Q4 13 would be having higher demand on Lighting LED as comparing with Q3 13

Q4 13 would be having higher demand on Lighting LED as comparing with Q3 13


After off-season of June and July, LED lighting will not usher in the season until August and September to the end of this year, and the base of last year is poor, from the third quarter, the year on year growth of LED enterprises is expected to improve quarter by quarter, which is conducive to enhancing the market's confidence for LED section.

In view of the life cycle of consumer electronics, new product penetration will grow at the fastest speed from 10% to 55%, the current LED lighting penetration rate is about 8%, and it is about to enter the stage of rapid growth.

LED section has fluctuated greatly, this sharp rebound of LED plate from the bottom is mainly because the LED lighting penetration enters the fast growth phase, while the LED backlight market penetration is close to 80%, LED lighting has officially replace the LED backlight to become the main driving force of LED industry to grow, and which has been verified with the short-term operations in June and July of the domestic LED enterprises.

Compared with LED backlight market at the value of one hundred billion, LED lighting market will reach one trillion, it is believed that domestic high-quality companies have more growth opportunities in the era of LED lighting. In addition, the best stock in U.S. market RVLT belongs to LED stock, this stock rose 515 percent this year, reflecting that the U.S. market is optimistic about LED lighting industry, which will further firm market's confidence.

In future, the performance of mainland China LED companies and American enterprises is more representative of global LED industry trends. In details, San An photoelectric is rapidly stepping towards the NO.1 in the world in LED chip field, and the subsequent further layout in downstream applications also is the trend, in the LED lighting market at the value of one trillion, there still is huge room for San An photoelectric to grow, and it is just a step away from the new record high.

LED Fever

Who is the beneficiary? Taiwan or China LED from the recent China Recent Credit Crunch on LED industry?

Who is the beneficiary? Taiwan or China LED from the recent China Recent Credit Crunch on LED industry?


The Chinese government subsidized purchase of MOCVDs from 2008-2013, but with subsidies ending this year, and with small companies unable to acquire subsidies, it has caused the issue of idle equipment. Although China added 300 MOCVDs this year, less than one third has actual output. Some equipment manufacturers even face accounts receivable risks. There is doubt about the industry’s unbalanced supply and demand.

Chinese banks’ recent credit crunch has impacted the LED industry. More than 100 LED manufacturers have defaulted as a result in Eastern and Southern China this year. Taiwanese LED manufacturers have emerged as the beneficiaries of the industry restructuring, as foreign investors purchase stock from industry leaders Epistar and Everlight.

In July, several LED manufacturers in southern China announced insolvency due to the Chinese government’s monetary policies to curb shadow banking, which restricts lending to “six industries with high levels of idle capacity” that includes LED and solar energy, according to a recent Xinhua News Agency report.

Chinese LED manufacturers suffered from short-term turnover issues as a result, which led to the recent wave of closures in Foshan and Guangzhou area. At least more than 100 Chinese small-mid size LED companies have shut down this year, as a conservative estimations.

The above trends are happening not only in China, also Taiwan. Over the last two years, banks have been increasingly conservative in their lending to the LED industry, according to a financial director of a major Taiwanese LED brand. However as a comparison, Taiwan LED manufacturer’s finance structure and cash flows are much better than their Chinese counterparts’.

China’s subsidy policy is the root cause behind the unbalance of supply and demand in the LED industry, said those in the industry. Currently, there is a continual rise in LED lighting demands, and the bar remains high for entry in the mid and high powered LED applications. Taiwan’s LED manufacturers have technology as backup, and will be the biggest beneficiaries in this bankruptcy wave in China, especially companies that are focused on LED lighting.

As an Analysts estimation that Epistar and Everlight will emerge as the biggest beneficiaries from this default wave in China. Currently, China’s downstream manufacturers are experiencing financial difficulties, while upstream epitaxy manufacturers will face the issue of staff returning to Taiwan.

Foreign investors purchased Epistar and Everlight stocks because both companies have healthy financial structure and advanced technology.

LED Fever

success of samsung ..comment

Sorry to inform one fan that made a  comment on the post success of  Samsung.
My led blog have  some Google bugs I think
..I  can not send comments on that.
 Ifu see this. Please post comment again..


LED  FEVER

Success of Samsung

Success of Samsung


I lose money because I once won some money...through gambling the winner and the loser...


This is a typical ancient Chinese idioms to tell people not to gamble, and what Chinese says, the reason of losing money because once they Have won some money.


Greed is interpreted as excessive desire to acquire or possess more than one need or deserves, buying mark six or gambling in Lisboa Hotel would likely clean off your saving only. Worst case is someone uses it's company asset to put it on the desk for a big risk challenge to try his luck.

The first time I bought Mark six was a surprise, I won one hundred dollars, over the next two years, I believed I had spent more than two thousand dollars in buying but the luck never came to me again.

So I decided not to buy again as I think the mark six is uncontrollable whereas my saving up the money is controllable.


Winner goes to those who can play safe and play smart...

September 15 2008 had a worldwide economy melt down triggered by the US house hold loan deficit by over borrowing and the sudden bankruptcy of Leman Brothers.

A lot of people might think that it would took three to five years to recover. However unexpectedly it took less than 10 months to fully recovered, Samsung grabbed the good timing to launch the LED TV as a gimmick to stimulate the consumer markets. Samsung earned a lot of market share, replaced Japan to become world number One in Hi End TV maker and as well a new worldwide recognition in Samsung’s branding.

One of the reason was good packaged product using LED as a means to have green energy for new young buyers, new technology to product thinner slimmer TV for Asian where space is a concern, time to replace TV staying home for less spending with a technology vision and clears steering direction from the CEO. Samsung had laid a rail for his hand phone locomotive to move forward even in a faster speed...

A strategy of good product marketing campaign one followed the other to capture world smart Phone. Samsung spends multi million dollars everyone just to promote his LED TV in Hong Kong one month.

Now they still capture the market of moribund Nokia, Apple and Sony to be the number one in worldwide smart phone market.

Successful factors of Samsung is: Good product, right timing, good promotion campaign and Good gimmick.

HK Snob

LED Light may cause Human Eyes Damages

Citi Bank Building in Mong Kok

Research has claimed that the ecofriendly LED lights may cause permanent damage to your eyes. The study found that exposure to LED lights can cause irreparable harm to the retina of the human eye.

According to Think-Spain.com, once the retina cells are destroyed by prolonged and continuous exposure to LED rays, they cannot be replaced and will not regrow.


Researchers said this is caused by the high levels of radiation in the 'blue band' , and is likely to become a global epidemic in the medium term given that computer, mobiles and TV screens, and even traffic and street lights, have been gradually replaced with LED. Experts are calling for the lights to have built-in filters to cut out the blue glare.

At very high light emission intensities, blue light (short-wavelength 400-500 nm) can photo-chemically destroy the photo-pigments (and some other molecules) which then act as free radicals and cause irreversible, oxidative damage to retinal cells (up to blindness).

We should treat this a social hygienic Warning, don't look at the LED light directly, do not stare at a LED light directly especial the Blue.

We should ban the Light pollution especially in area like Mongkok and Yau Ma Tei, which they keep LED light on even at night.

The advantage of using LED is partly due to the power harvest, and if we keep turning on LED 24 hours even there are no people are, that could be a way of offend the original purpose of LED.

On the other hand, LED should be categorized into part of the CE mark or National Safety for health and hygienic to have control on the emission intensity. At least some kind of warning has to be show on the Display of the Handset.

Moreover, when we use our smart phone at night, try to adjust the intensity to a comfortable intensity.

When we do hiking, don’t point the Super Bright LED head lamp at someone eyes.

HK Snob

LED Cathedral

Ghent Light Festival held in Belgium, displayed for four days (from January 26 to January 29, 2012), as a cathedral and made from no less than 55.000 LED lights. According to the official website of the festival, “Belfortstraat (Belfort Street) was the domain of the Luminarie Cagna. A giant colonnade made of wood and hundreds LEDs, with arches that remind one of Romanesque and Renaissance architecture. This immense work of art with 55,000 LED lights consumes only 20Kwatt / h of electricity.
HK Snob

Typical 3 W LED bulb Construction

LED 3 Watts Light bulb

This is a typical more les standard LED light bulb configuration from YuanShuai ShenZhen,

6 pieces 7025 LEDs mounted on an Aluminum substrate screwed onto the aluminum heat sink for hest dissipation, a simple Switching board that converted 220V AC into 3.75 V DV to drive the 7 LEDs.

A Light reflector screw in on to the heat sink,

This is pretty standard set-up for making the LED, and we know that we can actually buy the parts to make our own assembly.

How is the price, well you may not believe it, we bought it in a Recent Shenzhen LED Show with just RMB3.00. that is about HKD$3.6 or USD$0.5!!

I am sure this is juts a promotional price for this Chinese LED supplier. But that is the trend of the LED ASL going down to USD$5 for a 3W LED light blub.

That is the price for norm for a good reliable material, and reliable driving circuitry for a 3W LED package.

HK Snob

OutLook For China LED market 2012-2014

Outlook for LED market and LED manufacturing

China MOCVD Market slow down

The China MOCVD tool market grew rapidly and reached a peak in 2011, MOCVD installation ranked as first in the world with a half of the total quantity shipped in the world.

Oversupply is one of major reason of slow down on the MOCVD, utilization rate as low as 20% were happened especially on some “new comers”. In 2012, China's new MOCVD installation is expected to be about 40% of 2011 level. MOCVD market is expected to be at a low level till 2014.

China LED Fab,

China LED industry experienced a rapid increase in 4 years and — had a total of about 80 LED epitaxial and chip fabs at the end of 2011. However price Erosion is the major bad news in maintaining the business. Starting in 2012, the number of China fabs could decline due to either loss or unable to provide deliverables to the private or state investors. Estimated 40% of China LED fabs will suspend operations or be acquired by 2015. Only companies has strong technology foothold, large scale productivity and patented technology will remain unaffected. 

I have talked to some of the key players in China and their lines they bought in 2010 is still running with 30-40% capacity, which is still under my earlier estimation of 50-60% for September 2012. This is a bad sign that LED is not growing fast as we expected in 2011.

Reasons are:

1. Price Erosion
2. Technology improvement with higher efficacy of LED, less LED is required for same light intensity before.
3. End application design improvement including light guide effiency thus reducing the number of LEDs
4. LED assembly is continuing fine tuning the manufacturing process and manufacturing equipment UPH maximizing.
5. Low cost low end assembly equipment is dumping into the China market
6. Domino effect of end users are feeling nervous of using LED quality LED made by low end Assembly equipment due to poor reliability.
7. Boosting too much on the LED Life time, but due to poor driver circuit design and poor wire bonding process or the fall out Chip in use, the LED dies much earlier than it was Claimed to be.

Nowadays, everyone knows the LED assembly process, and there are so many Fabs making LED, the only way to earn money is having higher powerful LED assembly technology and good supply of high power chips

Or LED will be like the case for TV… Panasonic, Sharp does not want to make TV anymore as they lose market to Korean and Chinese Makers…Sharp is going to selling their LCD panel factory to Foxconn.

Fro, what I see and guess LED will not be blooming until there are either, or and…

1. New international LED makers to have a commercial standard for LED luminaries mounting, shape, reliability and life time guarantee
2. New Driver for a national standard for LED quality.
3. UN or DOE approval LED category on Chip efficacy, assembly, luminaries, or finished LED products be rated with Energy Star.
4. Hi End Equipment Suppliers makes super-in-line assembly for Display, VLED and K2 types LED as Total solution provider. Thus to ensure good quality LED is made under automated process control.

 End

ASM Pacific Technology delivers 100x300mm leadframe packaging set up

ASM Pacific Technology delivers 100 x 300mm eadframe packaging set up
July 26, 2012 -- Semiconductor packaging and assembly equipment supplier ASM Pacific
Technology Limited noted in its H1 2012 results a record level of orders for leadframes in Q2. It also delivered what it calls the largest leadframe packaging set up to date.
â€oe Overall, the market demand continues to be driven by portable electronic products such as smart phones and tablet computers,― said Lee Wai Kwong, CEO, ASM.
Leadframes benefited from improved market demand, lower raw material prices, and operational improvements, ASM reported. The company also moved its leadframe packaging users to floating prices.
ASM delivered a leadframe packaging set up -- equipment and leadframes -- for 100 x 300mm leadframes to a packaging customer in Q2. This is currently the widest leadframe on the market and therefore cost-efficient, ASM said. The equipment had to overcome specific production and packaging challenges with this leadframe matrix size.
Also read: Contemporary semiconductor packaging experts open up on cost, covering Leroy A. Christie, ASM Pacific, presenting on large leadframe matrices at SEMICON West.
ASM Pacific Technology Limited provides semiconductor assembly and packaging equipment, as well as SMT equipment. Learn more at www.asmpacific.com.
Visit the Advanced Packaging Channel of Solid State Technology, and sign up for our Advanced Packaging News e-newsletter!
To access this Article, go to:http://www.electroiq.com/content/eiq-2/en/articles/ap/2012/07/asm-pacific-technology-delivers-
100-x-300mm-leadframe-packaging-set-up.html
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HK Snob

Epoxy Bond Line thickness control

Epoxy is widely been used as a material to hold the die securely onto the substrate, lead frame which act as means to dissipate the heat energy generate by the chip operations. After Die attach, we need to cure the epoxy under certain temperature and time.

There is a need to control the bond line as there is significant performance contributed by the BLT (Bond Line Thickness)

Die attach media

Epoxy, Silver epoxy, non-conductive adhesive, soft solder, DAF (die attach film),

CTE

Different material has different rate of expansion on different temperature.

Copper has a much faster expansion than silicon. And matching of the die and substrate is necessary but not possible to be perfect unless same material is being used. As LED is afraid of heat, 5 degrees lower the LED junction teamperature will able to prolong 5,000 hours of the LED life time, hence Semileds has made copper layer on bottom of the high power LEDs at wafer fab. Stage which can be used on copper substrates for perfect conduction of heat.

Whereas for IC DA process consideration, an optimum of the die material and substrate by means of different type of DA media and the thickness of it is needed.

Effect of the Bond line thickness

Too thick the epoxy will reduce the effect heat conduction from the chip to the substrate. Too thin of the epoxy layer will reduce the cushion effect, in other words, the die and substrates will expand in different rate that the epoxy layer could not absorb the deformation or warp page. Or, under high temperate there is a high chance for the chip to be fully detached and or partly detached from the substrates, thus create hot spots thus the heat dissipation rate is reduced, the operation temperature of the chip will increase and hence shorten life of the chip or even cause premature failure.

Optimum thickness of epoxy is needed for optimizing the bond strength, heat dissipation and to ensure long life time of the package.

More powerful chip is made than before, an integrated circuit of 1mmx1mm contained 1,000 transistors in the 70s' same size of chip nowadays contain 5 millions. However the design of the package material has not much different, nor improvement at all.

Automotive requirement

Automotive are the toughest test site for an integrated circuit. The temperature of Sahara is 80 degree C in day and -20 at night, the car and their IC package will experience thousand s of temperature cycles every year The requirement for a bond line control as one of the key requirement. Twenty years ago the bond line for general purpose IC package of small power is considered loose. Partly because the available die attach machine was not able to provide such kind of accuracy. Recently, tendency of controlling the BLT is tighter and tighter from CpK 1.33 then 1,67 and even 2.0.

Now there is almost a standard demand for a tight control on the epoxy thickness. Typically SOIC, PBGA or TSSOP, the equipment qualification list has a BLT control of min. 0.4 mil and not more than 0.8 mil with capability index of 2.0 or more. A standard deviation of more than 6 micron will fail to meet this requirement. 

Epoxy

Epoxy has an imminent effect on the stability of the BLT, as if Epoxy is expired, not properly thawed, or very short pot life, that will contribution to inconsistency of epoxy dispensed, which in turn will after the volume of the epoxy. Machine wise, a highly consistent epoxy dispensing amount with continuous compensation over the hours is needed.

Some epoxy is very viscous and the die can be used up after the die is left on the epoxy, on the other hand for low viscosity epoxy, it is hard to make a very high BLT as it tends to smear after die is placed on the substrate

Geometry of the Epoxy dispensing nozzle

The factors affecting the performance of a dispensing needle has been investigated.  It is found that the geometry of the needle (especially the length) has substantial impact on the characteristic of needles performance. In general, longer needles have a better capability to resist the dripping effect when handling a less viscous epoxy (say 3,500cps).  However, a longer needle needs higher driving-pressure in order to dispense the same amount of epoxy when compared to a short needle. Besides, a short needle usually can give a faster response when compared to a long needle. From the past analysis, it seems that the tailing effect is not related to the length of the needle, but actually it is related to the wetting-surface-area on the needle and contact angle of epoxy.

Challenge on Material Variation

Current die bonder does not able to tell the variation of substrates thickness and die thickness; to achieve the BLT of CpK 2.0 is more or less like we throw a dart on the red target with folded eyes.

Challenge on Set-up

The Pick level, ejector level, bond level has interactive effect on the BLT, die tilting and placement (Die Rotation), hence it is a sweating job to achieve certain BLT process window, plus measurement o the bonded units for confirmation, it is really tedious to pass any production requirement on BLT at CpK 2.0

What can we do?

To ensure the high repeatability of machine in maintaining high capability index on epoxy... there is a need to have some means to detect the substrate thickness and at same time die thickness.

Methodology

In order to have good control over the BLT, the substrates thickness and die thickness has to be known in advance before the attach.

Bond head accuracy

Linear Z travel is needed, soft landing bond Z is an added advantage.

However the bonding Z motion should be precise at micron level, or least there is a high repeatability z motion.  

UPH concern

Likely the machine UPH should have been affected in performing the accurate BLT.

All new Die attach equipment should have this precise Control on BLT.

HK Snob