The semiconductor materials market doesn't get nearly the attention---and sometimes the respect---that the equipment sector does.
Thankfully, a few hardy souls do a bang-up job of tracking materials so the rest of us don't have to scramble for information. Industry veteran Karey Holland and her colleagues at Techcet Group are among those who do their best to make sense of what's going in the worlds of silicon, photoresists, masks, process chemicals, slurries, and the like.
Karey has many years of experience in the semi materials business. She played a key role at IBM when Big Blue developed CMP and foisted it on the chipmaking industry, taking many engineers kicking and screaming into the world of in-fab polishing, something now taken for granted as an essential part of many semiconductor production lines. She also worked for years on the supplier side of the fence, so her unique perspective contains enough healthy skepticism, laced with an acid wit, to make her a damn fine prognosticator and observer.
I asked her to provide a few paragraphs summarizing the latest Techcet materials market info. She's a very busy woman, but she got back to me earlier this week. Here's what she has to say.
"The overall market for IC materials topped $37 billion in 2006. The silicon wafer market accounted for $9.5 billion of this, while other direct front-end materials (resists, slurries, wet chemicals, gases, etc.) were about $7 billion and front-end indirect materials (quartz, filters, etc.) were nearly $5.5 billion. For years, people have spent little time and thought on indirect materials, but this is an important market and for many companies, it is worth thinking of investing this area...particularly for OEMs.
"Polysilicon shortages will continue through 2009, because of demand for poly by the photovoltaic (solar) industry, unless photovoltaics slump, which I sure hope does not happen.
"There is still a lot of interest in high-growth and 'in-development' materials. The high-growth areas are CVD and ALD precursors (low-k, high-k, barrier metals, metal gates), CMP, interconnect metals, photoresist and ARCs, and silicon carbide. SiC is a very interesting area, since new SiC wafers are finding many uses and have very high average selling prices ($500 to $15,000 per wafer, depending on the epitaxial layer).
"The key point we'd like to make, our number-one MegaTrend, is this: the next technology generation requires revolution rather than evolution. As we move to 45 nm and 32 nm, we see many new materials being added to the IC fab purchase list. The materials cost per wafer start is increasing significantly with each generation, with a 30% increase in materials spending from the 90-nm to 45-nm nodes. High-k dielectrics are already in use in memory trench capacitors, but are likely to be used for the new high-k dielectric/metal gate devices.
"These materials' per-gram costs are not cheap, but there is a large amount of development required from the suppliers as well as the end-users. Unfortunately, once the new devices are implemented in fab manufacturing, the volumes of the materials used will not be large...and these materials will only need to be used one pass per wafer start. It is amazing that numerous companies are investing in R&D on these materials with fairly low projected revenues for the next five years. The IDMs and foundries are very fortunate to have suppliers willing to support development in these areas."
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