In the factory of Zhangjiang SMIC in Pudong, a "relay race" representing humanity's highest manufacturing level is staged all the time. Round silicon wafers with a diameter of 30 cm are shuttled between various extremely precise processing equipment, and they are used to make grooves or circuits on the surface of the silicon wafer that are only one-thousandth of the diameter of the hairline. Heat treatment, lithography, etching, cleaning, deposition ... Each wafer has to be processed continuously for two months day and night, after hundreds and thousands of processes, and finally integrated a large number of tiny electronic devices, after cutting, packaging , Become the cornerstone of the information society-chips.
Semiconductor production equipment and materials are the most upstream of semiconductor products. According to data released by the International Semiconductor Industry Association, global semiconductor equipment manufacturers shipped USD 56 billion in 2017, a substantial increase of nearly 40% from the previous year, a record high. Compared with 2016 global semiconductor market sales of 338.9 billion US dollars, the scale is actually not large.
However, in view of Ye Tianchun, the chief technical officer of China ’s National Science and Technology Major Project 02 and director of the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, unlike other industries, semiconductor production equipment and materials are not supporting industries for ICs. . Since the late 1980s, semiconductor equipment companies have begun to integrate process capabilities into equipment, allowing users to buy equipment to ensure the use and meet the process requirements, so there is a "generation device, generation equipment". "The characteristic of this field is that the threshold of technology and capital is extremely high. It takes a long investment period to see the return, and it can also play a role in controlling the development speed of integrated circuits in other countries."
In the final analysis, the competition for the commanding height of the integrated circuit (IC) industry is still the competition in the equipment manufacturing industry.
"IC equipment manufacturing is the weakest link in China's chip industry chain. After more than 20 years of catching up, China's chip manufacturing field is still two generations away from the world." Ye Tianchun said firmly, "The core competitiveness of IC manufacturing is still IC Equipment manufacturing. If China's IC industry wants to master the development dominance, IC equipment is a problem that must be solved. "
This is a life and death race.
1 divided cake
From the ubiquitous sand to the constantly computing chips in mobile phones and computers, behind the magical changes is the complex and time-consuming IC manufacturing process: thousands of processes and nearly two months of polishing.
According to Wang Longxing, former deputy secretary general and senior consultant of the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Association, integrated circuit equipment can usually be divided into front-end process equipment (wafer manufacturing) and back-end process equipment (packaging and inspection). Due to the complex production process and numerous processes, the equipment required for the production process is diverse. Among them, there are seven major production areas in wafer manufacturing, namely diffusion (Thermal Process), lithography (Photo-lithography), etching (Etch), ion implantation (Ion Implant), thin film growth (Dielectric DeposiTIon), Polishing (CMP), metalization (MetalizaTIon), the corresponding seven types of production equipment are diffusion furnace, lithography machine, etching machine, ion implanter, thin film deposition equipment, chemical mechanical polishing machine and cleaning machine, including metal Chemical is to connect the various components in the integrated circuit with metal conductors, and the equipment used is also a thin film growth equipment.
Although there are only 7 areas, many processes need to be repeated. For example, cleaning machines are used in almost every area, because the production process is more and more complicated, and the silicon wafer must be cleaned almost every two steps.
The technical difficulty, value and market share of the equipment are proportional. In terms of sales, 79% of the market is front-end wafer processing equipment, and packaging and testing equipment account for 7% and 9%, respectively. In wafer manufacturing, due to the continuous circulation of photolithography, etching, deposition and other processes in the chip production process, it is the three core technologies of the chip front-end processing process, and its equipment value is also the highest, including coating equipment, etching equipment, Lithography machines account for approximately 15%, 15%, and 20-25% of the total investment in semiconductor fab equipment, respectively.
The United States, Japan, and the Netherlands are the world's top three semiconductor equipment manufacturing powers, accounting for 37%, 20.6%, and 13.5% of the global market, respectively, leaving less than 30% of the "cake" left to other countries. Among the top ten semiconductor equipment manufacturers in the world in 2016, only companies from the three countries of the United States, Japan and Netherlands were shortlisted. Applied Materials, Lam Research, ASML, Tokyo Electronics, and KLA Tencor ranked among the top five, accounting for 66% of the semiconductor equipment market share.
From the perspective of various equipment fields, these enterprises also occupy an absolute dominant position. Asmell (ASML) in the Netherlands occupies more than 70% of the high-end lithography machine market with revenue of US $ 5.091 billion; on ion implanters, American Applied Materials has a 70% market share and revenue of US $ 7.737 billion; In terms of gumming and developing machines, Tokyo Electronics has a 90% market share and revenue of US $ 4.681 billion.
In contrast, the scale of the domestic IC equipment industry is much smaller. In 2016, the top ten Chinese semiconductor equipment companies accounted for only about 2% of the global market share, and sales revenue totaled 5.733 billion yuan, far below the sales revenue of a US-based application materials company, and the main business is actually the photovoltaic part. The largest domestic electronic equipment and China Microelectronics in China have sales revenues of only RMB 1.1 billion in 2017, which is much smaller than internationally renowned manufacturers.
What does not match the market share is the increasingly hot IC market in China. Since 2014, the global IC manufacturing industry has begun to move to mainland China. As a key area for new production lines in the future, mainland China will usher in equipment purchases in the order of hundreds of billions. In the next one to three years, mainland China will have at least 7 12-inch production lines to purchase equipment, and the purchase amount will reach more than 200 billion yuan. It is estimated that the investment in equipment in mainland China will reach 8.6 billion US dollars in 2018, surpassing Taiwan in China and becoming the second largest semiconductor equipment market.
Despite the substantial increase in investment in semiconductors in mainland China, the supply capacity of equipment manufacturers in mainland China is seriously inadequate, especially the lack of supply of complete sets of equipment. The integrated circuit production line in the mainland will be shut down, "Wang Longxing said eagerly. Facing huge market demand and historic development opportunities, equipment manufacturers in mainland China urgently need to make breakthroughs.
On the one hand, there is a huge blue ocean in the market, and on the one hand, the giants are watching. For the domestic IC equipment industry, it is both an opportunity and a challenge.
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