SAN JOSE, Calif. -- 2009 is off to a rough start for fab tool and materials vendors.
But some technologies--and companies--are doing better than others. Some are doing far worse.
Here's a list of the good, bad and ugly in this arena in 2009 so far, according to The Information Network, a New Tripoli, Penn.-based market research company.
The list is segmented by different technologies, such as energy, LCDs, packaging, semiconductors, and others. The firm also lists a company that shines--or bombs--for a certain technology. Here's the list:
Semiconductors
The good
*Equipment and materials for niche markets such as strip and clean (Company: Surface Chemistry Discoveries).
The ugly
*Equipment for standard IC processing (All fab-tool companies).
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Packaging
The good
*Equipment for thin silicon vias (TSVs) (Company: Semitool).
*Package design for 3-D TSV (Company: NXP Semiconductors).
*Equipment for wafer-level packaging (Company: NeXX Systems).
The bad
*Packaging technology for MCPs. Slowdown in mobile phone market (Company: Amkor).
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Alternative energy
The Good
*Deposition of cadmium telluride (CdTe) (Company: First Solar).
*Deposition of amorphous silicon on flexible substrates using roll-to-roll (Company: Unisolar).
*Metrology tools for solar panels (Company: Rudolph Technologies).
*Gases for solar (Company: Air Products).
*Design tools for semiconductors for alternative energy conversion (Company: Cadence).
The ugly
*Deposition of amorphous silicon on heavy rigid glass. A $2 billion market in 2008 drops to less than $1 billion in 2009 (Company: Applied Materials).
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Hard disk drives
The good
*Equipment and technology for discrete track recording (Company: Molecular Imprints).
The bad
*Equipment and materials for traditional perpendicular recording. Competing against flash and affected by a slow desktop market (Company: Fujitsu).
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Nanomaterials
The good
*Nanomaterials for solar such as copper indium gallium (di)selenide (CIGS) (Company: NanoSolar).
*Nanomaterials for crystalline and polycrystalline wafer processing (Company: NanoSteel).
*Nanomaterials for DUV resists and slurries (Company: Rohm and Haas).
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LCDs
The bad
*Chemicals and materials for LCD production (Company: Corning).
The ugly
*Equipment for LCDs (Company: AKT).
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MEMS
The good
*Equipment for MEMs for 200-mm wafers and smaller (Company: Tegal).
*Equipment and materials for RFID production (Company: Tegal).
The bad
*Equipment and materials for automotive. Slowdown in auto market (Company: EV Group).
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