News Article
Ferroelectric thin films report
New MEMS applications are broadening the traditional scope of ferroelectric thin films
Yole Développement releases its report on Ferroelectric Thin Films providing an overview of the ferroelectric thin films applications, the current and future industrial ferroelectric thin films users in each application. The company analyses the deposition techniques and materials (PVD, CVD, CSD) trends. Moreover, this report announces the production data on ferroelectric thin film business: ferroelectric thin film production forecast 2010-2015 in number of wafers, market shares of the different detection techniques globally and by application, market shares of the ferroelectric material
Ferroelectric thin films have been used for many years in Integrated Passives Devices (IPDs), Ferroelectric memories (FeRAM) and MEMS inkjet heads. Such thin films can be used for ferroelectric, piezoelectric or pyroelectric properties.
Ferroelectric materials were considered as exotic materials in the past in the semiconductor domain. Thanks to better knowledge and industrialization of these materials, they are increasingly used in many new applications, especially in the MEMS field: MEMS wafer level autofocus, RF MEMS, MEMS ultrasonic transducers infrared sensors, IPD tunable capacitors, and many others.
Physical Vapor Deposition is the dominant deposition technique but Chemical Solution Deposition techniques will increase its market share greatly, especially in MEMS applications thanks to its better material composition. PZT, the most well-known ferroelectric material will keep the leadership on SBT, BST, except if other materials are developed to replace lead, black listed by the RoHs European directive.
Driven by existing and new applications, the production of ferroelectric thin films will grow from 881,000 6’’ eq. wafers in 2010 to 1,263,000 wafers in 2015, meaning a CAGR of +7.5 %. Inkjet head application and IPDs ESD/EMI planar capacitor represent more than 90% of the production in 2010 but other applications will grow strongly to reach globally 26% of the total production in 2015.
Large industrial companies are already using ferroelectric thin films in various applications fields, showing the reliability of this technology:
• IPDs: NXP, STM
• MEMS: EPSON
• FeRAM: Panasonic, Fujitsu, Rhom, Oki, Ramtron
In the next 5 years, many new players plan to adopt or evaluate ferroelectric thin films to enter on key markets, from SMEs (Polight, Irisys, NovioMEMS…) to large groups (Océ, Xaar, Delphi, IBM, Philips research…)
