Chinese semiconductor industry

WTAN said:

Since the Government has decided to spend more funds on the development of the Semiconductor Industry, there is talk that the EUVL could appear sometime in 2025.
With the development of the 28nm DUVL, the Chinese Academy of Sciences didnt really play a big part in its development. SMEE and a consortium of companies basically played a major part in its development which was why it took a little longer to produce the DUVL.
With the EUVL, the CAS is actually playing a bigger part in its development as much of the technologies are new and costly to develop.
The CAS has organised a EUVL Alliance to attract companies that want to be involved in this project.
Huawei is also involved in this EUVL Alliance.
ASML has a similar Alliance which comprises of TSMC, Samsung, Carl Zeiss etc.

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By "EUVL could appear sometime in 2025" do you mean a working prototype, or mass production?

Hi horse,

another one from motif (china military forum), @WTAN is this the one you refer to as the huge SMIC FABS under construction in Beijing, 135,000 wafer pieces per month seems a lot.

You do know that SMIC is now under sanction, right? Under the reason blah blah blah. It doesn't stop them from expanding. If they're smart, they should remove as much American tech as possible moving forward.

SMIC Establishes New 12-Inch Wafer Subsidiary in Beijing​

Dec 07, 2020 04:56 PM (GMT+8)
The large semiconductor foundry plans to expand production capacity with the new subsidiary – and will promote sustainable development.
On December 4, 2020, SMIC announced plans to set up a new wafer fabrication company, SMIC Beijing, cooperating with China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund II and Etown Capital, with a total investment of USD 7.6 billion and a registered capital of USD 50 billion. SMIC is investing USD 2.55 billion and taking 51% of shares of the newly-formed company.
SMIC Beijing, as a new subsidiary of SMIC, will mainly focus on producing 12-inch (300 mm) silicon wafers. It will provide multiple services, such as IC designs, wafers and IC tests, and IC packaging. According to SMIC, the establishment of the subsidiary can help the company expand its production scale, reduce its production costs, and promote its sustainable development. It is estimated that SMIC's 12-inch (300 mm) silicon wafer production capacity will reach 135,000 pieces per month when finished.
According to its Q3 report, SMIC achieved revenue of CNY 20.8 billion in the first nine months, up 30.2% compared with the same period of 2019. Notably, the net profit reached CNY 3.08 billion yuan, soaring 168.63% year-on-year. The net profit of the first three quarters has nearly doubled compared with the whole year of 2019. The new-established subsidiary will facilitate its further development.
Related link:

ansy1968 said:

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A question, in five years time as China strives for self sufficiency, where will you place the European, the Japanese and the US. Here in this video Europe will invest 145 billion euros to whim itself from American tech. For me it's good to have choices, But with sanction being weaponized (I think the world IC/semiconductor will be divided to 3 blocs (US , CHINA & the EU) with Japan a big question mark) , Nobody in its right mind will invest an expensive FABS equipment with uncertainty regarding supplies. Of the four , China has the market to sustain itself for a full spectrum top to bottom local IC development, what about others? will Japan be forced to JV with China to survived?
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Europe has announced a lot of investments but most of it has went nowhere. Europe for example was one of the major developers of SOI and FD-SOI technology but it turned out to be a niche product line. A lot of European fabs have been sold or are owned by foreign interests. Japan is also stagnating with major companies like Toshiba having to be propped up not to collapse. US also stagnating with Intel sliding ever backwards.

I think production will continue moving to Asia. If that is China or elsewhere like Vietnam I don't know.

I have no doubt the trade wars like you said will cause investments into new fabs to allow some amount of local self-sufficiency in terms of chip production in all those places. I also think the tools sector in Japan and South Korea will grow. But any growth elsewhere will be limited. Most production will be in Asia.

Because Asia is where the consumer center of mass is, it is where the supply chain is located, it does not make sense to locate most of the industry elsewhere at all.

Hi gelgoog,

Thanks for your prompt reply, another question if I may, Is China capable of producing all equipment related to IC production with the exception of an EUVL. From the previous post, a major milestone had been achieved in producing a domestic wafer equipment. What else is lacking especially critical parts in the process of achieving self sufficiency.

ansy1968 said:

...
Thanks for your prompt reply, another question if I may, Is China capable of producing all equipment related to IC production with the exception of an EUVL. From the previous post, a major milestone had been achieved in producing a domestic wafer equipment. What else is lacking especially critical parts in the process of achieving self sufficiency.

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It depends. China has leading edge technology in some parts of the production pipeline but the lag elsewhere varies. EUVL is considered a hard problem so that is why it gets talked about a lot but you need all sorts of tools and chemical products. Someone posted a PDF here which goes in depth into that. It had a table which described the progress sector by sector. The thing is no country can do a 100% leading edge native production line right now and China is the country which has the best chance of doing it if it comes to it because of the scale of the market and widescale capabilities across the entire range of tools and products you require.

For example to do lithography you need the machine with the light source, lens, but you also need masks. You need a tool to write the masks, and a tool to verify the masks. You need a tool to verify the output. You need a plasma etcher to remove non-hardered parts of the chip out, you need silicon wafers, you need mask materials, you need all sorts of other chemical products in smaller amounts to make interconnects (wires) and gates, or whatever. The processes can vary quite a lot. We have had recent posts about success in making ArF lithography capable mask materials in China for example. That is just as important as the silicon wafers themselves.

From what I understand the Chinese industry already has some silicon wafer manufacturing capability as it is. It might not be enough to supply 100% of the Chinese industry's needs, but it's there. Only recently, like reported, has someone been able to manufacture mask materials however. Those used to have to be imported from somewhere else. Be it Japan or somewhere else but not China. There was Chinese production of KrF (think 90nm) mask materials but not ArF (think 28nm) mask materials.

Just for the ArF equipment and materials besides the immersion lithography machine equipment SMEE is working on you need those mask materials for ArF. The thing with the silicon wafers is that you will need them regardless of which process node you are using so in that regard once you solve that problem you only need to do minor tweaks unless the wafer diameter changes or something like that.
With ArF immersion DUVL tools it is possible to go all the way down to 7nm but the more increased precision you require the more accurate the tools need to be. That's why initially SMEE's tools won't support 14nm or 7nm but just 28nm. With 14nm and below support coming after that. But the main thing is getting the light source and the lens working with regards to the lithography machine. The rest is just tweaks to mechanical parts and improved quality control.

ansy1968 said:

Hi gelgoog,

Thanks for your prompt reply, another question if I may, Is China capable of producing all equipment related to IC production with the exception of an EUVL. From the previous post, a major milestone had been achieved in producing a domestic wafer equipment. What else is lacking especially critical parts in the process of achieving self sufficiency.

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From the researches I made on the web below is a summary of the technological level of Chinese semi equipment makers for some of the major steps:
Lithography:
Smee. 28nm (to be confirmed) possibly 7nm with multiple exposures
Etching:
Amec. 5nm. 3nm under development
Naura. 14nm. 5nm under development
PVD:
Naura. 14nm. 5nm under development.
CVD:
Naura. 14nm. 5nm under development
Shenyang Piotech: 5nm
ALD:
Naura. 14nm. 5nm under development
Shenyang Piotech: 5nm
CMP:
Hwatsing 14nm.
Ion implanter:
CETC 28mm.
Metrology and defect inpection:
Several companies but not sure which node they are capable of.

I have probably firgotten some steps and would be helpful to add more steps/companies to the list.

Here's some Chinese language news (sorry, can't find an English article yet) about Jingce Semiconductor's eView automatic wafer detect equipment.

Wondering what technology level Chinese military use for chips production and what companies?

I understand Chinese military already use gallium nitride (GaN) for the AESA radar which is much more superior than Si based chips

Last time I checked the Russians were still using 90nm processors on avionics and things like that. I am not sure what process technology Chinese avionics use. I wouldn't be surprised if it was 65nm or better.

Skywatcher said:

Here's some Chinese language news (sorry, can't find an English article yet) about Jingce Semiconductor's eView automatic wafer detect equipment.

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In English google translate excellent news basically except for lithograph machine china is close to self sufficient from Si Ingot, wafer production, mask, engraving, cleaning, inspection etc

News! Jingce Semiconductor's eView automatic wafer defect review equipment was officially delivered
2020-12-23 16:44:40 Source: OLED industry

Shanghai, December 23, 2020-Shanghai Jingce Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. ("Shanghai Jingce Semiconductor") announced the launch of its first semiconductor electron beam inspection equipment: eViewTM automatic wafer defect review equipment, which was officially delivered today Domestic customers help the localization of the semiconductor industry.

This equipment is a review and classification device based on scanning electron microscope technology. It is used in the integrated circuit manufacturing process. It can perform high-resolution review, analysis and classification of the results of optical defect detection equipment to meet the needs of 10x nm integrated circuit process manufacturing.


It is reported that eViewTM adopts self-developed scanning electron microscope technology with ultra-high resolution and is suitable for automatic detection of process defects in integrated circuit manufacturing processes of 10x nm and below.

Source: Accurate Test
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