Largest exporter and importer !-- --As the new year rolls in, it is worth mentioning how some Philippine industries fared well last year, in particular our electronics and
semi-conductor industry.
France, Germany and Italy all have these clusters as well, none with the expertise in compound
semi-conductors that Wales has.
One of the challenges of using silicon as a
semi-conductor is that a transistor must be created with a 'top down' approach.
Now known as GlobalFoundries, it has become one of the world's top
semi-conductor foundries, with operations spanning the globe in Singapore, Germany, US and in the future, Abu Dhabi.
The
semi-conductor designers saw their revenues rise by almost 21 per cent to pounds 34.1million, they said yesterday.
The company, which makes measurement tools for the
semi-conductor industry and has its manufacturing and research base in Durham and offices in Prague, Denver and Shanghai, said this month that 20 positions would be cut, taking its UK workforce to 55.
Filtronic, the mobile handsets and wireless infrastructure group, yesterday warned shareholders that its
semi-conductor business at Newton Aycliffe in Durham was not delivering increases in revenue.
On the back of an economic turnaround, which we should begin to see in the US in the second quarter and hopefully begin to feel in Europe as well, leading edge sectors such as
semi-conductors and
semi-conductor equipment should start to rise to reflect improved order rates.
Samuelson notes that the three teams have partially retraced steps taken a decade ago by Japanese researchers who demonstrated diode function in nanowires with one band each of two different
semi-conductors.
Today the firm has a multi-million-pound turnover and is one of Europe's largest independent distributors of
semi-conductors.
"Although there has been some research in high-bandgap
semi-conductors, [the University of Missouri] is the only research center in the world developing high-bandgap photovoltaic cells for nuclear energy conversion," Prelas points out.
According to Nuala Beck, the Toronto author of Shifting Gears: Thriving in the New Economy, the four engines that will drive Ontario's future economy are computers and
semi-conductors, telecommunications, instrumentation and process controls, and health care.
