Sapphire '08

A comprehensive survey of the main market metrics and companies involvement in the sapphire for electronic applications business

Sapphire product is serving mainly 2 applications in the electronics field: GaN-based LED and RF switch devices for mobile phones.

The sapphire substrate market for electronic applications has reached a market volume of 4.61 Million wafers (2" equivalent) for LED augmented by several 10s of thousands of 6" wafers for SoS RF applications in 2007.

The overall sapphire material market is expected to grow at a +21% annual growth rate to $402M by 2012 (Fig. 1).

• Nitride LED has been the main driver for the sapphire business for several years, today exhibiting a +15% CAGR to 2012 and a $100M+ revenues in 07.
• Silicon-on-Sapphire (SoS) applications have ramped-up since 2006 with Peregrine take-off and have shown a tremendous start. 2007 revenue at the substrate level was in the sub-$35M range but is anticipated to cross the $100M line in 2011.

Sapphire business for the LED market is suffering from the huge pressure on prices in the main Asian regions. With a LED die-on-wafer now sold between 2 and 3 cents on the market the LED producers are requesting sapphire substrates down to $17 for a 2" wafer. This situation has forced some sapphire producers to leave these regions to focus on western countries where market prices are more attractive. Demand for 4" wafers is currently booming along with the recent announcements of some major companies such as Osram and Showa Denko to migrate part of the production to the larger diameter substrate. Plans for 6" nitride LED production have been announced by Samsung in Sept. 08 and 8" c-plan sapphire has been demonstrated by Monocrystal.

SoS Ultra-CMOS technology is gaining momentum in the cell-phone business, trying to shift the established switch technologies such as PiN diodes and GaAs pHEMT.

Asia is collecting about 67% of the sapphire business revenues thanks to 5 leading companies of the TOP10 ranking. Monocrystal and Saint-Gobain are positioning Europe with 20% of the total revenues. North America sapphire business (~13%) is mainly driven by Rubicon activities.

Sapphire for LED usage is concentrated in Asia with more than 88% of sales. Taiwan solo is representing 58% of the demand and Japan is covering 19% of the substrate consumption (Fig. 2).

Sapphire for SoS-based devices was originally located in Australia, but is now moving to Asia as Peregrine is becoming fab-less and has inked several agreements with Korean semicon fabs to outsource the production.

Kyocera is still the #1 vendor on a world basis with estimated sales in 2007 of $100 M for both electronics and optical materials. Namiki and Rubicon are challenging Kyocera in the TOP 3.

Sapphire business is buoyancy very active market where M&As are crossing new entrants and companies exiting the business. The most significant recent news: Energomera Group (Monocrystal mother company) acquisition of Russian compatriot Atlas that will place the company firmly in the TOP 3 suppliers and Honeywell tending to exit the sapphire business selling its Canadian plant to Chinese SilianTech (April 08).

This report provides a complete analysis of the 2 main applications targeted by the sapphire substrates along with key market metrics. It describes the involvement of the major material suppliers and gives a snapshot of the sapphire industry playground.
The report presents the $ and unit values on the 2005-2012 time scale for the GaN-based LED and SoS-based RF devices and their equivalence in substrate consumptions and related material market size.

• Glossary
  • Executive summary
    • 2005-2012 sapphire total market size in $ and sq. in. (LED & SoS)
• Sapphire substrate market
  • Introduction
  • Main applications of Sapphire-based devices
  • Sapphire properties
  • Sapphire characteristics per applications
  • Growth methods of sapphire substrates
  • Map of sapphire suppliers location
  • Company business model
  • Overview of the companys products
  • 2007 Total sapphire vendor revenues (split by Optics & Electronics)
  • 2007 sapphire vendor revenues breakdown by region
  • 2007 sapphire for electronics. Vendor revenues (split ingots + blanks & epi-ready)
  • 2007 sapphire for electronics. Vendor revenues split by LED vs. SoS
  • Supply-chain of the sapphire business
  • Sapphire wafer diameter roadmap. Time to market
• Sapphire for Nitride LEDs
  • Market segmentation
  • LED market volume as a function of LED type
  • LED market revenues as a function of LED type 2005-2012 GaN-LED market status and forecast for packaged LED devices
  • Average retail price of a conventional packaged LED
  • Estimated substrates volume for GaN-based LED production (SiC & Sapphire) 2005-2012
  • 2007 sapphire substrate market for LED: price, units and diameter analysis
  • Sapphire substrates for LED 2005-2012 price projection, split by diameter
  • 2005-2012 Sapphire substrates market for LED in volume, by diameter & related market size
  • 2005-2012 Sapphire substrates market for LED in value, split by diameter Regional usage breakdown 2007 and 2008
  • Conclusion and perspectives
• Silicon-on-Sapphire
  • Antenna Switch Module (ASM) market
  • Comparison of cell-phone antenna switching module (ASM) technologies
  • Antenna Switching Module (ASM) market data and main players
  • Comparison of Si CMOS vs. SoS UltraCMOS architectures
  • Comparison of main specifications of GaAs vs. SoS antenna switches
  • 2005-2012 RF switch technology breakdown
  • Main data of the SoS UltraCMOS switch manufacturing process
  • 2005-2012 sapphire substrate market size and volume for SoS applications
  • Conclusions and perspective
• Sapphire supplier profiles
  • Atlas (Ru)
  • Crystal GmbH (D)
  • Crystal Systems (US)
  • Crystal Wise (TW)
  • CrystalQ (N)
  • Epistone (CN)
  • Honeywell (US)
  • Interoptec/Fujimi (J)
  • Kyocera (J)
  • Monocrystal PLC, Inc. (Ru)
  • Namiki (J)
  • Rubicon Technology (US)
  • Saifei (CN)
  • Saint-Gobain Crystals (F & US)
  • Shinkosha (J)
  • SilianTech (CN)
  • Sino American Silicon (TW)
  • Sumitomo Metal Fine Technology (J)
  • Tera Xtal Technology (TW)
• Conclusions
• Annexes:
• SiC substrates market overview
  • State-of-art in SiC crystal growth
  • From powder to SiC epi-ready wafers. Sublimation (PVT) technique
  • SiC crystal growth techniques comparison table
  • Main SiC material manufacturing site locations Bulk or epi-foundry
  • 2007 estimated SiC substrates monthly production
  • Material polytypes, doping & orientation commercially available
  • 2006 & 2007 SiC substrate vendors revenues & related market shares
  • Wafers diameter evolution in production for HB-LED
  • Average $/mm price for SiC row substrates
  • Estimation of the CREE captive SiC substrates market for LED
• Current status of the LED performance and related technologies p104
  • Number of lumens requested for various applications and related time-to-market for mass-production
  • Main manufacturing steps and related options for GaN-based LED
  • Examples of current LED companies process flow-chart (in production or R&D)
  • Global LED efficiency is the ratio of the final luminous output power over the wall-plug input power Internal QE has now reached ~73% for low power LED (I=20mA)
  • but this value significantly drops as the current (and the power) increases !
  • How is the input power dissipated? 1.1 Watt HB-LED generates in heat vs. in light !
  • Average LED optical output power vs. heat generation at different current levels
  • Extraction efficiency (?extr.) is strongly linked to the die size.
  • How to improve LED efficiency? Different options to optimize LED performance
  • Expected efficiency gains for the future generation of white power-LEDs
  • The perfect white LED would include
  • Various techniques to improve white LED efficiency
  • Technology roadmap.Time to market for various technologies