What is the most difficult material in the wafer manufacturing process?

Semiconductor materials can be divided into wafer materials and packaging materials. Packaging materials have relatively low technical barriers compared to wafer manufacturing materials, so we are mainly talking about wafer manufacturing materials.

Let's first briefly understand what is wafer manufacturing and packaging testing, or use pizza as an example.

Earlier I said that the silicon wafer is the bottom of the cake, pierce a few holes on the basis of the bottom of the cake, sprinkle various materials, and then bake out the oven. This process is wafer manufacturing. When the wafer manufacturing plant came out, it was still a wafer, but there were circuits on it, with thousands or tens of thousands of grains.

Packaging test is to cut thousands of or tens of thousands of grains on the wafer into one piece, then wear a piece of clothing (encapsulation) for each one, and detect which is good and which is bad (Test), the good one is selected and sent to the next link of the industry chain.

The production of wafers mainly involves seven types of semiconductor materials and chemicals, and each type accounts for roughly the following market share of semiconductor materials:

1. Silicon wafer: 33%

2. Special gas: 17%

3. Mask version: 15%

4. Ultra-clean high-purity reagent: 13%

5. Polishing liquid and polishing pad: 7%

6. Photoresist material: 7%

7. Sputtering target: 3%

Today we mainly talk about sputtering targets that account for about 3% of the semiconductor materials market.

Simply put, the target material is the target material bombarded by high-speed energetic particles. By replacing different target materials (such as aluminum, copper, stainless steel, titanium, nickel targets, etc.), different film systems (such as superhard, resistant Grinding, anti-corrosion alloy film, etc.).

At present, (high purity) sputtering targets can be divided into:

â‘ Metal target (pure metal aluminum, titanium, copper, tantalum, etc.)

â‘¡ Alloy target (nickel-chromium alloy, nickel-cobalt alloy, etc.)

â‘¢ Ceramic compound targets (oxides, silicides, carbides, sulfides, etc.).

According to different switches, it can be divided into long target, square target and round target.

According to different application fields, it can be divided into: semiconductor chip targets, flat display targets, solar cell targets, information storage targets, tool modification targets, electronic device targets, other targets.

Sputtering: the process to be used repeatedly in the manufacturing process of integrated circuits; target material: it is an important and essential raw material in the sputtering process. Then, there are certain differences in material selection and performance requirements in different application areas, as follows:

The inside of the semiconductor is composed of tens of thousands of meters of metal wiring, and the sputtering target is a key consumable material for making these wirings. For example, Apple's A10 processor, tens of thousands of meters of metal wires are densely covered on the size of a fingernail. These densely packed circuits must be formed by sputtering high-purity metal targets.

It is reported that the high-purity sputtering target of Jiangfeng Electronics is used to manufacture the Apple A10 chip.

Sputtering target material is a very difficult material at the core of semiconductor wafer manufacturing. The chip has very high requirements on the sputtering target material, and the target purity is very high, generally more than 5N (99.999%).

5N means there are 5 9s, 4N means there are 4 9s, that is 99.99%, which purity is higher, you can see at a glance.

In the field of purification, for every additional 9 after the decimal point, the difficulty increases exponentially, and the technical threshold is higher.

Application and market structure

Now that you know the high-purity sputtering target and the aluminum, titanium, copper, and tantalum of the metal target, how can you tell which metal is used on a few inch wafer and which is used in advanced manufacturing processes?

In the manufacture of semiconductor wafers, wafers of 200 mm (8 inches) and below are usually made of aluminum, and the targets used are mainly aluminum and titanium. 300mm (12 inch) wafer manufacturing, mostly using advanced copper interconnection technology, mainly using copper and tantalum targets.

At the same time, titanium material is also used as the main material of the high dielectric constant dielectric metal gate technology, and aluminum material is used as the main material of the wafer bonding pad process.

In general, as the use of chips is becoming more and more extensive, the demand for the chip market has increased, and the demand for aluminum, titanium, tantalum, and copper, the four mainstream thin-film metal materials in the industry, will certainly increase. And at present, there is no other solution that can replace these four thin-film metal materials in terms of technology and economic scale, so these four materials currently do not see the risk of being replaced.

In the competitive landscape, since the sputtering coating process originated abroad, the performance requirements of the sputtering target products required are high. For a long time, the global development and production of sputtering target materials have mainly been concentrated in a few companies in the United States and Japan. Quite high. Sputtering target material manufacturers represented by Honeywell (USA), Nippon Metals (Japan), Tosoh (Japan), etc. account for most of the global market share.

After grasping the core technology of sputtering target production, these enterprises implement extremely strict confidentiality measures to limit the diffusion of technology, and at the same time continue to expand horizontally and vertically, and actively expand their business reach to various application fields of sputtering coating. Grasp the initiative of the global sputtering target market and lead the technological progress of the global sputtering target industry.

As for its application fields, it is mainly concentrated in the semiconductor industry, flat panel display industry (including touch screen industry) and solar cell industry.

Sputtering targets belong to electronic materials, and the relationship between upstream and downstream of their industrial chain is as follows:

Related listed companies

The domestic sputtering target industry started late. After years of scientific and technological research and industrial application, the domestic high-purity sputtering target production enterprises have gradually broken through the key technical threshold and broke through the zero situation, with large-scale production of some products Ability, it is foreseeable that the future will reach a period of rapid development.

Listed companies in the domestic semiconductor target business are as follows:

Let's focus on Jiangfeng Electronics, Youyan New Materials and Astronix!

Jiangfeng Electronics:

The largest manufacturer of sputtering targets for semiconductor chips in China. The main products are various high-purity sputtering targets, including aluminum targets, titanium targets, tantalum targets, tungsten-titanium targets, and carbon fiber supports for LCDs. They are used in semiconductors (mainly It is the field of VLSI), flat panel display, solar energy and so on. In the field of domestic targets, a breakthrough from 0 to 1 was achieved, breaking the monopoly of American and Japanese multinational companies.

Tantalum rings for integrated circuits 28-14nm technology nodes have been mass-produced in TSMC's 16nm chips, and titanium targets for 14nm have also been evaluated at SMIC. With tantalum targets and titanium targets at 28-14nm technology nodes Comprehensive mass production will significantly improve the company's performance.

Its main customers are TSMC, UMC, GlobalFoundries, SMIC, Sony, Toshiba, Renesas, Micron, Hynix, Huahong Hongli, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, BOE, Huaxing Optoelectronics, etc.

A Shichuang:

The leading products are two series of sputtering targets and evaporation materials. The products have been widely used in flat panel displays, optical components, energy-saving glass and other fields, and have developed a variety of products for solar cells, semiconductors and other fields. It is a comprehensive PVD coating material manufacturer with a complete range of products, a wide range of applications, and a comprehensive process technology in the domestic PVD coating material industry.

The main customers are BOE, Innolux, Lansi Technology, Burne Optics, Epson, Crystal Optoelectronics, etc.

There are new materials:

The subsidiary's main products are high-purity metal targets, vapor deposition materials, orthodontic equipment, medical interventional stents, precious metal alloys and compounds. Copper targets, tantalum targets, etc.

Its cobalt target has been verified by TSMC, breaking TSMC's 20-year history of no second supplier of semiconductor cobalt targets.

The main customers are TSMC, SMIC, Umicore, Johnson Matthey, etc. In addition, there are Antai Technology, Guiyan Platinum and so on.

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