Equipment and Materials ♦ news digest
Oxford Instruments says LQTC chose its systems as it has an extensive process library of over 6,000 recipes and provides excellent customer support, service and training packages.
Head of the Semiconductor Physics & Nanostructures Research Group at Lancaster University, Tony Krier, comments, “These new Oxford Instruments etch tools will enable us to run dry plasma etching and nano-patterning on a range of semiconductors including narrow gap antimonides and dilute nitrides for mid-infrared light sources and detectors. They will also be used for development of novel solar cells, quantum dot memories, nano-electronic structures, and much more.”
Krier continues, “The new clean room facility provides a focus for industrial and academic researchers with interests in fabricating nanoscale structures to enable them to investigate quantum phenomena. We chose Oxford Instruments because of the excellent technical specification and well founded reputation of the processing tools backed up by expert specialist support.”
“Oxford Instruments was founded as a result of the pull-through of science into the marketplace, and we are delighted to be part of this significant development in UK scientific research capabilities”, says Mark Vosloo, Sales & Customer Support Director at Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology, “Like the LQTC, Oxford Instruments uses innovation to turn smart science into world class products, meeting the needs of the 21st century and beyond.”
Rubicon signs $20 million contract to supply sapphire substrates
The new agreement is with the firm’s largest customer for large-diameter (classed as 6- and 8-inch) wafers
The contract represents a baseline level of shipments that will be made from June through December 2012. The previous contract expired at the end of December.
“We are pleased that we will continue as a key
supplier to our valued six-inch wafer customer in 2012,” said Raja Parvez, President and Chief Executive Officer of Rubicon. “As other LED chip manufacturers make the transition to large- diameter substrates in pursuit of greater efficiency, Rubicon—the world’s largest, most experienced and most reliable provider of large-diameter sapphire wafers—stands to benefit greatly. However, with LED chip capacity presently not fully utilized, the inflection point in demand for large-diameter sapphire wafers for LEDs is still some months in the future.”
In light of current market conditions and in the interest of further establishing a long-term customer relationship with our prominent customer, Rubicon granted adjustments to fourth-quarter 2011 price and volume requirements under the expiring six- inch contract, as management had indicated was likely in remarks made November 8.
As a result, Rubicon’s revenue for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2011, was between $19 and $20 million, slightly below its previous guidance of $20 to $23 million. The Company expects to release complete results for the fourth quarter on February 23, after the market closes.
In another matter, but also related to the current market conditions, Rubicon disclosed that the Company, as an accommodation to certain key customers of its small-diameter sapphire ingots (cores), wrote off $1.8 million of accounts receivable in the fourth quarter.
“The fourth quarter of 2011 was a period of limited demand for sapphire substrates resulting from the accumulation of excess inventory in the LED supply chain,” Parvez said. “This temporary decline in channel demand in turn resulted in sapphire prices falling sharply in the second half of 2011. Out of consideration for our important customer relationships, we made certain concessions that we deemed to be in the best long-term interest of our company.”
“The near-term demand from the LED market continues to be limited, as inventory adjusts throughout the supply chain, but orders for two- inch and four-inch cores have begun to recover somewhat in the first quarter of 2012, and demand for large-diameter wafers for the Silicon on Sapphire (SoS) RFIC market is growing. As the
March 2012
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