Tuesday, April 28, 2020

CMC Workshop Flags Looming Shortages of IPA and Sulfuric Critical Materials

Council (CMC) of semiconductor fabricators & suppliers is now meeting several times a month to mitigate potential supply-chain disruptions. The last meetings exposed likely shortages in iso-propyl alcohol (IPA) and sulfuric acid looming just over the business horizon due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The CMC has now opened attendance at monthly COVID-19 Briefings and Virtual Workshops to pre-registrants for the 2020 CMC Conference, happening October 22-23 in Hillsboro, Oregon. 
Fabs and suppliers say that the supply-chain for semiconductor-grade IPA has capacity to meet current global requirements (Figure). 
However, due to COVID-19, some of the industrial IPA supply-chain is re-directed to healthcare and consumer distribution, increasing overall demand. Spot prices for this critical material have reportedly increased a staggering 30% month-over-month (MoM). IPA depends on propene feedstock from oil refiners, and the current economic slowdown has reduced oil demand to such an extent that refineries are being idled. TECHCET has put up "cautionary flags" to watch for 2H20 shortages of IPA and sulfuric acid, as per the latest quarterly update to TECHCET's Wet Chemicals & Specialty Cleans analysis.

ABOUT TECHCET: TECHCET CA LLC is an advisory service firm focused on process materials supply-chains, electronic materials technology, and materials market analysis for the semiconductor, display, solar/PV, and LED industries. Since 2000, the company has been responsible for producing the Critical Material Reports™ for the Critical Materials Council (CMC), covering silicon wafers, semiconductor gases, wet chemicals, CMP consumables, Photoresists, and ALD/CVD Precursors. For additional information about these reports or CMC subscription membership please contact info@techcet.com, +1-480-332-8336, or go to www.techcet.com

Monday, April 27, 2020

Deposition Precursors Market Growth threatened by COVID-19 impacts

TECHCET announced that the market for atomic layer deposition (ALD), chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and spin-on deposition (SOD) precursor chemicals needed for semiconductor fabrication is looking healthy for 1Q2020. In particular, demands for cobalt (Co) and hafnium (Hf) precursors are forecasted to grow steadily over the next quarter. However, impacts of COVID-19 on world economies are still uncertain, and precursor market growth may be impacted negatively, as shown in the Figure (below) from TECHCET's latest ALD, CVD, SOD Precursors Quarterly Market Update.

COVID-19 has had an impact on cobalt (Co) metal supply-chains globally, since China dominates production of electric-vehicle batteries which use cobalt as a critical material. The extended manufacturing shut-down in China to limit the spread of COVID-19 after the Lunar New Year holiday cut demand for cobalt chemicals and were further slowed by logistics challenges. Cobalt demand in China and prices are expected to increase in the second-half of 2020.

Trade war and other bilateral trade conflicts relating to semiconductor materials supply (e.g. Japan - South Korea) have triggered a focus on securing localized sources of critical materials in all regions. For example, South Korean IC fabs are now seeking hafnium (Hf), zirconium (Zr), and Rare Earth Elements (REE) supplies from Australia to avoid being dependent on China.



To purchase Report go to: https://techcet.com/shop/

ABOUT TECHCET: TECHCET CA LLC is an advisory service firm focused on process materials supply-chains, electronic materials technology, and materials market analysis for the semiconductor, display, solar/PV, and LED industries. Since 2000, the company has been responsible for producing the Critical Material Reports™ for the Critical Materials Council (CMC), covering silicon wafers, semiconductor gases, wet chemicals, CMP consumables, Photoresists, and ALD/CVD Precursors. For additional information about these reports or CMC subscription membership please contact info@techcet.com, +1-480-332-8336, or go to www.techcet.com.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Anti-reflective optical coatings by ALD

[BENEQ] The challenge when coating 3D optics is to deposit the coating with high uniformity over an arbitrary topology in a simple manner. Commonly used techniques so called line-of-sight methods cause a non-uniform thickness distribution and shadowing effects. To alleviate this problem extensive mechanical work and process optimization is required, and this may still not lead to a sufficiently homogeneous film deposition. ALD overcomes those constraints and has proven its suitability for high precision pinhole free films, where the challenge is not only to achieve uniformity over a large scale, but to coat conformally over high aspect ratio structures of arbitrary shapes.

More information: Anti-reflective optical coatings (LINK)


Report: Chip Demand to Drop 5% to 15% in 2020

[EE Times, Barbara Jorgensen Apr16, 2020] McKinsey expects sales demand in the global chip market will decline between 5% and 15% in 2020, with steep declines anticipated for some IC market segments that will overwhelm the gains it still expects in others.
 
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on April 14 said it now expects global gross domestic product to shrink by 3% in 2020; in January, the IMF was predicting growth in global GDP of 3.3%. “This makes the Great Lockdown the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis,” the IMF said.

Research firms IC Insights and Gartner have also revised their projections downward; IC Insights predicts a 4% drop for this year, and Gartner forecasts a 0.9% decline in semiconductor revenue.

Choppy Waters for Shipping $50B of Semiconductor Materials in 2020

Risky Sailing on the Global Supply-Chain Seas

San Diego, CA, Apr 17, 2020:TECHCET announces that:
 
• 2020 global material revenues in semiconductor manufacturing forecasted to decline by 3.0% year-over-year (YoY) despite growth in 1Q2020,
• Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy is creating choppy waters for shipping and supplying critical materials, as highlighted in recent Critical Materials Council (CMC) monthly meetings, and
• With a return of global economic growth by 2021, compound annual growth rate (CAGR) through 2025 is forecast at 3.5% as shown in the Figure (below).
 
 

“From our market research, materials suppliers are increasing production and sales to ensure safety-stock throughout the supply-chain in case there are further disruptions due to COVID-19 cases,” remarked Lita Shon-Roy, TECHCET President and CEO. “Even without further disruptions, we can already see leading economic indicators such as unemployment levels, metal prices and container shipping indices point toward a significant decline in global GDP.” This is supported by the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) current outlook on 2020.

Currently, almost all chip fabs appear to be running at normal levels, with a few exceptions. During this difficult period, YMTC in Wuhan, China reportedly has maintained R&D and grown production of 3D-NAND chips. However, chip fabs in Malaysia report that the government required companies to request permission to continue operating at 50% staffing levels. One company in France had to temporarily reduce production due to their labor union insisting on temporary workforce reductions.

Significant value-added engineered materials including specialty gases, deposition precursors, wet chemicals, chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) slurries & pads, silicon wafers, PVD/sputtering targets, and photoresists & ancillary materials for lithography are reporting healthy orders and in some cases will see better than expected revenues for 1Q2020 and April 2020. However, more than 60% of all materials are expected to be negatively impacted before year-end.

Overall demand for commodity materials, such as silane and phosphoric acid, is expected to decline YoY in 2020 by an average of 3% due to softening of the global economy. Average selling prices (ASP) for electronic-grade commodities may drop due to cost reductions in feed-stocks; for example, the global helium (He) gas market which had been forecasted to be in shortage with high ASPs throughout 2020 has already improved due to COVID-19 slowing down helium demand.

DRAM, 3D-NAND, and MPU chips for server / cloud-computing applications are now in high demand for virtual meetings and remote work. It is yet unclear how much of an increase in materials shipments will be needed to support this segment, however from TECHCET’s modeling of prior cycles it will likely be >7%. Despite such an increase in the materials used to make leading-edge ICs to build out data centers, shipments in support of legacy node IC fabrication are expected to decline this year.

Consequently, cloud-computing growth may not compensate for overall reduced semiconductor materials demands caused by economic downturns this year. By 2021 the global economy and all chip fabs should return to healthier growth, with materials markets for all IC devices expected to increase at a CAGR of +3.5% through 2025.

Critical Materials Reports™ and Market Briefings: TECHCET Shop
CMC Events: Click here to view all Events

Friday, April 17, 2020

Volatile ALD & CVD Magnesium precursors for non-volitile memory and flexible display applications


The escalating struggle with further scaling of integrated circuit chips, on account of certain feature sizes in advanced chips gradually hitting atomic dimensions, has compelled the semiconductor industry to become more welcoming to new materials as a possible solution to continued PPAC (Power-Performance-Area-Cost) improvement. Traditionally not so popular in the semiconductor industry, Magnesium (Mg) is being explored for use in various related applications due to the fact that it forms semiconductor compounds with oxygen, sulfur, selenium, and tellurium.

For example, Magnesium Oxide (MgO) is a semiconductor with a wide band-gap and semi-insulating properties. A very thin semi-insulating MgO layer between two metallic ferromagnetic layers is used as a “magnetic tunnel junction”. Magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) based on the CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB layer have received great attention as a promising candidate for future spin logic devices. Among various applications of MTJs, spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) is emerging as a strong candidate as a next-generation nonvolatile memory due to its simple integration scheme, low voltage operation, and high speed. To fulfill certain critical requirements of 3D MTJ based sub-20 nm, high-density STT-MRAM, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Korea, has recently investigated both thermal and plasma-enhanced ALD for depositing a MgO tunnel barrier using bis(cyclopentadienyl)magnesium precursor under the scope of the Industrial Strategic Technology Development Program (10041926, Development of high-density plasma technologies for the thin-film deposition of nanoscale semiconductors and flexible-display processing) funded by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE, Korea). (Link)



Figure 1. TEM images of (a) Thermal ALD MgO, (b) PE-ALD MgO grown at 300 °C on a CoFeB layer

Recently, Panasonic Corporation, Japan, together with the National Institute of Material Science, Japan, reported ALD based Magnesium Phosphate (MgPO) thin-films as magnesium-ion conducting solid-state electrolytes that are considered to be promising candidates for future energy storage and conversion devices. The deposition was carried out at lower deposition temperatures, ranging from 125 to 300 °C, using bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium. (Link)

Apart from semiconductor and energy storage applications, Mg is also an interesting candidate for astronomical and optical applications. For example, recent NASA missions that make observations in the ultraviolet, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, employed primary mirrors coated with aluminum and further protected by thin films of Magnesium Fluoride (MgF2). Therefore, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA, reported ALD of MgF2 using bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium supplied by Strem Chemicals, Inc. (Link)



Figure 2. Photograph of a concave mirror and convex diffraction grating for a next-generation UV instrument prototype coated with electron beam evaporated aluminum and a protective coating of 10 nm ALD MgF2 deposited at 150 °C.

Strem Chemicals, Inc., a leading fine chemicals supplier, headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts, USA, offers the most preferred precursors worldwide for ALD of Mg-based compounds, i.e, bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium [Mg(CpEt)2] (catalog number 12-0510). The colorless to pale yellow liquid phase precursor with a density of 0.95 g/cm3 at 20 °C and vapor pressure of 0.0315 Torr is also sold by Strem Chemicals as pre-packed in cylinders:

§  98-4006: Bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium, min. 98%, 12-0510, contained in 50 ml Swagelok® cylinder (96-1070) for CVD/ALD

§  98-4010: Bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium, min. 98%, 12-0510, contained in high-temp 50 ml Swagelok® cylinder (96-1071) for CVD/ALD
 
About Strem Chemicals: Strem is an employee-owned fine chemicals supplier, manufacturing and marketing high-quality specialty chemicals for more than half-a-century. They provide custom synthesis and FDA inspected current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) services to its clients from academia as well as industry and also to government R&D labs. What distinguishes Strem from the other chemical suppliers are its ISO 9001 Quality Management System (QMS) standard and documenting procedures including for example “Color and Form” for every product as listed in the product details as a quality indicator for researchers. This helps Strem deliver precursors with a minimum metals purity of  99%, with some  some metal precursors attaining as high as 99.9999% metal’s purity. Strem offers over 5,000 specialty products in the area of metals, inorganics, organometallics, and nanomaterials. Strem’s product range includes:



Products Mentioned in this Blog:
12-0510: Bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium, min. 98% (114460-02-5)
98-4006: Bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium, min. 98%, 12-0510, contained in 50 ml Swagelok® cylinder (96-1070) for CVD/ALD
98-4010: Bis(ethylcyclopentadienyl)magnesium, min. 98%, 12-0510, contained in high-temp 50 ml Swagelok® cylinder (96-1071) for CVD/ALD


Related Product Lines & Resources:


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Promotional blog written and researched by Abhishekkumar Thakur and Jonas Sundqvist, BALD Engineering AB