Next Month’s Focus Test and Automation Send News Releases For
SMT/ Hybrid & ADM East
VOLUME 33 - NUMBER 5 Product Preview:
NEPCON China, Wire Tech Expo and EDS
THE GLOBAL HI-TECH ELECTRONICS PUBLICATION May, 2018
WACKER Posts Record Sales, Focuses on Digitalization and Sustainability
By Steve Leberstien
Thermaltronics brings full-vi- sion robotic soldering system to NEPCON China. Product Preview begins on…
Page 82
Sanmina: 10-Day Lead Times for
Industrial Controls OEM
Munich, Germany — With 23 produc- tion sites worldwide, WACKER Chemie AG has developed a world- class supply chain. The company’s polymers division, for example, oper- ates five sites across Germany, the U.S., China and Korea. The company has focused on improving productivi- ty and optimizing its processes at these sites over the past few years to position the company as an excellent supplier to these regional markets. An eventful year for the compa-
ny saw record sales, initiatives to strengthen its supply chain, a focus on sustainability, and a push toward digitalization. The company also re- covered from an explosion at its poly- silicon plant in Charleston, Ten- nessee, which injured two. Headquartered in Munich, Ger-
many, WACKER posted sales for 2017 of €4.9 billion ($6.1 billion), a six percent increase over the previ- ous year. The company saw a net in- come from continuing operations of €250 million ($311 million), a 40 per- cent increase.
In March of 2017, after almost
60 years, WACKER reduced its hold- ings of Siltronic to about 31 percent1. While this loosens WACKER’s grip on the company and decreases its capital commitment, it is still a source of revenue, due to the growth of semiconductors driven by the In- ternet of Things (IoT) and photo- voltaics.
Siltronic remains a major con-
sumer of WACKER’s hyper-pure polysilicon and the two maintain a strong working relationship with Sil- tronic facilities onsite at WACKER’s plant in Berghausen, Germany.
Charleston Disruption In 2016, U.S. Tech covered the
Sanmina helps OEM to meet customer demand for complex electromechanical control sys- tems. EMS section begins on…
Page 18 This Month's Focus:
SMT and Assembly
WACKER’s specialty monomer plant in Berghausen, Germany.
New Battery to Power Renewable Energy
Ersa installs selective solder- ing at Siemens Austria; SEHO uses AOI and monitoring to approach zero soldering de- fects; Mentor redefines lean production planning. Special Features begin on…
Page 66
Lawrence, KS — Any resident of the Great Plains can attest to the massive scale of wind farms that increasingly dot the countryside. In the Midwest and elsewhere, wind energy accounts for an ever-bigger slice of U.S. energy production. In the past decade, $143 billion has been invested in new wind projects, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
However, the boom in wind ener-
gy faces the challenge of effectively and cheaply storing energy generated by turbines when the wind is blowing, but energy requirements are low. “We get a lot of wind at night,
more than during the day, but de- mand for electricity is lower at night, so, they’re dumping it or they lock up turbines. We’re wasting electricity,” says Trung Van Nguyen, professor of petroleum and chemical engineering at the University of Kansas. “If we could store this excess at night and sell or deliver it during daytime at peak demand, this would allow wind farm owners to make more money and leverage their investment.” Since 2010, Nguyen has led re-
search to develop an advanced hy- drogen-bromine flow battery, an ad-
Continued on page 8
grand opening of WACKER’s $2.5 billion polysilicon plant in Char - leston, Tennessee, which employs about 650 workers. In June 2017, ground was broken for a $150 million expansion to produce pyrogenic sili- ca, also known as fumed silica or HDK. Pyrogenic silica is used as a thickening agent and anti-caking
Continued on page 6
Riding the Quantum Magnetic Wave
Salt Lake City, UT — In 1991, Uni- versity of Utah chemist Joel Miller developed the first magnet with car- bon-based, or organic, components that is stable at room temperature. It was a great advance in magnetics, and he has been exploring its appli- cations ever since. Twenty-five years later, physi-
cists Christoph Boehme and Valy Vardeny demonstrated a method to convert quantum waves into electri- cal current. They too, knew they had discovered something important. Now those technologies have
come together, hopefully to help pro- duce a new generation of faster, more efficient and more flexible electronics. Working together, Miller, Boehme, Vardeny and their colleagues have shown that an organic-based magnet can carry waves of quantum mechan- ical magnetization, called magnons, and convert those waves to electrical signals. It is a breakthrough for the
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