October 2003 Newsletter

October, 2003

Welcome to the first issue of Thin Film Manufacturing News!

Since I founded Thin Film Manufacturing in 2001, I've been struggling to keep in touch with the many people I meet at shows and conferences. This newsletter is part of my answer. It's a brief, bi-monthly look at some of the issues facing the industry, combined with links to helpful resources and now and then a bit of personal news.

You received this email because we've met or worked together in the past, and I thought you might be interested. It is a one-time mailing. To sign up to receive future issues, visit the newsletter's home page, at https://www.thinfilmmfg.com/newsletter/index.htm

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Article: Ubiquitous Computing is the Killer App
2. Looking at Links
3. Industry Events, Conferences and Technical Meetings
4. An Inside Peek
5. News on the Site
6. Subscribe/Unsubscribe
7. Forwarding and Feedback
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1. Ubiquitous Computing is the Killer App

Every time the semiconductor industry runs into a prolonged downturn, people blame its lack of a "killer app," the magic bullet that will allow growth and profits to return. They point to the rise of the PC, the rise of graphical interfaces, or the emergence of the Internet as past drivers, and lament the lack of anything with comparable growth potential on the horizon. They note the stabilization of the PC market and semiconductor content in PCs, and sagely observe that it is impossible to grow faster than your customers.

That's one way to look at it. I've taken that view myself. The problem with such a pessimistic outlook is that it can leave companies unprepared when the next killer applications emerge from some previously unimagined corner. A more productive strategy might be to step back and think about where killer applications come from. Computers had been crunching numbers for decades before Visicalc put personal computers on everyone's desk. The Internet was a Cold War relic when Tim Berners-Lee first used HTML to share research results with his colleagues. How did such prosaic applications create new companies and new industries, seemingly overnight?

In both cases, the answer was accessibility. Visicalc freed corporate managers from the shared resources and strict budgets of the corporate mainframe. HTML made information collected in Switzerland accessible to physicists in California, and now lets me read the Boston Globe from a San Francisco hotel room. (With help from my laptop, another device driven by accessibility.)

From that perspective, there have only ever been two killer applications, both of which are still going strong. The first is portability: the ability to squeeze more computing power into ever smaller packages. The second is connectivity: the ability of the computer on your desk -- or in your hand -- to retrieve data from down the hall or across the continent.

Usually, a great advance in connectivity or portability is met with derision or, at best, skepticism. The total market for personal computers was thought to be less than 100 systems. Why would anyone want such a limited machine? Why accept the limited screen and low battery life of a portable computer? (Laptop sales now surpass desktop sales.) Why tolerate the high costs and poor quality of the cellular phone? (When was the last time you left the office without yours?) Use a camera-enabled cellphone to e-mail pictures, or the cellphone itself to surf the Web? Forget about it.

My point is not that the camera-enabled Web-capable cell phones will save the industry. I don't have one and don't want one. Rather, my point is that it's impossible to predict how more portable, more connected devices will spark the next radical change. It may not be one killer application, at least at first. Rather, it will be a new way of linking together technology that is right under our noses already. It will be two guys in a garage, a student in a dorm room, an ordinary person solving a problem that it turns out millions of other people have, too.

I don't know what the next breakthrough product will be, but I know where to look for it. Look at the roadblocks and inconveniences in your life, and figure out how technology can solve them instead of making them worse. Look at what your kids are doing with computers now, and imagine what they'll want to do as they grow up and have jobs and families of their own. Look at the hobbyists who are somehow able to make their gadgets do things that yours can't, but you wish they could. Look at the people buying engineering samples and downloading free software development kits, not the people with multimillion dollar product development partnerships. Look for the ideas that are too new and too risky to interest the venture capitalists.

Look for the people who are leveraging portability and connectivity in new and exciting ways. Moore's Law and Metcalfe's Law are the only killer apps we've ever had, or ever needed.

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2. Looking at Links

Many micromachines contain moving parts that are combined with integrated circuits. Like most high-tech devices, they must be made with precise dimensions and materials properties to operate properly. To help manufacturers ensure that their devices meet these exacting specifications,
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and engineers helped develop three ASTM International standard test methods for the thin films used to make micromachines. The three standards provide detailed instructions for measuring thin-film dimensions and strain. For
further information, see http://www.eeel.nist.gov/812/test-structures.

Thanks to government subsidies and sky-high prices for imported fuel, Japan is now the world's leading producer of solar panels. http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/business/2039423

Holographic memory isn't a new idea, but it may finally be on the way to commercial viability. Several different companies have identified photosensitive media that may be stable and cheap enough to work. http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=1956881

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3. . Industry Events, Conferences and Technical Meetings

There are dozens of industry events every month, too many to list here. I'll be attending these. Hope to see you there!

November 19, 2003: SEMI New England Breakfast Forum, Burlington, MA
http://www.semi.org/web/wcontent.nsf/url/nebf

December 1-5, 2003: Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, Boston, MA
http://www.mrs.org/meetings/fall2003/

December 7-10, 2003: IEDM, the IEEE Electron Device Meeting, Washington, DC
http://www.his.com/~iedm/

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4. An Inside Peek

As I write this, my beloved Boston Red Sox have won two in a row after losing two in a row to the Oakland A's. Tonight's game will decide the American League Division Series. Fortunately, five teams have come back from two straight losses to win five game series, one of them being the 1999 Red Sox against Cleveland. Hope springs eternal...

To tear your hair out along with me, visit the Boston Globe's Red Sox coverage, at http://www.boston.com/sports/redsox/

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5. News on the Site

https://www.thinfilmmfg.com/admin/publications.htm lists recent publications, but is sometimes not as current as it should be. In the next few weeks, I'll be writing about both silicon-on-insulator wafers and advanced non-volatile memories for Semiconductor Manufacturing Magazine. The SOI article is planned for the December, 2003 issue. The memory article hasn't yet been scheduled.

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6. Subscribe/Unsubscribe

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7. Forwarding and Feedback

Ours is an information service. If you are experiencing problems, challenges and issues with which you think our research can assist, we need to know. We want to know what you'd like to know about. If you've seen some valuable information here that a friend needs, they need to know. Please feel free to copy or distribute this newsletter in its entirety to all interested parties.

Katherine Derbyshire
kderbyshire@thinfilmmfg.com
https://www.thinfilmmfg.com