EFFICIENCY AND EVALUATION - Total-Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis and Related Methods - page 416

Figure6.12. Pie charts with percentage of different fields of investigations or applications carried
out by TXRF and related methods. (a) After customers of Bruker devices; reproduced by courtesy
of A. Gross from Bruker. (b) After a survey of conference attendees in 2013. (c) After book of
abstracts compiled for the conference TXRF 2013. It was taken for granted that 150 semiconductor
fabs use TXRF for wafer control.
TXRF sets on average for wafer control. Consequently, about 300 devices
can be estimated to be still working in the semiconductor industry as of
2013. 4 Approximately 600 sets were installed for about US $700 000 per set
between 1989 and 2013. Most of them are floor-mounted large devices
instead of desktop instruments mentioned earlier.
Figure 6.11a and b demonstrates that TXRF is mainly distributed in
institutions of the northern hemisphere, especially in Europe, North America,
and East Asia. The same is valid for TXRF at synchrotron beamlines. The
semiconductor industry with TXRF equipment is concentrated in 51 fabs in the
USA, with 40 fabs in China and Taiwan, and 23 fabs in central Europe.
Apart from wafer control, TXRF and related methods work on different
fields of investigations or applications, especially at universities and scientific
institutes. The pie charts of Figure 6.12 demonstrate the percentage of such
fields. In order to meet different aspects, three different presentations are
4 If the average number per fab is 2 because of a necessary substitute for claim and if the life-span is 8
years, the total number should be 600 within 25 years.