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EPTE Newsletter from Japan - Nano-technology

Topics of the Week

What are the Nano-Technologies?

The use of the words "Nano-Technology" has grown popular in Japan over the last few years.  Attracting people to attend an expensive seminar is not difficult if the sponsoring company includes "Nano-Technologies" in their advertisement.  People believe that nano-technologies will generate some business opportunities in the future.  What exactly are the Nano-Technologies?

Generally "nano" is one thousandth of "micro". It means that one micro-meter is one thousand nano-meters and one micro-gram is one thousand grams. One micro- second is one thousand nano-seconds; however, "Nano-Technologies" in this industry are usually something smaller than one micro-meter.  Measurements are based on metric units. I hope American people can understand the exact size of the units.  One mil is a thousandth of inch and 25 micro-meters; one micro-inch could be 25 nano-meters. When we talk about nano-technologies, they are something less than 40 micro-inches. Currently, we have limited opportunities to use nano-inches.

Anyway, what are the actual nano-technologies or nano-technology products? Recently, Sangyo Times, a major industry media firm in Japan has published "Directory of Nano-Technologies".  This book introduces us to the nano-technologies and products for 1000 companies as well as the key people in the industry.  I reviewed the directory quickly, and decided to categorize my thoughts about nano-technologies into three sections.

The first category includes the current industry using nano-meter units. Certainly, semiconductor device companies can be members of the directory, because they have been manufacturing a huge volume of traces smaller than 100 nano-meters on the silicon wafers. Several MEMS device companies are developing elements smaller than 1000 nano-meters for their special devices. Other than that, I think the technologies are not practical or they are too conventional.

The second category could be labeled "fantasy ideas".  Many university professors and institutional researchers are talking about the great opportunities for the nano-balls, nano-tubes, nano-particles. However, I think a practical application for major technologies is at least 5 years away. There is a big gap between the original ideas and practical applications.

The last category is something nano-technologies. More companies are announcing that they have been contributing to the nano-technologies and industries. For example, sputtering process and plating process have been considering thickness smaller than 100 nano-meters, but these are not new technologies. We have been talking about them for many years in the conventional industries. I am not sure if we can include them as members of the nano-technologies industry. On the other hand, many biochemical processes are producing materials smaller than one micron, but they do not categorize themselves as nano-technologies.

It is my opinion that the nano-technology should not be one category for the industry.

DKN Research has been considering sub-micron level (smaller than one micron or 40 micro inches) units when we design our products or manufacturing processes; however, we don't say we are members of the nano-technology industry. 

Dominique Numakura, DKN Research (dnumakura@dknresearch.com)

Headlines of the week

1.Epson (Major electronics company in Japan) 11/20Has shipped a new ink jet printer system to Sharp for the 8th generation manufacturing process of the LCD color filters.

2.Molex Japan (Major connector manufacturer in Japan) 11/20Has developed a new rotary connector for the wiring of the hinge area of the cram shell type cellular phones.

3.Toshiba (Major electronics company in Japan) 11/21Will commercialize the world largest memory size (8 GB) SDHC card for mobile applications. It is enough size for the 3 hours movies. Size: 24 x 32 x 2.1 mm.

4.Taiyo Yuden (Major component supplier in Japan) 11/22Has commercialized the first 1005 capacitor for 4.7 micro Farads in the industry.It will reduce the SMT space remarkably.

5.Alps Electric (Major magnetic device manufacturer in Japan) 11/22Has made a plan to recovery business plan for the magnetic devices of  hard disc drives.  Alps has lost the business of Maxtor because of the acquisition.

6.Rohm (Major component supplier in Japan) 11/22Has developed a new small size chip component with an ultra low resistance of 10 mili ohms for the battery circuits of the cellular phones.

7.Sony (Major electronics company in Japan) 11/22Has been expanding the application of CoC packaging (Chip on Chip) for mobile game machines. Sony is shipping 1 million devices with CoC per month currently.

8.Oki Electric (Major electronics company in Japan) 11/22Has rolled out new devices with smallest package of 3.6 x 4.2 mm by W-CSP technology for MP3 applications. 9.YAMHA (Equipment supplier in Japan) 11/22Will commercialize a new high performance SMT mounting machine "YG300" with the fastest speed of 100k parts per hour.

10.Sakai Denshi (Major flexible circuit manufacturer in Japan) 11/22Has founded a new JV in Vietnam with Sojitsu Co. for the manufacturing of various flexible circuits. 

11.Meltex (Chemical product supplier for PWB industry in Japan) 11/22Will organize the engineering department including R&D utilizing the facilities in Omiya Plant.

12.Display Bank (Market research firm in South Korea) 11/22Has forecasted over 100 million units of LCD TV globally in 2009.

13.Asahi Glass (Major glass material supplier in Japan) 11/22Will invest 11 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacity of glass tubes for the back lights of the LCD devices to 600 tons per month in 2007. 14.Hitachi Chemical (Major electronics material supplier in Japan) 11/22Will invest 2.5 billion yens to increase the manufacturing capacity of ACF (Anisotropic Conductive Film) 70% to cover the booming demands.

15.Samsung Electronics (Major electronics company in Korea) 11/21Has developed the world thinnest LCD panel (0.82 mm thick) for the cellular phone applications.

16.Sharp (Major electronics company in Japan) 11/21Has developed a new CCD camera with 5 million pixels for the cellular phone applications.

Interesting literatures about the packaging industry

Articles of DKN Research

1. "New" "2006 Global Material Projection for Flex Circuit" DKN Research, October, 2006. http://www.dknresearch.com/Products.html

2."Introduction for the Printed Circuit Boards of Car Electronics, Flexible Circuits", (Japanese only), Dominique Numakura, Nikkan Kogyo Shinbun, June, 2006, 2400 yens.

3."The latest semiconductor package, Part XVII, Termination Technologies-Encapsulation", Dominique Numakura, Electronics Packaging Technology, August, 2006 

4. "Five Year Projection of the Global Flexible Circuit Market" Robert Turunen, Dominique Numakura and James J. Hickman, The Board Authority, Volume 7, August, 2006

5."New""Technical Trends and Market Projection of the Materials for the Flexible Circuits", (Japanese only) Dominique Numakura, Denshi Zairyo, October, 2006

6."New""Leading Edge Material and Application of Polyimide (Materials for the Advance Flexible Circuits)", Dominique Numakura, CMC publication, August, 2006

7."Global Trends of the Flexible Circuit Market", Robert Turunen & Dominique Numakura, TPCA Journal, Q2, 2006 (Chinese only)

From the Major Industry Magazines

1. "Evolution of a Wiring Concept: 30 Years of Flex-Rigid Circuit Board Production", CircuiTree, November, 2006.

2. "Re-Sourcing, Outsourced Electronics", Ed Grimes, Circuits Assembly, November, 2006.

3. "Embedded Passive, Stick in the Chasm?", Per Viklund, SMT, October, 2006

4. "The 2006 Salary Survey", Andy Shaughnessy, "Laminate Material Selection", Ed Kelley and Erik Bergum, Printed Circuit Design & Manufacturing, November, 2006.

5. "Package -on-Package Trends and Technology", Flynn Carson and Moshe Bunyan, "New Packaging Concept for Ultra-thin Chips", Els Parton and Wim Christiaens, "Microelectronics Design and Manufacturing", David Wiens,Advanced Packaging, October, 2006

6. "Goodbye CRT", Paul O'Donovan, IEEE Spectrum, November, 2006

7. "EB Top 300 Revenue" John Edwards, Electronic Business, August 2006