New MEMS applications broadening traditional inkjet, IPDs and FeRAM scope of ferroelectric thin films

LYONS, FRANCE: Yole Développement has released its report on Ferroelectric Thin Films. Under this report, Yole Développement provides an overview of the ferroelectric thin films applications, the current and future industrial ferroelectric thin films users in each application.Source: Yole Développement, France.

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 percent. Inkjet head application and IPDs ESD/EMI planar capacitor represent more than 90 percent of the production in 2010 but other applications will grow strongly to reach globally 26 percent 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 five 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).

Ferroelectric Thin Films report gives an overview of the ferroelectric thin films industry today. It helps devices manufacturers to evaluate the benefits of using ferroelectric think films technologies, identify new business opportunities and partners, monitor their competitor’s advancements.

It also helps materials manufacturers, investors, R&D centers, and MEMS and packaging foundries in their developments to identify new opportunities and partners.