Semiconductor wafer manufacturing materials and wafer manufacturing capacity, in recent years, along with the shipment number growth, semiconductor materials revenue also grew from $2013 in 23 billion to $2016 in 24.2 billion, the compound annual growth rate of about 1.8%. It can be seen from the details that the proportion of silicon wafer sales dropped from 35% in 2013 to 30% in 2016.
Advanced manufacturing processes and light resistance and light resistance related reagents (exposure is used to improve quality or reduce the complexity of the multiple exposures demand), as well as more advanced Wafer after the period of the CMP process related materials sales accounted for the ascension, visible material demand growth over the past few years and advanced process is of very high correlation.
Figure 1: proportion of manufacturing materials in wafer factories in 2013 and 2016
In addition, from the 2016 wafer manufacturing materials classification of than that of silicon wafers accounted 30%, maximum downstream intelligent terminal as the requirement of increasing the performance of the chip, the requirement for the quality of silicon wafers are also ascending, plus the cost of Moore's law and drove, stable silicon wafers to develop in the direction of large size. At present, the global mainstream silicon wafer sizes are mainly 300mm and 200mm, accounting for 70% and 20% respectively.
From the point of view that the main growth of silicon wafer area demand comes from 300mm, it is also proved that in wafer manufacturing, more advanced manufacturing process is the main source of demand growth. In addition, the compound annual growth rate of silicon wafer delivery area from 2013 to 2016 was 5.8 percent, higher than the revenue growth rate of silicon wafer industry in the same period, indicating that the average price of silicon wafer dropped significantly.
Due to silicon wafers are the main ingredients of wafer manufacturing, in this round of the semiconductor industry, especially in the Chinese chip manufacturer actively expanding production capacity, the silicon wafer industry in the short term is expected to benefit simultaneously.
According to the 2016 global revenue data mainly silicon wafers manufacturers, former world market share of six major manufacturers more than 90%, of which the first two big Japanese manufacturers Shin Etsu and earn a combined global market share of over 50%, Taiwan chip ring due to mergers and acquisitions of Singapore manufacturers SunEdison Semiconductor, currently ranked third in the world, 2016 sales accounted for 17%.
The market share of semiconductor materials in China is similar to that in the world. Silicon wafer and packaging substrate are the two types of materials with the largest proportion of wafer manufacturing and packaging materials respectively. From the growth trend chart, it can be seen that the semiconductor material market in China grew rapidly from 2016 to 2017. Both wafer manufacturing materials and packaging materials increased by more than 10%.
FIG. 2 changes in China's wafer manufacturing materials market from December 2012 to 2017
China wafer manufacturing materials, key materials mainly is still dependent on imports, but with the government's policy support and large funds to industrial chain continued into, there has been a new litres of semiconductor, microelectronics, such as Shanghai Shanghai shinyo and jiangfeng electronic considerable strength of the manufacturers.
These manufacturers, with policy support, have been actively engaged in r&d and innovation, and their products have begun to yield results. They have become the backbone of China's semiconductor materials industry. According to China's new fabs and construction process of factory, most of the construction of the production line will be gradually into mass production in 2018, when the corresponding upstream of a semiconductor industry will be a new round of explosive growth.
1. The development trend of China's semiconductor manufacturing materials industry
With China's national policy support, the big fund and local capital investment for a long time, China's integrated circuit industry fast development, the official target is "made in China" to drive the common progress of the whole industry chain upstream and downstream, and in the process, need to constantly improve and optimize the industrial chain each link, to master the core link breakthroughs made in key areas, gradually get rid of the core areas of long-term dependence on imports.
Semiconductor industry has many characteristics, such as product verification cycle is long and leading monopoly, to enter the international first-line customers manufacturers will be very difficult, chip makers in commonly after successful authentication materials dealer, rarely changed suppliers, such as the top six silicon wafer manufacturers almost global supply more than 90% of silicon wafers, the Chinese IC silicon wafers are basically all rely on imports.
China semiconductor manufacturers to enter the market as soon as possible, not only to strengthen the research and development and take out high quality goods, even under the government's support and the coordination, the priority from local chip manufacturers, complete success in local mainstream chip manufacturer certification, thus further implementation in China's domestic instead of imported.
Internal resources reorganization is an important trend, China's semiconductor industry future development throughout China semiconductor materials manufacturers, corresponding to the downstream products generally tended to low order, scattered distribution and multifarious, even in the middle and lower order material supply, the interior is also prone to vicious competition; And not only in the core material, such as light resistance, the material such as silicon wafer and mask, lags behind the advanced level, on the common reagents material, and only a handful of manufacturers can achieve the stability of the downstream line manufacturer standard.
At present, the China's semiconductor industry has good development opportunities, policy and financial support to attract a large number of enterprises, focus, many vendors have showed that the determination of upgrading industries, such as many small and medium-sized panels makers said going into electronic grade silicon wafer industry, but electronic grade silicon wafer materials than batteries with silicon wafer is several orders of magnitude higher purity, the two are not in the same technical level, besides solar panel manufacturers and downstream of the semiconductor industry chain far, all users relationship should be re-established, is unfavorable to the late product certification and sales.
All these problems require the semiconductor material industry to concentrate its superior resources and reintegrate resources for various types of semiconductor materials, led by some large factories.
2. China's semiconductor material industry faces severe challenges
Actively guide the government policy, large funds and local capital support, for China's semiconductor industry solve the problem of upfront money, but money can not buy technology, talent and the market, so the late Chinese semiconductor industry will face more from technology, talent and challenge of customer certification, etc.
Technical challenges
At present, the challenges of semiconductor materials technology in China mainly focus on the fields of large silicon wafer, optical resistance and optical cover materials.
In terms of silicon wafers, China is the main production of 6 inch silicon wafers, its self-sufficiency rate of 8 inches less than 20%, 12 inches headed by Shanghai new litres of semiconductor silicon wafer, is in the customer validation phase, technology level and product stability still faces rigorous test;
The products of Beijing kehua (joint venture) and suzhou ruihong, a Chinese manufacturer of photoresists, are mainly used in LED, panel and some 8-inch Fab fields.
The base material of the global optical cover is basically monopolized by the Japanese manufacturers, with more than 80% of the global market in Photronic, greater Japan printing co., and letterpress.
In fact, material industry related basic patent technology monopoly, has long been international companies and the basic patent and material industry essential elements, at the same time, foreign manufacturers are reluctant to sell the patent to China, so slow progress on the basic patent bottleneck breakthrough.
Talent challenge
The key to technological breakthroughs is talent. Recently about China's integrated circuit industry talent shortage and talent poaching has a lot of discussion, according to statistics, by 2020 China's integrated circuit industry higher-order talent gap will break through 100000, China's semiconductor industry develops slowly, over the years is closely related with talent reserves. At present, the government has removed policy and financial barriers for the semiconductor material industry, and the next step will focus on the introduction of talents and personnel training.
Authentication challenge
Is closely combined with semiconductor material certification is a product yield, yield is good or bad decision to contract directly competitive, so in the middle and lower reaches of the OEM manufacturer of upstream material certification is very strict, some key material certification cycle can be up to 2 years or more. Once authentication is successful, upstream materials manufacturers and vendors will be tightly bound together, as long as the upper material, to ensure the continued stability of the supply of materials, the manufacturer will consider the risk changed suppliers in the end, now China's semiconductor industry rapid development, how to successfully embedded into customer supply chain will be the future facing a big problem, during this period, if the government in the face of coordinated cooperation manufacturers, will help to accelerate the semiconductor materials industry to obtain certification of local manufacturers.
3, summary
China's local semiconductor materials are mainly used in LED, panel and other medium-low order applications. The materials used in integrated circuit production are still mainly imported. It is expected that 2018 will bring new opportunities for the development of local semiconductor materials industry in China as several new production lines of wafer manufacturing are put into production.
The future development trend of China's semiconductor material industry will be synchronized from two aspects:
Concentrate superior resources, and reintegrate resources for various kinds of semiconductor materials, with some large factories as the head.
We will establish a complete semiconductor material system, accelerate the development of core materials and realize domestic substitution in China.
Although China's semiconductor materials industry has overcome policy and financial barriers, it still faces severe challenges from technology, talent and customer certification.
Industry of the future will focus on solving the following problems: basic patent bottleneck breakthrough progress has been slow, semiconductor material shortage of talent pool and training, the coalition government coordination function, as well as the local certification level the first breakthrough.
Although China's semiconductor industry is weak at present, the key still is given priority to with imported materials, but as the government's policy support and continuing to pour money into large funds to industry chain, there has been a considerable strength of the manufacturers, under the engaged in research and development innovation, each product has paid off, has now become the backbone of China's semiconductor industry.
Because the process precision requirements (technical specifications) and impact (production material can directly reflect the influence of on chip performance, the application of some low order sealing materials and chip performance is affected directly), semiconductor materials with higher barriers to entry than sealing materials (due to differences in process complexity, compared with sealing material, material into the wafer to assess the difficulty of the production line is higher, and the acceptance slightly lower), it also makes the same import substitution.
At present, the projects promoted in China mainly focus on products with large output value, such as Starting Materials, light resistance (from LED emission) and target Materials (from the latter metal manufacturing process), which are easy to independently evaluate technical indicators. It can be seen that China's semiconductor wafer manufacturing related materials industry needs more support in order to improve the competitiveness of the industry.
