Metrology characterisation
products effectively. You’re right—this product is designed to address a specific set of applications—but it’s undoubtedly the fastest growing area of the semiconductor industry. Power semiconductors are used throughout more industries every year: in the auto industry for hybrid and electric vehicles, electric grid applications, solar and wind power generation, power supplies for PCs and consumer electronics, and many more. Just about every segment of the electronics industry and their downstream customers are using power semiconductors and HBLEDs in some way. And we want to serve all of them.
Q A 26 The three market areas this tool focuses on
are all areas of the industry that are tipped to grow with mainstream lighting for LEDs, the growing needs for high power semiconductors and increasing complexity of interconnects. What sort of growth expectations does Keithley have for these markets?
Industry analysts have indicated that the market segments we’re targeting seem likely to produce double-digit growth over the next five years, so they are obviously growing significantly faster than other segments of the semiconductor industry. For example, a 2010 report from Lux
Research predicted that solar installations will rise at a compound annual growth rate of 23 percent between 2010 and 2015. Similarly, Global Industry Analysts have indicated that wind farm capacity will grow at 29 percent CAGR over the same period. JD Power and Associates is anticipating that the hybrid/electric cars market will grow by 27 percent CAGR from 2009 to 2015. The power semiconductors market is set to grow by 11 percent CAGR and LEDs by 16 percent. So it’s pretty obvious that all the industries that depend on these components are poised to keep growing.
Q A Test has become an increasing part of the
manufacturing process but also an increasing part of the cost. In industries where margins are tight how does this tool help manufacturers? When they see specific tool requirements they assume that the cost will also be higher?
Until recently, manufacturers of power semiconductors had to rely on what we call “big- iron” ATE functional testers. And those systems were pretty expensive—typically hundreds of thousands of dollars each. Even more important, those systems aren’t really optimized to characterize modern power semiconductor materials and devices with their lower leakage currents and higher power levels. In contrast, the Model 2651A is designed for exactly those characterization challenges and costs about one- tenth as much. From a production test perspective, it not only lowers the cost of ownership dramatically but provides higher accuracy, better quality measurements without a loss of throughput. That’s because the combination of the Test Script Processor (TSP®) embedded in the Model 2651A and the TSP- Link® virtual backplane that system integrators can use to link multiple instruments together makes it easy to scale a system as large as they need while ensuring high throughput. TSP makes embedded scripting and execution of commands possible, in contrast with line-by-line execution of commands over GPIB as in traditional instrumentation.
Q The area of industry Keithley is targeting
crosses some intense research areas as well as the growing production needs. Do you have a strategy that enables cost of ownership at the research section and the ability to transfer to production stage with minimal disruption or added cost?
www.euroasiasemiconductor.com Issue IV 2011
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