news digest ♦ Power Electronics
will have a cost of ownership that will be competitive with current solutions.
More specifically, GTAT estimates that a fully fabricated sapphire smartphone screen will be $10 to $20 higher than the price OEMs pay for current screen solutions, with the differential dependent on the level of vertical integration by the OEMs or their manufacturing partners.
Given the compelling overall value proposition of ASF sapphire screens, GTAT says that initial feedback from industry leaders suggests this cost for a superior product will be acceptable.
Factors affecting this may be a lower rate of cracked or broken screens, providing a better overall user experience.
The company also points out that the expected price differential between ASF-grown sapphire and the “current solutions” is less than what consumers typically pay to replace a single cracked screen as well as being less than the cost of screen protectors and protective cases.
GTAT also expects that there will be significant potential to reduce the cost of producing sapphire smartphone screens over time as the industry matures, increases scale, vertically integrates and continues to advance technology innovations at both the crystal growth and fabrication stages.
Nanotronics defect inspection ticks all the boxes
The new system handles both blank and patterned compound semiconductor wafers including III- arsenides, phosphides and nitrides as well as silicon carbide
After gaining initial product success with nSPEC, Nanotronics Imaging has introduced new capabilities to provide a more complete semiconductor inspection system.
nSPEC now detects and categorises defects on semiconductor wafers after photolithographic patterning and other chip processing steps.
Nanotronics says its nSPEC has already proven its high effectiveness for the inspection of blank substrates and epitaxial wafers, across a full range of compound semiconductor materials such as SiC, GaN, GaAs and InP.
The firm says its patterned wafer inspection feature makes nSPEC a unique tool with unparalleled capability to track wafer quality through the whole chip manufacturing process from bare substrate all the way to fully processed devices.
Software has been developed in collaboration with Microsemi Corp. of Aliso Viejo, California and supported by funding from the US Air Force.
Bruce Odekirk, SiC Program Director at the Microsemi manufacturing facility in Bend, Oregon, comments, “We have been early adopters of nSPEC for SiC epitaxial wafer inspection, and our first Nanotronics tool has been producing highly informative data for over a year. Now we are delighted to extend its ability to monitor and improve our post-epi chip processing with equally great performance and cost-effectiveness.”
Ivan Eliashevich, VP at Nanotronics Imaging, adds, ”nSPEC’s versatility in image acquisition and state- of-the-art data processing power allow us to deliver
122
www.compoundsemiconductor.net October 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131