Semicon equipment decline paves way for future growth.

For the first time in almost 10 years, Semicon West was held in a single location, the newly expanded Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. This year's event ran from July 11-15 and marked the 35th anniversary of the exposition, which is one of the premiere events for all aspects of the semiconductor industry.

The organizers were certain that recombining the front-end and backend exhibitions would boost attendance and foster closer connections within the semiconductor community. Although attendance figures were not available at press time, IBO's observations suggest that the total attendance fell short of the optimistic predictions made by the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute (SEMI), which organizes the annual exposition.

On July 13, the exhibit floor bustled briefly in the morning, but the pace had slackened noticeably by later in the day. Perhaps the anemic response mirrored the overall state of the semiconductor industry. Although there has been a recent decline in the sales of instruments and equipment to the semiconductor industry, this decline needs to be put in perspective.

In 2004, SEMI's mid-year consensus forecasted sales of semiconductor equipment to increase from last year's prediction. Overall, a total of $37.12 billion was spent on semiconductor equipment in 2004, an increase of 67% over 2003. Given the moderate decline expected for this year, 2005 should still be the third largest year ever for semiconductor equipment, behind 2004 and the annus mirabilis of 2000, when the market reached a staggering $48 billion.

Regionally, China is experiencing the greatest drop in equipment sales, though last year saw astonishing growth. The Chinese equipment market is expected to fall 40% in 2005 to $2.73 billion. For 2006, China is anticipated to be the regional growth leader, with an increase of more than 30%. In 2004, Japan's semiconductor equipment market underwent a relatively modest loss of 5.8%, while Taiwan experienced a 20% drop. The North American market fell 10.2%, roughly the same as the overall world average of 12.1%. Given the 67% growth in 2004, the drop in 2005 is not all that severe. Nevertheless, given the hopes that 2005 would continue the growth of 2004, the current market appears to be something of a letdown for many manufacturers.

Indeed, many manufacturers of analytical equipment for the semiconductor industry had unassuming booths on the floor. Although Semicon West is not a major analytical show, many of the major companies had no instruments or equipment on display in the booths, being content to use posters or video to demonstrate their wares. There were notable exceptions, such as Olympus, which displayed a full range of its microscopes and wafer inspection tools.

Other analytical vendors that had a significant presence of equipment were Leica, Thermo Electron, Jasco, Veeco, Horiba and Ametek. As usual, the largest booth on the floor belonged to Applied Materials. In addition to its usual displays, the entire Applied Materials area had an impressive latticework of dozens of gantry lights suspended over it, adding a synchronized color show to the proceedings.

Focusing on the wafer-processing segment of the equipment market, which includes metrology and inspection systems based on analytical technologies, 2005 sales are forecasted to decrease 9.4%. The consensus forecast indicates a modest increase for 2006 followed by double-digit growth for the following two years. One driver of growth is the ongoing battle to keep up with the goal set by Moore's Law, the empirical observation that integrated circuit complexity doubles every two years. As an industry matter, Moore's Law is embodied in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS).

In a keynote speech at Semicon, Dr. Bob Doering of Texas Instrument (who sits on the ITRS Committee) outlined the issues facing the semiconductor industry. The proposal for the updated 2005 roadmap calls for a more aggressive pace of improvement in several key circuit design parameters, even as the industry draws closer to current technical limitations. Overcoming these limitations will require a confluence of research, technological development and industry participation. As these technological advances are made, new opportunities for analytical and process technologies will open.

In part to foster such technological advances, Semicon West has continued to promote and expand its Technology Innovation Showcase (TIS), now in its third year. From humble beginnings, the showcase has expanded to become the Emerging Technologies Hall. In addition to the 22 products jury-selected to be a part of the technology showcase, the rest of the hall was devoted to other cutting edge semiconductor technologies. Of the technologies on display, many were associated with analytical measurement. Notable new instruments include Bede's BedeScan system, Tiger Optics' LaserTrace system and Oxford nanoScience's Laser 3 Dimensional Atom Probe.

Bede was declared one of the TIS winners for its BedeScan system, first released in May of this year. Bede has parlayed its expertise in x-ray components and x-ray diffraction (XRD) into a system based on XRD detection that Bede calls X-ray Topography. The BedeScan can image an entire wafer in 15-30 minutes. For particular areas of interest, BedeScan can image at a resolution down to 10 microns. Analysis of the x-ray information collected by a CCD is much faster than with standard film-based metrology solutions, which require developing and processing. The system is designed to uncover wafer defects such as dislocations, precipitates and process-induced defects. Bede is continuing to develop the product and hopes soon to add robotics to the system for a fully automated operation.

Tiger Optics was honored as a TIS winner for the latest development in its LaserTrace system for process gas analysis. The LaserTrace makes use of cavity ringdown spectroscopy (CRDS) as the detection method, which can measure high ppt to ppm concentrations. The current incarnation of the LaserTrace was inspired by the desire of semiconductor manufacturers to get as close as possible to the wafer process, so that changes in the gas mixture could be monitored with as little time delay as possible. Tiger Optics has designed a low-pressure probe that can be directly introduced into the vacuum chamber for epitaxial processes, rather than just monitoring incoming and exhaust gases. This development will provide greater control and monitoring of chemical vapor deposition processes. The base price for this version of the LaserTrace is $50,000 with one gas cell. Up to four gas sensors can be attached to a single LaserTrace unit.

Oxford nanoScience used Semicon West as the first major show to discuss last month's product launch of the new Laser 3 Dimensional Atom Probe (Laser3DAP). The earlier 3DAP used high DC voltages to directly ionize the atoms from a needle-shaped sliver of sample. A combination of time-of-flight measurement and position measurement allowed the digital reconstruction of the original sample on an ultrafine scale that can even image individual atomic layers. The 3DAP was limited to conductive samples, but this restriction is removed with the Laser3DAP, which uses a femtosecond pulsed laser to ionize the sample. This increased applicability will enable research on semiconductor materials, dopants, thin films and magnetic media. The Laser3DAP is priced at approximately 1.75 million [pounds sterling].