THINFILM
(p1)1EN The goal
The goal of this blog is to present Thin Film Electronics ASA (THIN), to describe its past - present day and possibly, to forecast its future. Is it suitable for investing - or just for trading? How are the competitors? The whole scenery is well documented, but we have to dig everything out of it.The structure of this blog is a simple one - no comments are allowed. This keeps the presented material tight and helps newcomers to join us whenever they please to do so. I hope to find other writers to co-operate and - finally someone, who could carry on the work.
Motto: Sarcasm is investor's best friend.
My E-mail address:
mave@kymp.net
2EN Megatrends of electronics
A Science level, theory- conducting polymers (plastics)
- nanotechnics/ quantum physics
B Technology level, technics
- printed elektronics
Production that was based in silicon chips was concentrated in Far-East for a long time. In Europe there has been a desperate struggle to find new approaches to produce electronics. The solution was a suprising one: printing. A new paradigm (best practice) has born. Totally strange procedures has been connected and key words have been co-operation and leagues.
C Economical level, applications
- IoT (Internet of Things), comments:
-- David Cameron: "... a new industrial revolution";
-- Cisco: IoT will be replaced by IoE (Internet of Everything),
Physical and digital world will be united by attaching a tag on simple items by which they are connected into the net. Sutija: "Bringing intelligence to everything: a smarter everyday. Why has'nt this gap (value potential of adding intelligence: 100 mrd$) been addressed? Cost of silicon and integration; lack of scalability for conventional electronics. A new paradigm needed to create IoT."
These levels are true and acting at the same time and the result will not be the sum of them but exponential. Vast variety of products will see the daylight. The greatest revolution in our lifetime is going on and THIN seizes the opportunity in all of the levels mentioned. Furthermore it has stated that it is leading the change. A lot to be said at a company whose personnel is around 160. Good marks can been seen...
THIN, analyst briefing, Jan. 2014; Sutija:
- "."
- Cisco systems, D. Evans: "Internet of Everything is an exponential proxy for sensing, understanding and managing our world."
- Connected objects by 2020:
Estimates: Cisco - 50 mrd; IBM - 1'000 mrd.
For historical reasons there are two scales for big numbers:
long scale (Eurooppa) / short scale (USA, Englanti)
luku 10exp6 - miljoona / million
luku 10exp9 - miljardi / billion
luku 10exp12 - biljoona / trillion.
3EN Any potential?
THIN produces tags, electrical circuits built on a flexible substrate including logic and memory. Forecasts of its success are confusing... What is happening in the real world?- THIN/ Sutija 2013:
1: "Significant customer pull with go-to-market secured";
2: "Proven mass production process; complete value chain established";
3: "Strong ecosystem of manufacturing and technology partners."
- BEMIS Company, Inc. (Sutija 2013)
Global leader in flexible packaging; 78 manufacturing facilities worldwide; 200 mrd packages per year; 2011 net sales of 5,3 mrd$; Fortune 500 company.
H. Theisen, CEO: "Our agreement with Thin Film Electronics ASA is an investment in technology that could eventually make printed electronics a component of every package we manufacture."
THIN's new factory in Silicon Valley is to be completed with a capacity of 6,5-7 mrd tags per year. 30 similar factories might be enough to fullfil the needs of ONE client EVERY YEAR.
- EDISON Research
http://thinfilm.no/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/EdisonNO0010299068Thinfilm211216update.pdf
Edison in an official auditor, evaluator, for THIN, time scale is up to 2026: Exhibit 2:
Sales Revenue ($m) 2017e 8,6; 2018e 46,3; 2019e 279,0; 2020e 609,7; 2021e 628,2; etc.
Product are dealt in 7 groups. Estimates are based on KNOWN CLIENTS' estimated needs and statistics are dated continuously. THIN will be on solid ground on 2019; estimates are on the level of 600-700 $m from 2020.
Proofs of potentials should be relevant. The new factory will work on full capacity "24/7" from the second half of 2018.
4EN New paradigm
Our digital world is based on Si-microchips. In IoT they are too comlex and expensive. Their production is complicated and process is long. "Companies are prisoners of success of their own."PC Magazine Jan. 2004: "Plastics everywhere- In case you have not noticed, the world of conducting polymers is creeping into the world of silicon (Si). We have the OLED revolution; next you'll begin to hear more and more chichat about plastic, or polymer memory. The leader in this... seems to be a Norwegian company called Opticom ASA (THIN's predecessor). Its subsidiary company, Thin Film Electronics, has been licensing plastic-memory patents, and Intel is the one player hoping to cash in on what is a potential windfall. If this kind of memory works, it will be major breakthrough, since it chews up less power, costs nothing to make, and can be built in three dimensions, providing gobs of capacity. If anything is going to supplant the hard drive for mass storage, polymer memory will. Intel is apparently using its facility in Hillsboro to develop the technology (>). Overlooked in all this is DuPont. Whenever anything plastic is developed you can generally expect DuPont to enter the scene."
Is the new technology complicated? NASA plans to use it in the Space where astronauts might replace a damaged circuit by printing a new one using a program taken from internet. Shops could print their rfids in their back-room.
5EN Co-operations
"Thinfilm’s roadmap of system products integrates technology from a strong and growing ecosystem of partners to enable the Internet of Things by bringing intelligence to disposable goods.""While microchip makers continue to wring more and more from silicon, the most dramatic improvements in the electronics industry could come from entirely different material - plastic. Labs around the world are working on integrated circuits, displays for handheld devices and even solar cells that rely on electrically conducting polymers - not silicon - for cheap and flexible electronic components. NOW TWO OF THE WORLD'S LEADING CHIP MAKERS ARE RACING TO DEVELOP NEW STOCK... POLYMER MEMORY.
http://docshare02.docshare.tips/files/20186/201869752.pdf
- INTEL is collaborating with THIN (in Linköping, Sweden)
- Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) collaborates with Coatue.
Big players had specialised groups and new projects were kept secret. "Digital memory is and has been a close comrade of each and every technical advancement in Information Technology." "Industry is searching for 'Holy Grail' - future memory technologies, and large number of them were emerged." (Reference was dated in 2003, a seminar!; princibles were already well known!)
AMD 'quietly' purchased molecular memory maker Coatue in June 2003. But, instead of taking it in-house, AMD sold it to FASL, a joint venture with Japan's Fujitsu, which became its own entity. FASL changed its name to Spansion, which was close to fail, was reorganized and makes Flash memories today. One giant down!
"Intel cutting back on polymer memory research - it is not suitable for inclusion in Intel's products (2005)." Another giant is down!!!
Stock markets are desperately waiting for news but their meaning is missunderstood and we have forgotten the real news of the past.
6EN Intel and THIN
History...Computerwire Jan. 2002: "Intel is accelerating the development of polymer-based memory and preparing to move into production with an alternative to flash memory that will be 10% of the price of its silicon equivalent and has vastly greater storage potential. It is taking out production licenses (from THIN) for what are described as 'possible Intel products' in a move that will send SHIVERS DOWN the spine of those with billions invested in silicon-based storage technology." "Intel bought a 13% stake in TFE... and has its own development team... Intel has beeb secretive about the whole project."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/01/23/intel_preps_plastic_memory_production/
"The WORLD IS WAITING" Dec 2002
https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1002952/intels-plastic-ferric-polymer-memory-the-world-is-waiting"
"Intel was evaluating an 'internet on a chip'. ... and polymer memory (PFRAM, Polymeric Ferroelectric Random Access Memory)."
Stock holders at Opticom are waiting for the results...
"Intel plastic memory (!!!) moves to applications."
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1147506
"Intel corp.'s dev. of multilayer plastic memory has reached the software-dev. stage, a move that could precede a market launch for the technology."
"One Intel researcher expects the multilayer pl. memory technology, if successful, to result in an order of magnitude jump in memory capacity and inspire many new products not feasible with conventional silicon memories."
<< "Intel cuttting back on polymer memory research, says partner (THIN)." 2005
http://archive.eetasia.com/www.eetasia.com/ART_8800358816_499486_NT_7b319a94.HTM
"TFE was preparing to stop work with Intel due to technical problems and a failure to negotiate contracts..."
Everything was explained in: (TF NewCo ASA)
http://otc.nfmf.no/public/news/4271.pdf
"Fully functioning, high capacity, multilayer chips were built in commercial siliconfabs, but for undisclosed reasons they did not meet all the production requirements demanded by the silicon fabricators.The memory chips built by TFE’s collaboration partner were based on advanced lithography only available in very costly silicon fabs. Probably the biggest challenge that faced TFE was bringing not only one, but several new materials into very strictly controlled and conservative production environments. The fact that those materials were organic did not make the situation easier. On average it is said to take 12 years to introduce a well-characterised material into silicon fabs. TFE got a window of 5 years, for materials that had never been applied for memory purposes before. That proved too short." (!!!)
When the co-operation with Intel ended, Opticom stock collapsed; as the reason a bubble was offered...
7EN Ferroelectric memory
The name is fake, ferro- refers to iron (Fe, f.i. ferrochrome or ferrite). Ferroelectric phenomen is related to ferromagnetism: both are polarised (two states 0/1 >< two poles S/N). FeM (FRAM, FeRAM, etc.) can be built from organic or inorganic material. Both make bi-stabil, permanent (non-volatile) memory.a) THIN uses organic copolymer, mixed polymer: P(VDF-TrFE *); in a long chain of carbon are joined with branches of other polymer or group of atoms H or F. One molecyle turns 180 grades when outer electric field is changing, and stays there > 0 or 1 is born.
(*) poly vinylidene fluoride (VDF) - trifluoroethylene (TrFE)
b) Coatue used inorganic substance, they are called perovskites (found first from nature). It has cubic shaped grid of Ba, and holes between atoms are filled with smaller atoms of O and Ti, these can change their position and 0 or 1 is born.
c) Like in a film both changes (switching) start locally (= nucleation), regions start to grow and reach each other, then widening... (SPRINGER NATURE, APL-Materials)
