The era of IoT advancing CMP consumables growth

Although semiconductor materials business development efforts have consistently focused on leading edge technologies (now <;14nm), more than 60% of all wafer starts, by MSI, are still from trailing edge technology nodes some of which will be counted on to support the growing era of the Internet of Things (IoT). Estimates for the number of internet connected things is expected to be 50 Billion by 2020 [1]. Although the number of IoT semiconductor devices is relatively small, <; 7 % of total semiconductor device revenues, the growth is large, >30% per year, in comparison to the total semiconductor device revenue growth rate of >5.5%. The interrelationship between the technology node, corresponding material changes, devices and applications related to IoT will be presented. The impact of the IoT on CMP consumables, CMP Supply Chain Analysis and wafer forecasts will be discussed.