Semiconductor Material Industry In Dawan District: From Upstream Technology Catching Up To Platform Ecology

Editor's note: in the digital era, the importance of chips has become increasingly prominent. Among them, wafer material is one of the core carriers. As the first generation material, pure silicon has been unable to meet the requirements of higher voltage, higher power and lower loss. The second and third generation semiconductor materials are on the scene. With the common promotion of domestic ecology and the continuous R & D iteration of material manufacturers themselves, the material market in Dawan district is emitting vigorous vitality. They go beyond the "Gazelle" enterprise development process must go through the difficult period, catch up with the more difficult process technology, and in this way attack a more perfect industrial ecological role.

With the development of electronic industry ecology in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, semiconductor material manufacturers in the upstream are growing stronger and stronger in the process of market demand boosting and their own technology evolution.

Especially in the 5g wave center, due to the limitation of its elements, pure silicon materials can not meet the requirements of higher voltage, higher power and low loss in some scenarios. As a result, the second generation semiconductor application market represented by gallium arsenide and indium phosphide, and the third generation semiconductor application market represented by silicon carbide and gallium nitride are gradually cultivated and expanded, and become popular in the global market driven by leading innovation companies.

At the policy level, we have long hoped for the development of semiconductor upstream basic frontier technology in China“ During the 13th Five Year Plan period, the Ministry of science and technology of the people's Republic of China mentioned to support the development of the third generation semiconductor in the "national key R & D plan". The national 2030 plan and the national R & D plan of the "14th five year plan" also clearly pointed out that the third generation semiconductor is an important development direction, which is also listed as a major national science and technology innovation 2030 major project "research and development and application of new materials".

During this period, Guangzhou proposed to organize and implement the "strong core" project. In the "chip manufacturing chain supplement project" proposed by Shenzhen, the R & D and industrialization of key equipment and materials are mentioned; At the same time, it is emphasized that by 2023, the pilot research and development of the third generation semiconductor and the completion of the device production line should be realized, so as to accelerate the development of substrate and epitaxy, and the supporting and cooperation ability of the local industrial chain will be significantly improved, and the competitiveness of the industrial chain will be significantly enhanced.

Nowadays, among the industrial chain companies in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao, there are some manufacturers who have accumulated in the field of gallium nitride due to the ecological competition and growth of LED industry in the early years; Based on the industrial ecological deployment, there are manufacturers who have gone deep into the compound material market of gallium materials, and have gradually stepped into the second and third generation semiconductor materials; There are also start-up companies that have come back from studying abroad to identify and take root in the third generation semiconductor industry chain.

Although on the whole, there is still a gap between domestic and foreign countries in the field of second-generation and third-generation semiconductor materials, with the joint promotion of domestic ecology and the continuous R & D iteration of material manufacturers themselves, the material market in Dawan district is emitting vigorous vitality. They go beyond the "Gazelle" enterprise development process must go through the difficult period, catch up with the more difficult process technology, and in this way attack a more perfect industrial ecological role.

The beginning of compound semiconductor materials

Throughout the field of raw materials for wafer manufacturing today, silicon wafer is still the supply base for 90% of the semiconductor device market.

However, with the expansion of 5g, new energy vehicles, power semiconductors and other market applications, more attention has been paid to the sparse metal materials with better performance matching these scenarios.

Different from silicon wafer, the second and third generation semiconductor materials are compound materials composed of at least two scattered metals or other elements. As a result, the growth process of compound semiconductor materials is different from that of silicon wafer materials, and high purity raw materials are not easy to obtain.

Therefore, there is more "epitaxy" after the substrate of compound semiconductor material than that of silicon wafer, which is an important link affecting the purity and flatness of wafer. This tests the linkage strength of technology and industrial chain of material manufacturers.

In 2012, based on the ability accumulation of gallium materials, the leading thin material group gradually extended its business to the downstream market. The newly established leading advanced materials company began to undertake the preparation and application of gallium arsenide, a compound semiconductor material.

Zhou Tiejun, general manager of leading advanced materials, told all media reporters of Nanfang finance and economics that the biggest difficulty of compound semiconductor materials in the process of iterating from 2-inch wafer to 6-inch wafer is crystal growth.

"Especially for large-scale crystal growth, the required temperature requires the heat of the crystal heater to radiate from the outside to the inside. However, the temperature in the center of the crystal accords with the growth conditions, while the surrounding temperature may not reach the suitable growth conditions; When the surrounding temperature reaches the suitable growth conditions, the central temperature is easy to exceed the temperature suitable for crystal growth. In this way, the consistency of crystal image temperature becomes more difficult to control, so it is more difficult to grow large-diameter crystals For example, in the process of GaAs crystal growth, the machine will be divided into six temperature regions, each of which has different temperatures, forming a complex growth environment.

To solve these problems, it is necessary to have a special person to cooperate with the equipment R & D department, and also need to have in-depth strategic cooperation with semiconductor equipment manufacturers to jointly train and even jointly develop and improve test and production equipment.

Of course, the process is more critical than the equipment. Zhou Tiejun pointed out that because the production equipment must ultimately meet the process requirements, sometimes even with mature equipment, it may not be able to produce high-quality substrate materials. In essence, this is a process that requires the close cooperation of industrial links, equal strength and common prosperity.

Continuous R & D efforts have gradually received market response. According to the report released by yole D é development in 2020, it is estimated that in the global market share ranking of gallium arsenide wafer suppliers from 2017 to 2019, leading advanced materials will rank third in the industry with an annual growth rate of 98%, with a market share of 17%.

In the same period, the annual growth rate of other large factories has declined. Considering that from 2020 to now, the main material suppliers in the world are more or less affected by the new crown pneumonia epidemic or disaster weather and other factors, resulting in production reduction or short-term shutdown. It is not ruled out that the market share of Chinese manufacturers has much room for improvement.

According to Zhou Tiejun, in the process of technological evolution, the leading advanced materials company has always been benchmarking the world's top compound semiconductor materials companies, including Freiburg of Germany and Sumitomo Electric of Japan, and has cooperated with experts in the field of compound semiconductor worldwide.

At present, the fastest GaAs material market has been pushed to 8-inch wafers, most of which are still in the process of 2-6-inch wafers, so are the leaders. However, Zhou Tiejun pointed out that the company began to develop 8-inch GaAs products in 2020, and planned to put the 8-inch products on the market in the second half of 2021. From this point of view, the pace is almost the same as that of the global core companies.

The advance of domestic industry and research forces

Looking at the global semiconductor substrate field, Japan is undoubtedly a country with mature technology, and still occupies an advantageous position. In Europe and the United States, with the rise of new material application market, the relevant large factories have also entered a mature development cycle through mergers and acquisitions in recent years.

In recent years, a number of domestic forces, relying on the increasingly mature industrial ecology and the accumulation of technological capacity, upstream material manufacturers also have full development strength.

For example, LED industry, its initial technical route is not entirely proposed by the Chinese industry and research community, but with the iterative demand for deep-seated technical capabilities in the subsequent preparation process, our country still realizes a mature industrialization path in this field.

From 2013 to 2014, after the establishment of China Library Science and Technology Co., Ltd., it began to build factories in full swing. According to reports, at the beginning of 2015, the company's production line was officially put into operation. After half a year's adjustment and exploration, the company's business was basically on the right track from 2016 to 2017, and achieved domestic leadership in 2017.

The rapid completion of this process is driven by self-developed technology. The gallium nitride route for sapphire substrate was not first proposed by Chinese scientists. This development idea originated in Japan. After the industrialization verification, it won the Nobel Prize, and then promoted the technology route to be popularized in the global LED material industry.

However, through joint research with the industrial and academic circles, in 2018, Kang Kai, who was then the chairman and general manager of CETC, won the second prize of the National Technology Invention Award for the project "nitride semiconductor large mismatch heteroepitaxial technology", which is also an important fulcrum to support the industrialization of the company's products.

Kang Kai introduced to reporters that the graphic substrate technology is an open technology. The LED material designed by optics is a cone, and the mask and material etching need to be carried out simultaneously to achieve the final desired results. This is the particularity in the development of compound semiconductor materials, which is very different from the two-dimensional etching of silicon-based materials, and is also the core difficulty in the process of industrial landing.

"We have realized the industrialization of secondary mask etching technology for the first time while improving the etching ability, and accelerated the large-scale, low-cost, repetitive and stable localization process of sapphire patterned substrate technology." He continued.

On this basis, the iterative evolution of the technology will have an advantage plus. Kang Kai told all media reporters of Nanfang finance and economics that based on the company's own team's awareness of leading industrial and technological capabilities, and by copying and expanding production, it will soon achieve greater scale benefits of advanced processes, and make it difficult for later comers to easily surpass.

"This industry is a fully open competitive environment, which requires the company to surpass its peers in materials, technology and other aspects, and ensure low cost and stability, so as to obtain a larger market and customers." Conkey concludes.

This is also one of the reasons why Chinese companies have gradually become the global core force in the preparation technology of gallium nitride materials on sapphire substrate, and even in the development process of LED industry chain.

In the early years, sapphire materials had different requirements at home and abroad in the selection of crystal orientation, and the polishing fineness parameters on the back of wafers were different at home and abroad. After youtou company mastered the dominant position, it would drive the domestic industry to jointly formulate national standards, which would also enlighten the more efficient development of the entire industrial ecology.

Therefore, it will further promote the domestic LED semiconductor industry, including equipment manufacturers, device manufacturers, etc., to achieve a larger scale of ecological improvement and maturity.

According to the China Library Science and technology prospectus, since 2018, the company's 4-inch PSS (graphical sapphire substrate) monthly production capacity has been maintained at more than 1 million pieces, and the annual production capacity has exceeded 13 million pieces.

In addition, according to ledinside's estimation of global GaN LED epitaxial wafer output, the global market share of China National Library Corporation exceeded 26% for three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020, and the global market share reached 29.81% in 2020. At present, it is one of the largest PSS manufacturers in the world.

The advantage of Dawan District lies in the integration of mature industrial ecological chain. Once the technology can make a breakthrough, the next large-scale, low-cost commercial, it is not too difficult. Therefore, China can achieve a rapid breakthrough in the compound semiconductor material market.

The pilot company has realized the similar path in the sustainable development. Zhou Tiejun told reporters that when the company just entered the second-generation semiconductor material market, its main share was monopolized by the top Japanese and American companies mentioned above, which led to difficulties in the development of downstream enterprises, and the price of substrate products was extremely expensive, and most of the profits were intercepted by foreign enterprises.

"Relying on the dominant position of the parent company's leading thin materials in the field of scattered metal materials science and technology, the leading advanced materials, through continuous R & D investment, have finally achieved the product performance in the field of 2, 4, 6 inch GaAs substrate, but the product cost is far lower than them, which creates an opportunity for the company to seize the market with a lower price." According to Zhou Tiejun, the company lost money for many years in the early stage, but after all, it has shouldered the difficult period of early R & D accumulation and reached the present share.

Explore the path of platform

For any electronic ecological chain enterprises, platform operation and more abundant industrial roles are the only way to mature. However, due to the immature ecological environment, how to position themselves and bear the pressure is also an important proposition.

In 2009, Wang Zhihan, who came back from his overseas study of Bo, recognized the development prospect of power semiconductor industry and started the road of entrepreneurship with his classmates. In 2016, in order to expand the third generation semiconductor business, basic semiconductor company came into being, focusing on the R & D and industrialization of silicon carbide power devices.

Compared with the first and second generation semiconductor materials, the third generation of semiconductor materials is a more emerging field from technology to application. The industrial ecology is not mature, and the strength of different industrial roles is also uneven.

"For entrepreneurial companies like ours, if they decide to develop in IDM mode at the beginning of their establishment, they will face a lot of risks and uncertainties." Wang Zhihan, chairman of the board of basic semiconductor, told the reporters of Nanfang finance and economics that the company adopted a progressive development mode. At the beginning, it rapidly developed products to the market by OEM, and gradually turned to IDM path with the company's in-depth development.

"IDM mode is one of the options for semiconductor enterprises in the development process, and it is not a must." Wang Zhihan pointed out that one of the common patterns of inter industry development is vertical integration. However, the field of silicon-based integrated circuits has developed into a mode in which design and manufacturing are completed by different enterprises independently.

The core of the choice is to consider the overall environment of the industry and the position of the enterprise. He believes that in the field of integrated circuits, the division and cooperation between design companies and OEM factories is a mature and sustainable way. But at present, the important application of the third generation semiconductor is power semiconductor devices. The dominant enterprises in this field usually choose the IDM development mode, because its process technology has a great impact on the performance and reliability of products.

"If we completely separate the design and manufacturing links, it is difficult to make first-class products. Therefore, both silicon-based power semiconductor manufacturers and silicon carbide power semiconductor manufacturers mostly adopt IDM development mode Wang Zhihan pointed out that the vision of basic semiconductor company is to become a world-class silicon carbide power device enterprise, so IDM mode is the only way.

"We believe that it is only a matter of time before silicon carbide devices in the power semiconductor market will replace silicon-based devices on a large scale, considering the differences in material properties. Although there are still uncertainties in the market, there are huge opportunities for the silicon carbide industry, and we have made a full layout in advance. " Wang Zhihan said.

"It's impossible to make a product overnight. Even after the product is officially launched, it still needs to pass the long cycle of customer testing and certification, small batch delivery and mass shipment. Through efficient development, we can gradually make up for the distance with overseas advanced enterprises. So there are difficulties, but motivation and opportunities. " He continued.

Today, Tesla and other automobile enterprises have fully adopted silicon carbide devices, which brings greater confidence to relevant industrial companies. Wang Zhihan pointed out that the large-scale application of the industry has been accelerating continuously, and the technical route has been determined, which gives the team, customers, partners and investors strong confidence.

It is reported that at present, the performance of basic semiconductor silicon carbide power devices has reached the industry leading level, and has been used in new energy power generation, electric vehicles, rail transit, smart grid and consumer electronics. While continuously expanding its domestic market share, the company is also actively exploring overseas markets,

In the relatively mature second-generation semiconductor and sapphire substrate GaN material market, it is also becoming an inevitable path choice to build a richer industry link capability based on its own position.

Zhou Tiejun told reporters that the compound semiconductor industry of the leading advanced company is a niche industry, and its output value accounts for less than 5% of the total output value of the whole semiconductor industry. If the company wants to absorb enough profits in the compound semiconductor industry, achieve rapid growth, and even compete with big manufacturers such as Europe, the United States and Japan, it must realize diversified landing in the downstream fields.

In view of this, the company started from the production of substrate products for light-emitting diodes. After occupying a large market share, the company began to expand the substrate products for mobile communication and radar.

With the company's high share in the field of gallium arsenide, based on the vertical integration development strategy, it began to explore the downstream market, in order to explore the emerging business growth points.

One of the downstream markets in the layout is 3D sensing. According to Zhou Tiejun, at present, the company has completed the VCSEL laser epitaxy, independent chip design and development, and small batch production. It has sent samples to many customers for testing, and the chip performance is equivalent to the world-class competitive products.

"Entering the VCSEL laser chip field means that the company has entered the semiconductor design + semiconductor chip manufacturing link." He said that in the future, the company will establish the whole industry chain extension, chip, package, module and system manufacturing of compound semiconductor, with product types covering radio frequency (HBT / HEMT), optical communication (DFB / FP / DBR), detector (pin / APD) and space photovoltaic fields, and cooperate with foreign countries to carry out epitaxy, chip OEM business and material application research.

Based on the previous accumulation in the Gan market, China pictures also began to explore further industry research linkage to the third generation semiconductor market. Recently, the company plans to be listed on the science and technology innovation board. Part of the fund-raising purpose is for the "construction project of the third generation semiconductor substrate material engineering research center".

Kang Kai pointed out to reporters that at this stage, American companies are relatively successful in the development of silicon carbide based gallium nitride technology, while Japan has taken another development path through gallium nitride technology on sapphire substrate. This shows that the development route of technology itself is not unique.

"We raised funds to invest in the research and development of the third generation semiconductor material market because we have the obligation to further study in the new frontier market as we gradually expand in the PSS field." He added that after making the world's leading level in subdivided fields, he has mastered the ideas and ability to break through the previous industry development line to a certain extent. With the opening of a larger industrial market, China library also has the ability to further copy to other markets for exploration and landing, thus forming a platform development model.

Of course, he is very conscious of the importance of clear thinking in the process of industrial investment“ We are not preparing for this kind of investment, not to catch up with the wind. The core is to grasp the team and not to grasp the project. If there is a suitable team, we will pay attention to it. " He said.

Now, under the increasingly complete development path of domestic semiconductor ecological chain, companies in the upstream material field, based on their deep accumulation of technology research and development, and their original intention of enduring loneliness, are moving to the next highland.

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