IC Coffee Annual Conference minutes to share

Dr. Zhang Yujing's speech on the "New Sheng Semiconductor 300mm Silicon Project" speech

Guest introduction

Guest speaker: Zhang Yujing

      Zhang Jingjing, a godfather of the semiconductor industry in mainland China, worked for Texas Instruments for 20 years and is currently the general manager of Xinsheng Semiconductor. As a vanguard of Texas Instruments, he successfully created or managed technology development and IC operations for more than a dozen factories in the United States, Japan, Singapore, Italy, and China Taiwan. In 2000, SMIC was founded, and its annual revenue growth rate was 6.3 times, making it the fastest growing wafer manufacturing company in the world. It also drove the development of the mainland semiconductor industry by leaps and bounds.

      Starting from the end of 2009, it officially entered the LED R&D, manufacturing, and LED-related applications, and worked hard in the field of environmental protection and health.

      In 2014, Dr. Zhang began to enter the field of large silicon wafers and began a new journey of R&D and mass production of 300-mm-large silicon wafers (12-inch silicon wafers). This move will also make up for the mainland's semiconductor industry an important shortcoming. He has personally contributed nearly 40 years of experience in the semiconductor industry to developing the semiconductor industry in the mainland.

Minutes notes

Dear guests, everyone.

All of you IC industry professionals present here have been crippled in our semiconductor industry chain. However, we still lack an important link: silicon materials.

(Global market forecast for different size silicon wafers)

First of all, let's take a look at the current status and development forecast of different size silicon wafers in the world. Among them, 300mm silicon wafers are 12-inch silicon wafers. Since 2009, they have become the mainstream of global silicon wafer demand (greater than 50%). It is estimated that in 2017, Will account for more than 75% of market demand for silicon wafers. The 12-inch tape process is a very important process in semiconductor manufacturing. So we now see that most new foundries in mainland China are 12-inch factories, followed by some 8-inch factories that use second-hand equipment. However, there are few new foundries under 6 inches.

As of 2014, the amount of 300mm silicon wafers in the world has accounted for about 65% of the wafer output, with an average of 4.5 million wafers/month. The average monthly demand in the first to the second quarter of 2015 is about 5 million pieces. Currently, 12-inch silicon chips are used to consume memory, digital circuit chips, and mixed-signal circuit chips with feature sizes (16 nm and 14 nm) of 90 nm to 28 nm and below.

In 2014, among the top ten most demanding 300mm wafer vendors, Samsung used the largest amount of memory and logic chips. The second largest was Micron, only memory, and the third largest was Toshiba and SanDisk. The company is also basically a logic product. The fourth largest player is Hynix, which is almost entirely memory. The fifth largest user is Taiwan’s TSMC, which is almost entirely used as a logic chip, and Intel is the sixth. Great use of volume. Among the top ten applications, Taiwanese Semiconductor, UMC, Powerchip, etc., and 12-inch wafer foundry and memory, the Chinese have done very well. And our domestic demand for 12-inch silicon wafers has also begun to rise. From the perspective of demand in the semiconductor market, starting from 2004, China’s demand has exceeded the United States as the world’s largest semiconductor demand, around 2010. The demand for semiconductors in Mainland China accounts for 50% of the world's total. In 2016, it accounted for 60% of global demand.

(Global IC Market Demand Regional Status and Trend Forecast)

As the previous speakers said, the demand for mainland semiconductors is very large. Our own IC (integrated circuit) industry consumes less, so today IC (integrated circuit) has become the single most imported item in mainland China. Years exceeded the amount of oil imports. China, as a big country in the use of ICs (ICs), has not been able to consume enough energy and has relied too much on imports. As a result, the National IC Industrial Investment Fund (grand fund) established by the country and the IC special fund established by local governments aim to accelerate IC industry development and promotion.

I remember that around 2000, domestic IC (integrated circuit) consumption could supply about 6-8% of domestic demand, that is, more than 90% was dependent on imports. After the establishment of SMIC and other colleagues, the entire country can supply 15% of domestic IC (integrated circuit) demand. However, from about 2006 up to now, although the supply has increased a lot, but the demand is also added simultaneously, the percentage of self-supply of domestic IC is still maintained at about 15%. The government is also concerned about the development of the IC industry. It is hoped that by 2025, the self-sufficiency rate of the domestic IC industry can reach at least 50%.

 (28nm will be the main product of 2017-2018)

The integrated circuit manufacturing is basically 12 inches at present, and the technology is below 40nm, about 10nm or even below (size) more advanced technology mass production can be achieved around 2025. Among them, 28nm will be the main force in 2017-2018, the proportion of 20nm is added, and 16nm and 14nm are very difficult, the quantity of production is not too much, but it is estimated that 16nm and 14nm should be mass-produced in 2019, 28nm The product process will go to the 16nm or 14nm process product line, 28nm process production will slowly decline. However, since 28nm is a long-lived technology, the demand for 28nm process will still be high after 2019. Therefore, the country also hopes to speed up R&D and mass production of 28nm silicon wafers (300mm wafers). This is a good opportunity.

But where are the results? We see the integrated circuit industry chain, the most downstream is the design company, which is now developing very well in our country, there are several companies can design to 16nm, 14nm; but consumption, downstream material IC grade polysilicon is not yet, However, it will soon be there. There have been several companies that have been promoting projects. Polysilicon raw materials, high-purity quartz, the world's known reserves, China's most, the best quality, but we had before the reduction of quartz into metal silicon after low-cost domestic sales, and then import high-priced polysilicon, and quartz to restore The stage of metallic silicon is highly purified. Fortunately, before the solar industry led the development of the domestic polysilicon industry, the current solar grade polysilicon, China's production was once the world's first.

The solar grade polysilicon purity is 99.9999%, a total of six "9", now doing a little better at 7-8 "9" and semiconductor grade 11 "9", the current domestic laboratory can do a large number of semiconductor grade However, it is impossible to do several tons of single crystals. Therefore, the state is also very concerned about this, in the 02 special project, there are projects to handle semiconductor grade polysilicon production results, it is estimated that in about 2-3 years can be achieved 11 "9" of the mass production of polysilicon, can generally meet the domestic industry chain Demand.

However, in the IC industry chain, the downstream part of polysilicon: IC-grade crystal rods and wafers are still an important part of the missing of our national IC industry chain.

At present, at the back end of the industry chain, domestic IC Wafer Fabrication has been up, and both sides of the Taiwan Straits have become the world's largest in terms of packaging and testing. In this regard, the mainland's progress is even faster than Taiwan. In addition, product assembly is already the world's first, such as the iPhone; End-user consumers are also the first in the world. The back end of the domestic IC industry chain is strong, but the front end is weaker.

Now 300mm semiconductor grade silicon wafers, the domestic demand for a month about 45-50 million, and the current domestic production is almost zero, which is the industry chain, the most critical link. In this ring, Japan is the world’s largest consumer, Japan’s Shin-Etsu and SUMCO, which together account for more than two-thirds of global supply of capacity and practice. 300mm semiconductor-grade silicon wafers are not only an important link in the absence of industrial chains, but also a requirement for the development of national security strategies.

In 2012-2013, the Ministry of Science had already prepared funds for large-scale silicon projects in Project 02, but it has been unable to issue projects. The reason is that although domestic R&D institutions have done 12-inch wafers, R&D Successful, but still not producing energy due to low yield. In 2014, the leaders of the special department of the Ministry of Science 02 also met with us. The requirements are not only successful in research and development but also successful in mass production. The concept of mass production is not a few thousand pieces. It is the delivery of more than 100,000 pieces of products per month and delivery of more than 100,000 pieces of customers for six consecutive months to complete the project.

(Shanghai Xinsheng Semiconductor Science Co., Ltd.)

   In the early days when working as a Fab factory, we often encountered the situation that silicon wafer suppliers were often out of stock or increased their prices, and few overseas companies were willing to provide technical assistance. Therefore, we are constantly thinking of own consumption of silicon wafers.

In this situation, in 2014, we started to build a team to try and do a great job, because at present there is no real company in the country to do an overproduction process. Just like in 2000, we returned to China to do 0.25-micron technology. The recruitment of talents from overseas, this time also, has found a large number of overseas professionals who have practical mass production experience to drive this project. In this case, Shanghai Xinsheng Semiconductor Science Co., Ltd. was established in Lingang in June 2014.

(factory overall effect chart)

The demand for domestic silicon wafers is likely to reach 800,000 monthly or even 1 million per month by 2020, so we plan to produce 600,000 units per month for 2021/2022. The overall planning of the plant area covers an area of 150 mu and the total investment is about RMB 6.8 billion. The total investment in the first phase is about RMB 2.3 billion.

Among them, the pull-crystal factory is 23 meters high, only one layer, pulling a single height of 15 meters, 450 kilograms. It also includes cutting mills, power plants, consumer plants, and pilot office buildings. By the end of January 2016, it had basically reached the capping stage. There is room for improvement in the planning of 600,000 production capacity.

At present, in the domestic semiconductor industry, except for silicon wafers that rely on imports (more than 65% of the production capacity is in Japan), most of the other raw materials, chemicals, and equipment are dependent on imports from Europe, the United States, and Japan. For example, the grinding process after the silicon wafer is cut and many diamond grinding wheels are manufactured in Japan. The diamonds are made in China, but they cannot be made into grinding wheels at present. For example, the quartz crucibles used in the semiconductor level are also similar. We also hope that aspirational young people will be able to fill in these blank areas and try their best to make them domestically. Only the quality of production will be reliable, and we will give priority to them.

In terms of process and inspection and analysis equipment, the plant and equipment include: crystal pulling furnace (in which superconducting magnetic field used for crystal pulling furnace has no domestic consumption at present, and in early procurement, certain high-precision testing equipment is subject to export acceptance and other factors, Some countries in East Asia have refused to supply goods or have agreed to set limits on exports, and they will eventually be purchased in Europe.) This project also requires many other precision equipment, such as equal-diameter spheronizer (which is not yet self-consumed in China), sawing machine, crystal quality characterization and analysis equipment, wire cutting machine, post-cutting cleaning machine, double-side grinding machine, Edge grinder, double-sided refiner, stress eradication and etching machine, double-side polishing machine, edge polishing machine, final polishing machine, final polishing pre-cleaning machine, measuring equipment, multi-layer connotation reactor, high-efficiency connotation reactor, particles Detector (minimum particle size detection: 26 nm), flatness detector, crystal thin film impurity contamination and resistivity detection and analysis equipment, etc. Some of these equipment can be mass-produced domestically, but most are purchased from Europe, America, Japan, Therefore, it is hoped that these equipments and raw materials will be able to be mass produced in the country in the future.

Xinsheng Semiconductor's first-phase goal is to research and develop silicon wafer industrialization complete production technology for 300mm silicon single crystal growth, silicon wafer processing, consummation wafer preparation, silicon wafer analysis and detection applicable to 40-28nm nodes in China; The 300-mm semiconductor wafer consumption base has trained domestic R&D, engineering, and consumer talents to complete the localization of 300-mm semiconductor wafers, which fully meets the urgent requirements of China's very-large-scale integrated circuit industry for silicon substrate base materials.

Our schedule is estimated to begin sampling in this year (16 years) in June. We hope to start mass production by the end of the year. Although the certification is very long, many customers are willing to cooperate with us. By the end of next year (at the end of 17th), the target is to produce 100,000 pieces of energy each month (with higher internal goals), and by 2021-2022, it will achieve the goal of producing 600,000 pieces per month.

The entire project has a large amount of investment, but it also contributes more to the country and the industry. We are recruiting talents in many positions. We hope that more willing young people can participate in this undertaking and join in this undertaking to achieve this mission. Thank you, !

Postscript

I am grateful for Dr. Zhang's second visit to IC Coffee. This time, Dr. Zhang’s speech on the 300-mm-large silicon project also included the personnel recruitment plan of this project. After IC Coffee and Xinsheng HR department confirmed it, IC Coffee will also provide assistance for the project’s personnel recruitment program.