The Sandbox

After last week’s Wall Street plunge, it was a relief to receive word that all was not lost at least at Lehman Brothers as C.J. Muse, semiconductor equipment/display technologies analyst there continued to send out his reports.

With word of a number of fab closures, sales and cutbacks as well as floundering equipment sales, Muse said in a report Friday that in terms of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, the “conviction level on a sustained recovery is quite slim, suggesting to us that the group will likely lag the overall t...Read More

These people need an award or something. How cool is Shea homes? So cool that if you buy one of their homes in California, Arizona, Florida and Washington, they will give you a free solar roof.

Seems like a creative and innovative way to boost the solar market. Hopefully they can find buyers that can get mortgages.

In another interesting solar development, Tokyo-based Sanyo Electric Co Ltd reported Monday that it has completed construction of the Shiga Plant at its Shiga facilities in Ohtsu City, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, which was constructed for the assembly of HIT solar cell modules as part of the company’s plans to expand its solar business, in order to be ready for the expected growth in Jap...Read More

Last year at about this time STMicroelectronics disclosed that it would close three of its manufacturing operations over the next two to three years, which followed the decision to spin-off its flash memory business in December 2006.

The plants set to close were a 6-inch (150-mm) wafer fab in Carrollton, Texas, an 8-inch (200-mm) fab in Phoenix, Arizona and its back-end packaging and test facility in Ain Sebaa, Morocco.

Word on the street in Phoenix, according to Bill McClean, president of market research company IC Insights, is that ST’s Phoenix fab will be sold to a pure-play foundry with China-based Grace Semiconductor and Singapore-based Chartered in pursuit. Chartered is considered to be the front runner, McClean noted in an email Monday afternoon.

Ontario, Canada is jumping on the green bandwagon. The province is seeking to create new jobs in green industries by investing nearly $8 million in solar-grade silicon maker 6N Silicon in order to create sustainable solar energy industry jobs for skilled workers.

The investment comes as part of 6N’s $50 million expansion that includes a new manufacturing plant in Vaughan, Ontario, which will create 84 new jobs.

6N hope this investment will help build its reputation in the emerging “green economy,” and continue to draw international interest for its manufacturing process that turns low-grade silicon into the form needed to produce solar cells. 6N claims its method is cheaper, quicker and more energy-efficient than others, and is helping meet the growing demand for renewable power.

The O...Read More

I’m starting to wonder what the real story is behind all the talk on the 450-mm wafer size. I’m here at Semicon West in San Francisco this week, where ‘450’ is the buzz everywhere you turn, with most equipment vendors saying they won’t go down that path.

SEMI recently released a report on the economics of a 450-mm wafer transition and concluded that for now, “Shrinks, new materials, and new processes will continue to advance the industry on Moore’s Law, but there are simply not enough R&D resources available to continue such advancement in nodes and processes AND to work on a 450-mm wafer size transition.” 

This report is corroborated by a recent survey of semi...Read More

Given the poor state of the economy in the US, and with the situation likely to get worse for the semiconductor industry, companies supplying to customers located outside the US may have a better likelihood of business growth.

Clearly, Germany leads the world in its acceptance and implementation of solar energy with although other big solar-supporting countries such as Spain and Italy, are working hard to catch up as evidenced by thin film solar module equipment supplier Applied Material Inc’s many contracts in these geographies, with another just announced today.

Aragona, Sicily-based renewable energy producer Moncada Energy Group ...Read More

California’s largest electric utility Southern California Edison (SCE) is getting onboard the solar train as today it inked a deal with Pasadena, Calif.-based eSolar to help it secure an additional 245 megawatts of solar power by 2013 for its customers in what the companies say is the nation’s first commercial effort using power tower solar thermal technology.

What exactly is power tower solar thermal technology anyway, you ask? Well, according to the companies, each pre-fabricated module (pictured left) consists of several solar towers each associated with thousands of heliostats, or mirrors, which precisely track the sun over the course of the day and reflect light to a receiver at the top of each tower. The...Read More

Highlighting the news from Solar City this week was the announcement that Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates-based Masdar PV plans to invest more than $2 billion in thin-film photovoltaic solar technology in a three-phased strategy to produce thin-film photovoltaic (PV) modules, and inked a deal (possibly $600 million) with Applied Materials for three of its SunFab thin film lines.

In other PV news, it was exciting to see the first Gen 8.5 thin film solar PV module that Signet Solar completed at its factory near Dresden, Germany, which was manufactured on Applied’s SunFab equipment (pictured below).

The panel (pictured below) meas...Read More

In just some of the solar activity for the week, I was impressed to see this story in The Hindu Business Line that the government in India wants to establish 60 cities as “Solar Cities,” which calls for a minimum 10% reduction in projected total demand of conventional energy at the end of 5 years in each of the cities through energy-efficiency measures and generation from renewable-energy installations. The article says most Indian cities and towns are experiencing peak electricity shortages of more than 15%, so the plan would kill two proverbial birds with one stone: offset the power outages and install clean energy. Very cool.

Wednesday, who could miss Applied Materials’ big move i...Read More

The week is starting out bright for the solar industry as SunPower Corp is saying that it has produced a full-scale, five-inch prototype solar cell with an efficiency of 23.4%, which it claims is a world-record for a large area solar cell.

The company reminded in its statement that it reported improvements of its cell efficiency in the laboratory and in mass production since its first all-back contact solar cell prototype in 2003, and CEO Tom Werner is now saying that this is a step function increase from the company's 22% efficient Gen 2 technology, which has been in mass production since last year.

This level of efficiency is expected to be commercially available in approximately two years, and is expected to reduce system cost by 50% by the year 2012.

In a recent discussion with Applied Materi...Read More

According to market researchers at iSuppli Corp, the explosive global demand for solar energy has driven such a significant shortage of polysilicon used in the manufacture of photovoltaic (PV) cells that PV suppliers are being forced to realign their business structures and strategies and to seek alternative raw materials.

With global revenue for PV cells projected to reach as much as $22.1 billion in 2012, up from $9.6 billion in 2007 (according to a preliminary forecast from iSuppli), by 2020, about 50,000 Megawatts worth of PV systems (MWp) will be installed annually, up by a factor of nearly 20 times from 2,538MWp in 2007. (MWp is a metric that measures the power output of solar cells.)

Indeed, no market can expand so quickly without some growing pains, iSuppli reminds, particularly shortages that can impact supply. While the global PV industry has the capacit...Read More

Following up on its first survey last year that found 40% of respondents did not believe 450-mm wafers would ever happen, productivity management software and consulting services company Wright Williams & Kelly Inc (WWK) said this week it is starting its 2008 survey on equipment and process timing in the semiconductor industry, which can be found here.

WWK reminded that last year’s survey showed that 50% or more of respondents expect to see adaptive test, high K gate dielectrics, metal gates and equipment with energy saving "sleep" states, in production between 2008 and 2010. And, between 2010 and 2012, 50% or more of respondents expect to see 193 high index immersion lithography, wafer-level reliability testing...Read More

Last October, I slammed Lehman Brothers’ downgrade of semiconductor equipment stocks, which at the time, I felt was not called for – however, six months later, it is clearly time to revisit that topic and the facts, following financial results this week from Lam Research Corp and Novellus Systems.

Lam’s revenue for its quarter ended March 30, was $613.8 million, slightly above Q4 2007; gross margin sank to $287.2 million from $307.7 million in Q4 2007; and net income of $103.5 million, or 82 cents per diluted share, compared to Q4 2007’s net income of $115.1 million, or 91 cents per diluted share – and this includes the earnings of the SEZ G...Read More

In addition to its purchase of more of Intel Corp’s optical business this past week, Albuquerque, NM-based Emcore Corp inked a supply agreement for concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) systems to China energy company XinAo Group.

Under the agreement, Emcore will first deliver a 50 kilowatt (kW) CPV system to be installed in Langfang, China, which will be used for test and evaluation purposes. Then, once the expected reliability and performance metrics have been met, XinAo said it would install CPV systems to provide electric power for its coal gasification project -- estimated to have a requirement of 60 megawatts (MW) of power.

XinAo also said it plans to build a manufacturing plant in ...Read More

Financial analyst Doug Freedman at American Technology Research says yes.

“Semiconductors and the market have had a nice move in recent weeks, but we think there is another leg higher as we move to be more constructive and vocal in our “Overweight” semiconductor sector call at this time. We believe it is an opportune time to aggressively buy semiconductor stocks in light of recent under-performance of the SOX as we move past seasonally weak demand periods. Several signs exist that the stocks are becoming more attractive to value investors and that we may look past a macro bottom in the next 3 to 6 months, suggesting now is a good entry poin...Read More