Showing posts with label China ALD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China ALD. Show all posts

Thursday, April 8, 2021

Why China denied Applied Materials take over of Hitachi Kokusai

According to a recent analysis by Robert Castellano (Seeking Alpha/The Information Network LINK), Hitachi Kokusai holds a strong position in tube/non-tube LPCVD and oxidation/diffusion semiconductor equipment. For some time Applied Material has planned the acquisition of Kokusai that would have increased its global market share, for silicon wafer processing equipment by adding a big segment that it does not have in its product portfolio - LPCVD, Diffusion, and ALD Furnaces. According to the market assessment, Hitachi Kokusai holds a leading market share in this segment over No. 2. Tokyo Electron. 

Castellano brings up the interesting observation that "China blocked Applied Materials' acquisition of Kokusai while permitting the Marvell-Inphi deal the same week". Basically meaning that there are more than just US-China Trade issues behind the decision. He concludes that "China is developing a home-grown equipment industry infrastructure, and the deal would impede on that effort." and follows up by breaking up the segments and global competitive situation as below.

Summary by Castellano of China OEM active in LPCVD, Diffusion, and ALD segments vs. the global leaders

China’s NAURA makes oxidation and diffusion furnaces and its products have captured a significant share (40-50%) of YMTC’s thermal process equipment purchases, per our channel checks. In RTP, major players include Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, and Mattson Technology.

NAURA is developing etchers and deposition equipment for 7nm and 5nm nodes. NAURA has a large product offering, and its customers consist of SMIC, Hua Hong, YMTC, and GTA Semiconductors.

NAURA also makes thermal furnaces and has a 45% share of China’s memory maker YMTC purchases. Whereas NAURA sold 8 etch systems and 6 CVD and ALD deposition systems to Chinese semiconductor companies, the company sold 34 furnaces in 2019 as well as 16 cleaning systems.

Shenyang Piotech also supplies PECVD and ALD deposition equipment. Piotech received orders for 4 PECVD (for SiN, SiO2) systems from YMTC, and is also receiving repeat orders from Hua Hong, and SMIC.


The size of the semiconductor equipment market and the small share China's equipment suppliers currently enjoy compared to foreign suppliers (source: The Information Network LINK)

Monday, May 18, 2020

ACM Research Enters Dry Processing Market with Launch of CVD/ALD Ultra Furnace

  • ACM’s First Furnace Product Targets LPCVD Initially, Oxidation, Annealing and ALD in Future
  • ACM Research intends to target customers in China initially, before expanding the offering of the Ultra Furnace into Korea and Taiwan later.
  • ACM delivered the first Ultra Furnace tool to a key logic customer’s manufacturing facility in China in early 2020. This tool targets LPCVD, and has been installed in a production environment to begin qualification.

FREMONT, Calif., April 28, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ACM Research, Inc. (“ACM” or the “Company”) (NASDAQ:ACMR), a leading supplier of wafer cleaning technologies for advanced semiconductor devices, today unveiled the Ultra Furnace, its first system developed for multiple dry processing applications. Initially optimized to deliver high performance for low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD), the Ultra Furnace also leverages the same platform to be used for oxidation and annealing processes, as well as for atomic layer deposition (ALD). This achievement represents a two-year collaboration between ACM’s R&D teams located in China and Korea.



“Advanced technology nodes present ongoing challenges that require innovation from the capital equipment suppliers. This demanding environment provides significant opportunities for ACM,” explained Dr. David Wang, CEO of ACM Research. “Continuous innovation is in our DNA. We saw a market need that could benefit from our technology, and expanded our reach into a new market segment. The addition of the Ultra Furnace to ACM’s established portfolio of wet processing tools, expands our opportunity by providing an integrated solution to our customers’ advanced products.”

“The Ultra Furnace product is the result of collaboration between our talented experts in China and Korea to develop differentiated technology,” stated YY Kim, CEO of ACM Research Korea. “ACM’s team in Korea was established to complement the talents of our world-class Shanghai team, accelerate our time to market, and provide outstanding technical support to our local customers.”

Deposition processes utilize process gases at a high temperature to react with each other on a silicon wafer, forming a silicon oxide or nitride layer on the wafers. The Ultra Furnace system is intended for batch processing of up to 100 12-inch (300mm) wafers. The innovative system design combines newly developed hardware that improves durability, with the company’s proven software technology and a proprietary control system and algorithm. This enables the tool to provide stable control of pressure, gas flow rate and temperature.

While the Ultra Furnace system targets LPCVD processes, with a few changes to the components and layout, each tool can address other target applications. About 85 percent of the hardware configuration remains unchanged, so the alterations for the new application can be achieved efficiently.

ACM Research intends to target customers in China initially, before expanding the offering of the Ultra Furnace into Korea and Taiwan later. ACM delivered the first Ultra Furnace tool to a key logic customer’s manufacturing facility in China in early 2020. This tool targets LPCVD, and has been installed in a production environment to begin qualification.

Friday, January 17, 2020

The 5th International Conference on ALD Applications & 1st Asian ALD Conference (2020 China ALD

Following the successes of the previous four International Conferences on ALD Applications and China ALD Conferences since 2010, the 5th International Conference on ALD Applications & 1st Asian ALD Conference (2020 China ALD) will be a three-day meeting, dedicated to the fundamentals and applications of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology in various fields. It will be held in Wuhan, China, from October 12 to 14, 2020. This conference will feature plenary sessions, oral sessions, poster sessions and industrial exhibitions.

The ALD technique has been widely used and explored in numerous fields such as microelectronics, photoelectronics, optical coating, functional nanomaterials, MEMS/NEMS, energy storage, biotechnology, catalysis technology, and etc.

Conference web: http://www.c-ald.com/

Program Chair

Rong Chen (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China)

Program Co-Chairs

Chang Liu (Wuhan University, China)

Soo-Hyun Kim (Yeungnam University, South Korea) 
 






Saturday, October 20, 2018

The 4th International Conference on ALD Applications & 2018 China ALD Conference

[www.c-ald.com] This week the 4th International Conference on ALD Applications & 2018 China ALD Conference was held  in Shenzhen, China, from October 14 to 17, 2018.

The four-day meeting was dedicated to the fundamentals and applications of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology in various fields.This conference will feature plenary sessions, oral sessions, poster sessions and industrial exhibitions.

PROCEEDING AND FULL PAPER:

Full contributed papers will be peer reviewed and published in a special issue Nanoscale Research Letters ((2018 impact factor: 3.125) https://nanoscalereslett.springeropen.com/aald








Thursday, June 28, 2018

Picosun storms over the Asian ALD production market in several key application areas

ESPOO, Finland, 28th June, 2018 – Picosun Group, a leading supplier of advanced Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) thin film coating technology, breaks through into industrial production in Asia in several new, key application areas.

The applications relate to display manufacturing and telecommunications, and a novel approach to use ALD to improve chip quality diagnostics. 
 
 
The rapidly increasing popularity of smartwatches, wearable activity and health monitors, smartphones, and other small, portable electronic devices equipped with a screen puts a new kind of pressure to display manufacturers. A next generation of solutions needs to be developed, where the image quality, brightness, contrast, and resolution are not compromised even if the screen size gets miniaturized. Advanced LED, micro-LED, OLED, and TFT LCD (thin film transistor liquid crystal display) technologies answer this need but also create more challenges. One is passivation and encapsulation of the devices against ambient conditions, air and moisture. This is where ALD shows its strength. The superior conformality(*) and pinhole-free nature of the ALD films, and the possibility to perform the film depositions at moderate temperatures make ALD the ideal technology for advanced display manufacturers.

The same qualities, conformality and uniformity of the coatings over the smallest nanoscale features, trenches and voids, advocate ALD’s use in protection and passivation of semiconductor laser diodes which are widespread in modern telecommunications and data transmission based on fiber optics.

Picosun has also successfully commercialized an ALD-based method with which resolution and imaging properties of TEM (transmission electron microscopy) can be greatly improved. The main application for this method is chip failure analysis in high-volume manufacturing of various semiconductor components.

”We are happy to take our ALD technology to yet new application areas where it creates new, disruptive solutions to our customers’ key challenges. In China, we have been the market leader in research ALD tools for a long time already, and now we are solidifying our position in the industrial market as well. China, Taiwan, and Singapore are key global hubs when it comes to semiconductor manufacturing. There is our largest industrial customer base and expansion potential,” says Mr. Edwin Wu, CEO of Picosun Asia Pte. Ltd.

(*) In PICOSUN™ ALD systems, samples with ultra-high aspect ratios of over 1:2500 have been successfully coated.

Friday, June 1, 2018

ShenZhen Association for Vacuum Technology Industries visits ALD lab at Fraunhofer IKTS

Today we at the Thin Film Technology group of Fraunhofer IKTS in Dresden were honored to be the 2nd stop for the delegation from the ShenZhen Association for Vacuum Technology Industries from China on their European Trip. We presented the latest research and industrialization of Atomic Layer Deposition technology and discussed new opportunities for ALD industrial application.

Shenzhen is one of the most dynamic cities in China. It is located in the southern part of Guangdong Province, next to Hong Kong. Shenzhen is famous for its rapid economic development since the establishment of the special economic zone in 1980. Over the past several decades, Shenzhen has been developed from a small fishing village to currently a modern city featured for innovation and high-tech. Many renowned high-tech companies such as Huawei, Tencent, and BYD are located in Shenzhen.

The next China ALD Confernce will be held in Shenzhen, China, from October 14 to 17, 2018 (LINK)

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Picosun sweeps through China with over 20 new customers

ESPOO, Finland, 28th December, 2016 – Picosun Oy, the leading supplier of advanced industrial ALD (Atomic Layer Deposition) solutions, reports winning more than 20 new customers in China for its ALD systems since December 2015.
 
 
 
According to SEMI, out of 62 front-end fabs that will open worldwide over the next three years, 26 are in China, representing 42% of the global total. (Data from SEMI)

Amongst these customers are many of China’s leading companies in LEDs, III-V semiconductors, and new energy. Thanks to the high technical level of PICOSUN™ ALD equipment and the excellent customer support, Picosun has become the supplier of choice for ALD technology in China.

Chinese semiconductor manufacturing and the number of planned fabs in the country are booming, making China the new key market for semiconductor processing equipment. This is the most excellent news considering Picosun’s prominent position as the advanced ALD solutions provider. Collaboration with the leading Chinese research institutes is further supporting Picosun’s sprint in the market.

“We are extremely happy with the development of our ALD business in China. Our achievements are based on solid ALD knowhow, high-level support and proprietary designs, which give the best value for our Chinese customers and ensure our steady progress in the Chinese market. We are committed to our customer satisfaction by providing the newest and the best ALD solutions and systems in the market,” states Mr. Xiaopeng Wu, CEO of Picosun China.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Invited Speakers for China ALD 2016 Announced

Following the successes of the previous two international Conferences on ALD Applications and China ALD Conferences since 2010, the 3rd International Conference on ALD Applications & 2016 China ALD Conference will be a four-day meeting, dedicated to the fundamentals and applications of Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) technology in various fields. It will be held in Suzhou, China, from October 16 to 19, 2016. This conference will feature plenary sessions, oral sessions, poster sessions and industrial exhibitions.


Recently the Keynote Speakers (see above) as well as the list of Invited Speakers have been updated and can be found here: http://www.c-ald.com/Data/View/69.

Also full contributed papers will be peer reviewed and published in a special issue Nanoscale Research Letters (2015 impact factor: 2.584)​.