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NewswireToday - /newswire/ -
Montréal, Québec, Canada, 04/08/2008 - For more than 20 years, silicon pure players have been looking at those "strange" semiconductor materials made of a compound of 2 or more metals, wondering if it could be, one day, a threat for their existing business.
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Electronics.ca Publications, the electronics industry market research and knowledge network, announces the availability of a new report entitled "Compound Semiconductor Materials Market".
For more than 20 years, silicon pure players have been looking at those "strange" semiconductor materials made of a compound of 2 or more metals, wondering if it could be, one day, a threat for their existing business. Material makers are seeking new business opportunities outside of silicon and equipment suppliers are open to adapt their know-how and expand their product portfolio.
Silicon largely dominates the semiconductor business as the reference material. However, specific applications such as optoelectronics, RF or power electronics require material properties that cannot be offered by silicon.
According to the new study, GaN, GaAs, InP, SiC and Sapphire substrates now account for only 0.6% of the 8,630 million square inches annually processed in semicon fabs. However, that small portion of processed area is compensated by a higher merchant price leading to a $800M market size in 2007, reaching the billion dollar threshold by 2009- 2010.
Up to now, these materials have been protected from silicon competition, allowing device performance not reachable by the semiconductor material, such as Frequency, power, thermal conductivity, robustness, junction temperature and voltage breakdown. However, compound materials exhibit market prices dramatically higher than Si.
This situation, the report explains, pushes the device developers to do "as well as" the compounds but using silicon. Bill Of Material is the main market driver for the adoption of these CS substrates and related technologies, and is predicted to remain in the future.
This new report offers a unique panorama of the compound semiconductor material business in a single package. It highlights the main metrics and the key market trends that will help material and equipment vendors to position their R&D efforts and anticipate the changes and forecasted evolution of their business.
Details of the new report can be found on Electronics.ca Publications' website.
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