Building a Reliable and Predictable Specialty Chemicals Supply Chain

White paper

2018 will go down in the semiconductor history books as a year of explosive growth, reaching $450 billion in sales, and with aggressive targets to hit $500B by 2020 and $1 trillion by 2030, as predicted by SEMI.1 While dipping slightly in January in response to Apple’s revenue forecast adjustments, predictions of semiconductor growth remain strong, even while the US trade war with China rages on.^{2, 3}

Indeed, despite geopolitical concerns and declining memory prices, market drivers like artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, the internet of things (IoT), advanced driver assist systems (ADAS), augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR), and other new applications give the semiconductor industry plenty of growth opportunities.⁴

This white paper will examine the technology advancements required to support this variety of applications, and the role the advanced materials supply chain plays in supporting new opportunities and solving challenges to help semiconductor manufacturers remain competitive.

TECHNOLOGY ADVANCEMENTS

Advancements in device node scaling and high-density 3D integrated circuit (IC) technologies are critical to remaining competitive in today’s semi-conductor manufacturing market.

According to technology roadmaps, advanced logic platforms are all based on Fin field effect transistors, (FinFET) beginning at 14 nm. Additionally, fully depleted silicon on insulator (SOI) technology has risen as an alternative technology for non-high-performance applications, particularly where value-added features such as high-performance analog, radio frequency (RF), and embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) are more important than cost and density.⁵ Lastly, in the memory market, 3D NAND is playing an increasingly important role as 2D NAND is no longer sufficient to achieve big data requirements, and major players are competing to increase the number of vertical gates on their 3D NAND architectures.⁶