Thanks to better knowledge and the industrialization of these materials, they are increasingly used in many new applications, especially in the MEMS field: MEMS wafer level autofocus, RF MEMS, MEMS ultrasonic transducers infrared sensors, IPD tunable capacitors, and many others.
According to market research firm Yole Développement, Physical Vapor Deposition is the dominant deposition technique but Chemical Solution Deposition techniques will increase its market share greatly, especially in MEMS applications thanks to its better material composition. PZT, the most well-known ferroelectric material will keep the leadership on SBT, BST, except if other materials are developed to replace lead, black listed by the RoHs European directive.
Driven by existing and new applications, the production of ferroelectric thin films will grow from 881,000 6’’ equivalent wafers in 2010 to 1,263,000 wafers in 2015, meaning a CAGR of +7.5 %. Inkjet-head application and IPDs ESD/EMI planar capacitor represent more than 90% of the production in 2010 but other applications will grow strongly to reach globally 26% of the total production in 2015.
Large industrial companies are already using ferroelectric thin films in various applications fields, showing the reliability of this technology:
In the next 5 years, many new players plan to adopt or evaluate ferroelectric thin films to enter on key markets, from SMEs (Polight, Irisys, NovioMEMS…) to large groups (Océ, Xaar, Delphi, IBM, Philips research…).
For more information, get the Ferroelectric Thin Films report from Yole Développement.
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