Optics and Photonics Essential Technologies for Our Nation (2013) / Chapter Skim
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7 Advanced Manufacturing
7 Advanced Manufacturing
Pages 185-225
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From page 185... ...
This chapter discusses photonics manufacturing, emphasizing three distinct but closely linked issues. First, it examines the relocation of production of photonics components and products in three key product fields -- displays, solar technologies, and optoelectronic components -- and the factors behind the offshore movement of much of this production activity.
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From page 186... ...
LCDs accounted for more than 90 percent of LCD sales, having first found their way into application in calculators, then in cell phones and computers applications, and more recently, as prices continued to decline, largely replacing cathode ray tubes in television receivers.4 Large TFT LCDs accounted for about 75 percent of the value of TFT LCD sales, although the unit production volume of small and medium-size LCDs was five to six times that of large TFT LCDs.5 TFT LCDs remain the dominant display technology. TFT LCD manufacturing and innovation have their roots in the United States 2 National Research Council.
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In 1996, greater than 95 percent of all TFT LCDs were produced in Japan. By 2005, fewer than 11 percent were made in Japan, and the top two production locations were Korea and Taiwan, each of which produced roughly 40 percent of total output.
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SOURCE: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
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firms at this late stage required that they work with partners in East Asia that were experienced in high-volume production.11 U.S. government policies made it dif ficult for firms receiving government funding to work closely with manufacturers in Asia, and most of these firms did not recognize the importance of collaborating with high-volume manufacturers.12 TFT LCDs dominate today's display markets, but new market opportunities in displays are opening up particularly in flexible displays.
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From page 190... ...
Two were start-ups: Hoffman Electronics, which acquired National Fabricated Products and its patent license for the Bell Laboratories patents, and Heliotek, founded by Al fred Mann as a spin-off from his previously founded company, Spectrolab.16 The remaining three entrants were established companies that had diversified into the solar cell market: RCA (which produced radios) , International Rectifier (which produced semiconductors)
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2000. Monitoring and assessing technology choice: The case of solar cells.
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The top 10 manufacturers accounted for more than 50 percent of total global PV shipments in 2010.24 Although the United States no longer dominates global production of solar modules, it has maintained its lead in patenting in solar technologies,25 followed by Japan (according to the geographic location reported by the corporate assignees on the patent)
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From page 193... ...
Today, thin-film solar technologies hold the second-largest proportion of the commercial market after crystalline silicon, hovering below 20 percent.33 In the 1980s, both the United States and Japan invested in thin-film amorphous silicon technologies.34 One report finds that between 1994 and 1998 the number of USPTO patents granted in amorphous silicon exceeded the number granted in crystalline silicon.35 A more recent report based on National Renewable Energy Laboratory data concluded that the cost per watt of producing thin-film PV was closing the gap with the cost of producing crystalline PV in the late 1990s and early 29 Atthe firm level, one U.S.-headquartered firm is among the corporate leaders (by volume) in global manufacturing of solar modules.
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From page 194... ...
, much of it at Bell Laboratories, yielded the fabrication methods by which fiber and the other system-critical optoelectronic components could be manufactured economically. In 1970, Corning was the first firm to develop the optical waveguide technology -- in particular, low-loss optical fiber that would prove critical to the development of optoelectronics.
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From page 195... ...
telecommunications equipment market led to dra matic change in the location of optical components production. Between 2000 and 2006, the majority of optoelectronic component manufacturers moved manufac turing activities from the United States to developing countries, in particular to developing East Asia.43 By 2005, five U.S.-based companies (Agilent Technologies, JDSUniphase, Bookham, Finisar, and Infineon)
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From page 196... ...
SOURCE: Reprinted, with permission, from Doutriaux, T., 2009. "The Resiliency of the Innovation Ecosystem: The Impact of Offshoring on Firms Versus Individual Technology Trajectories." Work toward a master's thesis.
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From page 197... ...
Arguably, the publications data indicate a significant rise in optoelectronics research activity in the industrializing economies of East Asia since 2000. To elucidate the relationship between manufacturing location and the rate and direction of innovation in optoelectronic components better, the following discussion addresses the technical details of the innovations that U.S.
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From page 198... ...
optoelectronic component manufacturers of their assembly and fabrication activities offshore after the bursting of the telecommunications bubble shifted their focus in process innovation away from monolithic integra tion to discrete-technology solutions. That shift largely reflected the different manufacturing-cost environment of the 1990s in the industrializing East Asian economies within which the U.S.
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U.S. monolithically integrated design produced in the United States cannot cost-compete with the discrete design produced in developing East Asia (D.E.A.)
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In the case of optoelectronic components for communication systems, the dominant manufacturing position moved to developing East Asia. In all of those cases, manufacturing moved overseas, but the primary offshore manufacturing site did not always become the leading source of innovation.
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2009. "The Resiliency of the Innovation Ecosystem: The Impact of Offshoring on Firms Versus Individual Technology Trajectories." Work toward a master's thesis.
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Finally, in the case of optoelectronic components for communications systems, the close tie between R&D and manufacturing led firms that moved manufacturing overseas to abandon monolithically integrated technologies. As a result, monolithic integration contin ues to be dominated by private firms that remain in the United States.
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. The push toward the upper end of the precision scale will drive the need for improvements in optical sources and imaging tools to support the increase in resolution.
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Fabrication Processes and Equipment Processes and equipment available to fabricate optical surfaces, particularly aspherical surfaces, have undergone notable improvement during the last decade. Improvements have been made in both the ability to produce and the ability to measure precision optical components.
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has also grown in popularity in fabricating optical components. It is now routinely used to produce mold inserts for polymer lenses, mold inserts for glass molding, and finished optical elements.
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Since the publication of the National Research Council report Harnessing Light: Optical Science and Engineering for the 21st Century, photolithog raphy in IC manufacturing has remained dominant and has continued to achieve impressive technical advances. Photolithography is similar to photography in that both use imaging optics and a photosensitive film to record an image.
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From page 207... ...
In the early days of photolithography, the mercury arc lamp "G-line" opti cal source with a wavelength of 436 nm was used; this resulted in a feature size down to about 700 nm. The transition to "I-line" sources at a 365-nm wavelength enabled resolution below 400 nm, and the use of KrF excimer lasers at a 248-nm wavelength 57 Mack, C.A.
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From page 208... ...
Over the last several decades, lithography tools have progressed to the state-of-the-art production line lithogra phy with an exposure wavelength of λ = 193 nm for a feature size of 22 nm.60 Over the same period, the cost of a state-of-the-art lithography tool has grown from $100,000 to greater than $50 million. Fortunately, such dramatic increases in tool cost have been accompanied by equally dramatic increases in tool throughput, so the cost of printing a square centimeter of silicon has remained roughly constant.
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Table 7.1 shows the top semiconductor equipment suppliers in 2011; the United States has an important but not dominant position. Recently, the Nether lands' Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML)
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2012. "2011 Top Semiconductor Equipment Suppliers." VLSIresearch.
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Expanded applications of lasers throughout manufacturing have been driven by continual innovation in this technology. Laser systems have been transformed from tools applicable only to highly specialized processes to commonplace tools that are used extensively in shop floor operations, such as cutting, drilling, piercing, and welding.
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From page 212... ...
Figure 7.10 shows slots cut into in stainless steel as small at 75 µm in width. ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING "Additive manufacturing," three-dimensional printing, describes a group of technologies that are used to create parts by building up layers to, in effect, "grow a part." Additive processes are fundamentally different from traditional subtractive processes in which material is removed from a block to create a part.
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ceptance and practice to the point that today it is an effective development and shop floor tool. The improvements in performance and cost-competitiveness associated with additive manufacturing reflect advances in a number of enabling technologies, many of which are based on photonics.
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The improved capability leveraged with the advantages described earlier makes additive manufacturing a good fit for a class of products that can be produced effectively in the United States. They are prototypes, products with a high degree of customization and complexity, and products produced in low volume.
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A chess piece fabricated with stereolithography is shown in Figure 7.12. Selective Laser Sintering Selective laser sintering (SLS)
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216 Optics and Photonics: Essential Technologies for O u r N at i o n FIGURE 7.13 Selective laser sintering (SLS) schematic.
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Figure 7.16 shows a tool produced with the LENS process. FIGURE 7.15 Laser Engineered Net Shaping (LENS™)
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. In general, one important part of additive manufacturing is an increased em phasis on in situ metrology that uses coherent optics (interference)
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Recent advances in several manufacturing capa bilities, such as different methods of additive manufacturing, hold out considerable promise for the development of low-cost machines capable of providing precision optics, with surface figures not restricted to the narrow range of surfaces possible with current grinding and finishing techniques. In addition to providing a new set of potential optical surface figures and the associated capabilities, these advances may enable low-cost precision optics even for low-volume applications and thereby remove much of the benefit of moving optics manufacturing overseas by minimiz ing the impact of labor costs on the optics.
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From page 220... ...
In addition to focusing on products that are less cost-sensitive, manufactur ers have reduced the amount of direct labor in their U.S.-based manufacturing processes. In optics grinding and polishing operations, such as lens centering, use of CNC equipment capable of running unattended, as shown in Figure 7.17, has FIGURE 7.17 Automated lens handling.
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U.S. manufacturers have excelled in the production of low-volume, high precision optical components and devices.
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firms develop more attractive career paths for advanced-degree holders to pursue careers in photonics manufacturing and in the applications of photonics technolo gies throughout manufacturing. Some committee members cited the example of the U.S.
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From page 223... ...
and is the leader in potential next generation technologies, such as flexible displays, "paint-on" and other thin-film solar cells, and monolithically integrated optoelectronic devices. Key Finding: To enable the United States to be productive in manufacturing pho tonics goods, a capable and fully trained workforce must exist at all levels, includ ing shop floor associates, technicians, and engineers.
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Shorter wavelengths will move the state of the art to allow more precise additive manufacturing that could eventually lead to three-dimensional printing of optical elements.
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From page 225... ...
The pho tonics industry also should enhance incentives for holders of advanced degrees in photonics, optics, physics, and related fields to pursue employment opportunities in manufacturing. One potential vehicle for such expanded support and for needed improvements in data collection on photonics employment trends at all levels is the federal initiative in photonics discussed in the recommendations of Chapter 2.
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