Supplies of polysilicon will remain tight for the foreseeable future, said Stan Myers, president of Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International.
During a press conference here to kickoff the 35th annual Semicon West, Myers characterized the contraint of the polysilicon supply as an "emerging critical issue."
The tightening supply of polysilicon is being driven not by chip applications or its use in the growing flat panel display market, but in the use of photovoltaic or solar power applications, Myers said. "It is a critical situation," he added.
Polysilicon is short for polycrystalline silicon, also referred to as poly-Si. It is a specialized material made up of multiple small silicon crystals, and has been used for years in the chip industry in transistor gates. In the past few years, its use has spread to flat panel display applications, specifically in the active or doped layers in thin film transistors.
While the 2003 market for polysilicon was $619 million, it jumped to $824 million in 2004, according to Lubab Sheet, senior director of nanotechnology at SEMI. In Q1 of this year, capacity utilization in the polysilicon market hit 100 percent, even as overall silicon wafer shipments continued to decline after peaking in Q3 of last year.
SEMI predicts that the market for polysilicon will flirt with the $1 billion mark this year, and continue to grow at least through the next two years. Shipments, meanwhile, will top 26,000 metric tons, and top 28,000 metric tons in 2007, according to SEMI's forecast.
There isn't a direct correlation, however, between the market for photovoltaic cells and that of polysilicon for semiconductor applications; the level of quality acceptable for polysilicon solar cells is less than that required for transistor gate electrodes and other chip applications, Myers noted.
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