Panoramic view of semiconductor equipment industry chain

According to the SEMI report, global semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales will reach US$107.6 billion in 2022, a year-on-year increase of 5%, setting another record high; from 2018 to 2022, the global semiconductor equipment market will grow from US$64.5 billion to US$107.6 billion, with a compound annual growth rate The rate reached 13.65%; semiconductor equipment sales in mainland China were US$28.3 billion, still the world's largest semiconductor equipment market.

01

Semiconductor Equipment Industry Overview

Equipment is the cornerstone of the development of the semiconductor industry. Semiconductor special equipment generally refers to the production equipment required for the production of various semiconductor products. It is a key supporting link in the semiconductor industry chain. It is also the part with the widest space and the most important strategic value in the upstream link.

The position of semiconductor equipment in the semiconductor industry chain:

Semiconductor special equipment is the technology leader in the semiconductor industry. Chip design, wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, etc. need to be designed and manufactured within the scope of equipment technology. The technological progress of equipment in turn promotes the development of the semiconductor industry. Taking integrated circuits, which have the highest technical difficulty, the greatest added value, and the most complex processes in the semiconductor industry chain, as an example, equipment used in the integrated circuit field can usually be divided into front-end process equipment (wafer manufacturing) and back-end process equipment (packaging and testing). ) two categories. In wafer manufacturing, it can be divided into seven major processes, namely oxidation/diffusion, photolithography, etching, ion implantation, thin film deposition, cleaning and metallization. The corresponding special equipment mainly includes oxidation/diffusion equipment, photolithography Equipment, etching equipment, cleaning equipment, ion implantation equipment, thin film deposition equipment, mechanical polishing equipment, etc. Equipment investment in chip manufacturing equipment accounts for about 80% of the main capital expenditures of integrated circuits. Semiconductor equipment classification:

02

Core link of semiconductor equipment

Silicon wafer manufacturing is the largest step in semiconductor processing. The equipment involved in the silicon wafer manufacturing process is mainly divided into growth furnaces and other processing equipment, including cutting machines, grinding machines, etching machines, polishing machines, cleaning machines, etc. The wafer manufacturing process is complex and covers many processes. After the silicon wafer is ground, polished, and sliced, it forms a silicon wafer, that is, a wafer. The process flow of wafer manufacturing mainly includes diffusion, photolithography, etching, ion implantation, film growth, polishing, and metallization. A typical wafer manufacturing process is complex and time-consuming, taking 6-8 weeks and covering more than 350 steps. In the wafer manufacturing process, the core equipment mainly used are thin film deposition equipment, photolithography equipment and etching equipment; while the market size of PVD/cleaning/measurement equipment is in the second echelon.

1. Etching equipment

Integrated circuit manufacturing mainly transfers all photomask patterns to the wafer layer by layer through three major process cycles: film deposition, photolithography and etching. Etching is one of the three most important types of equipment in the front-end wafer production process, accounting for 25% of its value. As the complexity of the semiconductor device structure increases, especially the reduction of line width and the 3D structure, the etching amount of a single semiconductor device is also greatly increased. Etching technology is mainly divided into dry etching and wet etching. Dry etching mainly uses reactive gases and plasma for etching, while wet etching mainly uses chemical reagents to react with the etched material for etching. Dry etching is the current mainstream etching technology. SEMI predicts that the global etching equipment market is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 5% in the next five years, and the market size is expected to reach US$15.5 billion in 2025. Etching equipment classification and main application areas:

From the perspective of the global etching equipment market structure, competition among manufacturers is fierce, and Chinese companies are emerging. According to Gartner data, the global market share of etching machines is still dominated by the three giants Lam Semiconductor (46.71%), Tokyo Electronics (26.57%) and Applied Materials (16.96%). Hitachi High-tech and Ximeishi occupy 3.45% and 2.53% of the global market share respectively. Domestic micro companies account for 1.37% of the global market, Kelei accounts for 1.23%, Northern Huachuang accounts for 0.89%, Aifake accounts for 0.19%, and Yitang Semiconductor accounts for 0.10%.

2. Thin film deposition equipment

Thin film deposition equipment is usually used to deposit film layers of conductors, insulators or semiconductors on substrates to give them certain special properties. Thin film deposition equipment can be divided into physical vapor deposition (PVD) equipment, chemical vapor deposition (CVD) equipment and atomic layer deposition (ALD) equipment according to different process principles. CVD accounts for 64% of the overall market share of deposition equipment. It has many technical routes and has good pore filling and film thickness control capabilities, so it is the most widely used deposition equipment.

From the perspective of market structure, thin film deposition equipment is mainly dominated by Japanese, American and European manufacturers. According to Gartner data, in terms of PVD equipment, Applied Materials has an absolute share advantage, accounting for 85% of the market share; Applied Materials, Lam Semiconductor and Tokyo Electronics are the leaders in the CVD equipment market, accounting for 30%, 21% and 19% respectively. %; among ALD equipment, Tokyo Electronics and ASMI are the industry leaders, occupying 31% and 29% of the market share respectively.

Among domestic manufacturers, Northern Huachuang and Tuojing Technology are leading the research and development of thin film deposition equipment. While China Microelectronics is deeply engaged in MOCVD for LED manufacturing, it is also investing in tungsten-filled CVD equipment. Northern Huachuang's CVD, PVD and other related equipment has reached the 28nm process level; the 14nm advanced process thin film deposition equipment and ALD equipment have been verified and implemented on the client side through multi-process processes. AMEC's tungsten-filled CVD equipment can be applied to advanced logic device contact hole filling, as well as several key film deposition steps in 64-layer, 128-layer and 200-layer 3D NAND. Some of Tuojing Technology’s CVD equipment has been widely used in China’s wafer factories for 14nm and above process integrated circuit manufacturing lines, and product verification testing for 14nm and below processes has been carried out; some ALD equipment has been used in China’s wafer factories for 28nm and above processes. Integrated circuit manufacturing production line, and has launched product verification testing for 28nm and below processes.

3. Lithography machine

The lithography machine is the core equipment of the lithography process in chip manufacturing, with extremely high technical and value content. It uses a technology similar to photo printing to print the fine patterns on the mask onto the silicon wafer through light exposure. It has been developed and iterated for more than ten generations. The lithography machine industry chain mainly includes three major links: upstream equipment and supporting materials, midstream lithography machine system integration and production, and downstream lithography machine applications. The technology is extremely complex, involving system integration, precision optics, precision motion, precision material transmission, high-end Precision micro-environment control and other advanced technologies, some models require hundreds of thousands of parts, so the production of lithography machines usually involves thousands of suppliers.

The technical barriers to photolithography machines are extremely high, and ASML is the only company in the Netherlands. ASML lithography machine revenue in 2022 will be approximately US$16.1 billion, an increase of 23% from 13.1 billion in 2021. Canon lithography machine revenue will be approximately US$2 billion, and Nikon lithography machine business revenue will be approximately US$1.5 billion, of which Canon and Nikon Some of the lithography machines are used in the panel industry, and some are used in semiconductors. In 2022, the total revenue of the lithography machines of the three major companies will be close to 20 billion U.S. dollars, and the total market share will exceed 90%. The domestic benchmark product is ASML's DUV lithography machine: TWINSCAN NXT:2000i. Taking NXT:2000i as an example, each subsystem is split as follows: Shanghai Microelectronics is responsible for the design and overall integration of the lithography machine, Beijing Keyi Hongyuan provides the light source system, Beijing Guowang Optics provides the objective lens system, and Guoke Precision provides the exposure optical system , Huazhuo Jingke provides double workbenches, and Zhejiang Qier Electromechanical provides the immersion system.

4. Gluing and developing equipment Gluing and developing equipment is the glue coating, baking and developing equipment used in conjunction with the photolithography machine in the photolithography process, including glue coating machines, glue spraying machines and developing machines. The glue coating/developing machine serves as the input (photoresist coating before exposure) and output (development of graphics after exposure) of the photolithography machine. It mainly uses robots to transfer and process wafers between systems to complete the wafer processing. Photoresist coating, curing, development, film hardening and other processes. It not only directly affects the formation of fine exposure patterns in the photolithography process, but the pattern quality of the development process also has a profound impact on the results of pattern transfer in subsequent etching and ion implantation processes. It is an indispensable key process in the integrated circuit manufacturing process. equipment. Photolithography process:

In the field of front-end coating and development equipment, Japanese manufacturer Tokyo Electronics (TEL) has a global market share of as high as 87%. Relying on years of technology accumulation, domestic manufacturer Xinyuan Micro independently developed the first domestic high-capacity front-end glue coating equipment in 2018, and successfully passed the process verification of downstream integrated circuit manufacturing plants. At present, the front-end coating and development equipment produced by Xinyuan Micro has received orders and applications from multiple large front-end customers. Its front-end coating and development equipment business will significantly benefit from domestic substitution opportunities.

5. Cleaning equipment

Semiconductor cleaning refers to the process of non-destructive cleaning of the wafer surface according to different process requirements to remove impurities such as particles, natural oxide layers, metal contamination, organic matter, sacrificial layers, and polishing residues during the semiconductor manufacturing process. In order to reduce the impact of impurities on chip yield, in actual production it is not only necessary to improve single cleaning efficiency, but also to perform frequent cleaning before and after almost all processes. According to the cleaning principle, the cleaning process can be divided into dry cleaning and wet cleaning. Currently, more than 90% of the cleaning steps are mainly wet processes. Under the wet cleaning process route, it mainly includes single-chip cleaning equipment, trough cleaning equipment, combined cleaning equipment and batch-type rotating spray cleaning equipment, among which single-chip cleaning equipment is the mainstream. Cleaning equipment classification:

In the global cleaning equipment market, Japanese companies occupy a dominant position, with DNS accounting for more than 40% of the market share. TEL, SEMES, Ram Research, etc. also occupy a high market share in the industry, and the market concentration is high. In the domestic market, DNS and TEL still occupy a large market share, while Shengmei and Northern Huachuang occupy about 10% and 5% of the market share respectively, breaking the import monopoly to a certain extent and opening up domestic substitution. Manufacturers in the field of semiconductor cleaning in my country include Shengmei Shanghai, Northern Huachuang, Xinyuan Micro and Pure Technology, etc. The localization rate of cleaning equipment is about 31%. Compared with other semiconductor equipment, the technical threshold of cleaning equipment is lower, and it is expected to be the first to achieve full localization in the next five years.

6. Oxidation/diffusion equipment

The continuous improvement of downstream demand for the performance of semiconductor products will have a pulling effect on the upstream heat treatment equipment market. Under this trend, heat treatment equipment is expected to gain greater development space. Domestic Yitang Semiconductor ranks second as the only Chinese company with a market share of 11.50%. The other three major companies in the international market are International Electric, Veiko and Schooling.

7. CMP equipment

Chemical mechanical grinding/chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is currently a recognized nanoscale global planarization precision processing technology. In the silicon wafer manufacturing process, after completing the crystal pulling, silicon ingot processing, and slicing forming processes, in the polishing process, the final smooth and clean polished wafer needs to be achieved through CMP equipment and processes. In the integrated circuit manufacturing process, the chip manufacturing process can be mainly divided into thin film deposition, CMP, photolithography, etching, ion implantation and other process links according to the technical division of labor. CMP equipment is indispensable. In the field of advanced packaging, through silicon via (TSV) technology, fan-out (Fan Out) technology, 2.5D interposer, 3D IC, etc. all require the use of CMP equipment. Integrated circuit manufacturing process and CMP process application scenarios:

Among global CMP equipment manufacturers, Applied Materials occupies the majority share, accounting for 70%, followed by Ebara Machinery, accounting for 25%. A number of outstanding companies have also emerged among domestic manufacturers, including Huahai Qingke, Tianjun Electromechanical, CLP 45, Shuoke Micro, etc., filling the gap in domestic CMP equipment manufacturers. However, compared with foreign manufacturers, there is still much room for improvement in the localization rate of CMP equipment. At present, Huahai Qingke CMP equipment is mainly used in 28nm and above process production lines, and 14nm is still being verified, ahead of other domestic manufacturers. Its equipment has been widely used in the large production lines of leading integrated circuit manufacturing companies in the industry such as SMIC, Yangtze Memory, Huahong Group, Dalian Intel, Xiamen Lianxin, Changxin Memory, Guangzhou Yuexin, Shanghai Jita, etc., occupying the domestic CMP The vast majority of the market share in equipment sales.

8. Ion implanter

The ion implanter is a very large equipment, including several subsystems: gas system, motor system, vacuum system, control system and the most important ray system. Ion implantation equipment and main process flow:

Among global CMP equipment manufacturers, Applied Materials occupies the majority share, accounting for 70%, followed by Ebara Machinery, accounting for 25%. A number of outstanding companies have also emerged among domestic manufacturers, including Huahai Qingke, Tianjun Electromechanical, CLP 45, Shuoke Micro, etc., filling the gap in domestic CMP equipment manufacturers. However, compared with foreign manufacturers, there is still much room for improvement in the localization rate of CMP equipment. At present, Huahai Qingke CMP equipment is mainly used in 28nm and above process production lines, and 14nm is still being verified, ahead of other domestic manufacturers. Its equipment has been widely used in the large production lines of leading integrated circuit manufacturing companies in the industry such as SMIC, Yangtze Memory, Huahong Group, Dalian Intel, Xiamen Lianxin, Changxin Memory, Guangzhou Yuexin, Shanghai Jita, etc., occupying the domestic CMP The vast majority of the market share in equipment sales.

8. Ion implanter

The ion implanter is a very large equipment, including several subsystems: gas system, motor system, vacuum system, control system and the most important ray system. Ion implantation equipment and main process flow:

In the ion implanter market, American companies monopolize the vast majority of the market share, with Applied Materials (AMAT) accounting for approximately 70% of the market share, and Axcelis accounting for approximately 20% of the market share. Japan also has well-known manufacturers of plasma implanters such as Nissin, Nippon Vacuum, and Sumitomo Heavy Industries. Among domestic companies, only Keshitong and Zhongkexin have the R&D and production capabilities for integrated circuit ion implanters. The first low-energy large-beam ion implanter independently developed by Keshitong (a subsidiary of Wanye Enterprise) took the lead in completing equipment verification at a domestic 12-inch mainstream integrated circuit chip manufacturing plant. The high-energy ion implanter was successfully delivered to a 12-inch integrated circuit chip manufacturing plant. The low-energy high-beam heavy metal ion implanter and the low-energy high-beam ultra-low-temperature ion implanter successfully passed the manufacturer's verification. Zhongkexin's "90-65nm large-angle ion implanter research and development and industrialization" project passed the national major special project acceptance with a high score, and various models of 45-28nm ion implanters passed the verification of international cutting-edge technology. Products include medium beam, large beam, high energy, special applications and third-generation semiconductor plasma implanters. The R&D and industrialization projects of 12-inch 45-22nm low-energy large-beam ion implanters have entered a new stage of independent innovation.

9. Glue removal equipment

With the development of advanced chip manufacturing technology,