in the MEMS and microfluidics areas. This category mostly includes foundries that start from blank or pre-patterned wafers. However, unlike typical foundries such as Silex Microsystems, these companies also create their own products.

As this market is highly segmented, different companies have advantages for specific applications. Established glass applications such as CIS and microfluidics have led Schott to dominate the glass material market in the semiconductor field. However, emerging applications including RF devices, FOWLP technology could require the use of different glass materials. These emerging fields represent real business opportunities for the major glass companies, both for raw materials and also for structured wafer and panels.

Yole also sees increased competition, even in mature markets like actuators and sensors and power devices. In these industries Chinese glass processor companies are likely to challenge established players like PlanOptik and Tecnisco. In order to capture market share, aggressive players like NEG have penetrated the FOWLP market deeply. But competing in a market growing at 23% per year is normal, and there are lots of opportunities for companies to differentiate themselves.

Status of the Advanced Packaging Industry 2017How can advanced packaging decrease semiconductor market uncertainty and enable future semiconductor products? –More

DuPont’s rich history of experience and innovation has deep roots in the semiconductor fabrication industry. Our broad portfolio and expertise support many segments, from advanced chip manufacturing processes, to advanced packaging and assembly, to compound semiconductor device fabrication.

We offer complementary, reliable, high-quality materials sets to support both today’s high-volume manufacturing processes and advanced technology for the future. Through close collaboration with our customers, we develop solutions to address leading-edge technology challenges that are critical to advancing diverse market drivers. We work with our customers to develop or place materials that meet their specific needs, including technical performance and cost-of-ownership improvements.

Our materials are valuable building blocks for today’s advanced microelectronics found in everything from consumer electronics to high-end data centers, automotive applications, medical devices, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, power electronics and more.

The Flat Panel Displays are thin and lightweight display screens that are used in laptops, monitors, televisions, smartphones, digital cameras, and other portable devices. Flat-panel size requirement varies as per the end device on which it is mounted. With the introduction of more innovative technology-based solutions, flat panel displays can be found in the majority of consumer and industrial display systems.

Today flat panel displays mostly use LCD (liquid crystal display) technology but in recent years there is a shift toward the use of the organic light-emitting diode display (OLED) technology which is gaining large momentum. OLED displays are not just thinner and more efficient than LCD displays - they provide superior image quality and they can also be made transparent, flexible, foldable, rollable, and stretchable.

Driven by end-user demands for increased product quality and lower costs, FPD manufacturers are constantly searching for improved processes and fab automation equipment. In addition, larger (G8 to G11) and thinner glass (<0.4mm) substrates are more complex to process and present ongoing precision and handling challenges for equipment manufacturers.

Realizing both LCD’s high resolution and economic efficiency by synergy effects from the combination of sophisticated materials technology developed over the years and coating technology with excellent uniformity

LCDs are widely used for various products ranging from compact-to-medium-size devices such as mobile terminals and PCs, to large-size devices including not only LCD TVs and digital signages for consumer use but also the display parts of industrial equipment.

We have been developing many types of products in the Panel manufacturing field as well, using our broad know-how accumulated in semiconductor manufacturing, and uniquely developed microprocessing technology. For LCDs, we offer an optimal photoresist for each purpose including specialized products with high sensitivity for the TFT / TN-STN process and other resists which form a black matrix for color filters. We have also developed photoresists forming reverse tapered ribs, or those that form Insulators for organic EL displays. For touch panels, we have commercialized materials form insulating films.

In addition to photoresists and other materials, we have developed coating machines such as slit coaters and coat-and-spin coating machines that can achieve highprecision performances. we have also developed and commercialized developing machines and cleaner units aiming at higher efficiencies in the manufacturing process. In this way, we have achieved synergy effects from the combination of our technologies of photoresist materials and processing equipment, thus improving production efficiency and offering optimal processing technologies.

Abbreviation of organic electroluminescence. A phenomenon that occurs when a certain type of organic matter has a voltage applied to it.Pigment dispersing-type black resist for color filters

Photoresist used to form a black matrix which increases the contrast of the image of a liquid crystal display. The photoresist is colored with black pigment in advance and remains patterned on the color filter and forms a black matrix.Liquid photoresist

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:

Sony produces and sells commercial MicroLED displays called CLEDIS (Crystal-LED Integrated Displays, also called Canvas-LED) in small quantities.video walls.

LCDs are made in a glass substrate. For OLED, the substrate can also be plastic. The size of the substrates are specified in generations, with each generation using a larger substrate. For example, a 4th generation substrate is larger in size than a 3rd generation substrate. A larger substrate allows for more panels to be cut from a single substrate, or for larger panels to be made, akin to increasing wafer sizes in the semiconductor industry.

2015, sold to giantplus and tce photomasks, gen 3 still operated by giantplus, gen 4 line sold to giantplus, equipment sold and line demolished, remainder operated by tce

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In the past, cathode ray tubes were mainly used as a device to display images. A cathode-ray tube is a device that emits an electron beam into a funnel-shaped vacuum tube and deflects it with a magnetic field to scan over the phosphor. The phosphor that the electron beam hits emit light and display an image.

However, the disadvantage of cathode-ray tubes was that they required a lot of depth for the display because vacuum tubes were essential. FPDs, which have been increasing in number in recent years, do not require vacuum tubes and are therefore thinner than CRTs.

There are several types of FPDs, including liquid crystal displays (LCDs), plasma displays, organic electroluminescent displays, and LED displays, which are used in all kinds of electronic devices such as electronic paper and digital signage, as well as televisions and smartphones.

As mentioned above, there are various types of FPDs. Still, this section will explain the mechanisms of liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and organic EL displays, which are often used in electronic products.

LCDs are lined up from back to front in the following order: backlight, a glass substrate, polarizer, liquid crystal layer, color filter, and glass substrate. During display, the backlight is always on, and the image is created by adjusting how much of the backlight passes through which part of the color filter.

At this time, the liquid crystal layer is responsible for adjusting the amount of light transmission. The mechanism by which the liquid crystal layer adjusts the transmission of light is the same as for monochrome liquid crystals and utilizes the principle of the polarizer. In their natural state, liquid crystal molecules have the property of lining up in a loosely regular manner, but when they come into contact with a plate with fine grooves (alignment film), they line up in a regular manner along the grooves.

When light is shone on a liquid crystal in this state, only light with a wavelength in a certain direction is transmitted. On the other hand, when a voltage is applied to a liquid crystal, the molecules are aligned perpendicular to the alignment film, allowing light to pass through regardless of the direction of the wavelength.

The light emitted from the backlight passes through the polarizer, and only light with a wavelength in a certain direction reaches the liquid crystal layer. The grooves of the alignment film are oriented orthogonally to the grooves of the polarizer, so when no voltage is applied, the light from the backlight is blocked and does not appear on the surface.

However, the portion of the liquid crystal layer where voltage is applied allows light to pass through, so light passing through the color filter is recognized as an image. Thus, in a liquid crystal display (LCD), electricity is applied to the liquid crystal layer to let light through or block it, and to adjust the amount of light that passes through.

Unlike LCDs, OLED displays do not require a backlight. As a result, thinner and lighter FPDs can be realized, and their use in smartphones, game consoles, and TVs has been expanding in recent years.

An OLED display consists of three primary colors of OLED materials sandwiched between electrodes, and when voltage is applied, the OLED materials emit light directly.

The processes of film formation, lithography, and etching that take place in TFT manufacturing are similar to the front-end processes of semiconductor manufacturing.

Film formation: Create the transparent electrode film, gate electrode film, wiring film, insulating film, and other films necessary for TFT. Sputtering, in which ionized materials are impinged on glass substrates by electrical discharge, and Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD), in which raw material gases are converted into plasma using electric current and microwaves to deposit materials, are used for film deposition.

Development: After exposure, the circuit pattern is developed by immersing the substrate in a developer. The developed photoresist serves to protect the underlying thin film in the subsequent process.

Etching: Etching of glass substrates using chemicals and ions. Etching removes the photoresist and thin film on the glass substrate, but the developed photoresist is not removed by etching and protects the thin film underneath. This gives the thin film the shape of a circuit pattern.

Liquid crystal layer filling: The transparent electrodes that control the liquid crystal are formed by film deposition, resist coating, exposure, and development in the same way as the transparent electrodes of TFTs. After that, the resin is applied, and rubbing is performed to form grooves in the alignment film that aligns the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules. Fill the liquid crystal material and paste the TFT substrate and color filter together.

In the vapor deposition process, three colors of organic materials, which are also light emitters, are deposited. In most cases, the deposition of organic materials is done by vapor deposition. The organic materials that emit red light are deposited first, followed by blue and green organic materials.

The deposition of organic materials is performed together with the deposition of the hole injection and hole transport layers. This is because organic materials are not electrically conductive and require a hole injection layer or hole transport layer to apply voltage to them.

Copper phthalocyanine and polyethylenesulfonic acid are used for the hole injection layer. This is followed by the deposition of the hole transport layer and then the organic materia