TrendForce 2025Q4 and overall 2025 revenues. Looks like SMIC is catching up to Samsung on the fab side of things.
Chinese semiconductor thread II
- Thread starter vincent
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TrendForce 2025Q4 and overall 2025 revenues. Looks like SMIC is catching up to Samsung on the fab side of things.
Shanghai Xinyang's net profit surged 71% in 2025, with breakthroughs in multiple areas of semiconductor materials.
On March 12, Shanghai Xinyang disclosed its 2025 annual report. The company achieved revenue of 1.937 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 31.28%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 301 million yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 71.12%; and net profit excluding non-recurring items was 274 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 70.48%.
By business segment, the semiconductor industry generated RMB 1.517 billion in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 46.50%, becoming the core driver of growth. Among them, integrated circuit materials revenue reached RMB 1.479 billion, a year-on-year increase of 48.15%. Specifically, sales of electroplating solutions and additives increased by 40% year-on-year, achieving efficient electroplating filling of micropores in 3D-TSV with an aspect ratio of up to 20:1. The cleaning and etching product series expanded smoothly, with post-dry etching cleaning solutions achieving full coverage of 14nm and above, and sales increasing by over 50% year-on-year; etching solution sales increased by over 80% year-on-year, with the high-selectivity silicon nitride etching solution achieving a selective etching rate of up to 2000:1, already applied in the world's highest-level 3D NAND manufacturing.
In the photoresist business, multiple products achieved mass production and sales volume increased by over 30% year-on-year. Sales of chemical mechanical polishing slurries increased by 160% year-on-year, and mature products can cover 14nm and above nodes.
The company continued to increase its R&D investment, with R&D expenses reaching 269 million yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 22.37%, accounting for 13.91% of revenue. The number of R&D personnel reached 301, a year-on-year increase of 25.42%.
In terms of production capacity layout, some production lines of the Hefei Xinyang expansion project are about to be commissioned, the Shanghai Chemical Industry Park project is progressing steadily, and the Songjiang headquarters project with an annual output of 50,000 tons of key process materials for integrated circuits and headquarters has started construction. After completion, it will form a production capacity of 5,000 tons/year of cleaning solution, 6,500 tons/year of electroplating solution, 33,500 tons/year of etching solution, and 5,000 tons/year of polishing solution.
Shandong University has proposed a new growth method that enables the fabrication of gallium-based semiconductors on various substrates.
Shandong University has introduced a groundbreaking growth method known as "Induced Fit Growth," which facilitates the fabrication of gallium-based semiconductors on diverse substrates without strict lattice matching requirements. Collaborating with City University of Hong Kong and Kyushu University, the research team developed this technique to overcome historical limitations in growing high-quality semiconductor thin films. By utilizing amorphous gallium oxide (GaOx) templates, the method allows for ordered crystal formation on a wider range of materials, effectively removing cost barriers that previously restricted the adoption of advanced 32-bit semiconductor technologies.
The core mechanism draws inspiration from biological systems, where enzymes guide polypeptide chains into functional structures rather than disordered shapes. In this context, localized gallium regions within the amorphous GaOx films act as nucleation sites, inducing the orderly arrangement of group V elements to form crystalline compounds like gallium antimonide (GaSb). This process enables high-quality crystal growth on previously incompatible substrates, demonstrating that even non-crystalline templates can serve as effective foundations for complex semiconductor structures when specific chemical conditions are met.
Experimentally, the team successfully prepared various gallium-based thin films, including GaSb, GaSe, and GaAsSb alloys, using a dual-temperature horizontal tube furnace with liquid metal exfoliation to create uniform GaOx templates. Analysis revealed that traditional spin-coating methods failed to replicate these results because they lack the necessary gallium-rich regions required for crystal initiation. Instead, the unique properties of the liquid-metallurgy-derived films allowed for "seeds" that promoted island-like growth structures which eventually expanded and interconnected to form dense, continuous layers comparable in mechanism to traditional epitaxial lateral growth (ELO).
Beyond material fabrication, this innovation has yielded significant advancements in device applications, particularly in flexible electronics and neuromorphic computing. Researchers utilized the GaSb thin films to construct transistors that mimic biological neural synapses, exhibiting plasticity behaviors similar to double-pulse facilitation and time-dependent synaptic functions. Additionally, an infrared photodetector based on these materials demonstrated exceptional performance with high photoresponsivity in the 800–1550 nm range, paving the way for future developments in omnidirectional light sensing and imaging arrays across various substrate platforms.
The domestically developed optical interconnect and optical switching supernode "Optical Leap 128 Card Commercial Version" has been officially launched.
Shanghai Biren Technology, in partnership with ZTE Corporation and industry peers Xizhi Technology and Shanghai Instrument & Electronics, officially launched the LightLeap (Guangyue) 128-card commercial supernode on March 12th during the Appliance & Electronics World Expo (AWE). This marks a major milestone for China's domestic AI infrastructure, transitioning a prototype developed over six months into a fully operational commercial solution.
It is the world's first domestically developed optical interconnect and optical switching GPU supernode. It enables massive scale-up from single racks to tens of thousands of cards without physical bottlenecks. Compared to traditional electrical networks, it reduces transmission latency by over 90% and achieves microsecond-level model switching latency. Its has been successfully tested with large models like DeepSeek V3 (671B), MiniMax, Kimi, and GLM and demonstrate that significantly shortens training times and inference latencies while improving energy efficiency.
Silicon Photonics OCS Chip: Features the world's first silicon photonics optical switching chip (by Xizhi Technology). It allows dynamic topology reconstruction in seconds, eliminates vendor lock-in, and does not rely on advanced semiconductor process nodes for security.
High-Performance GPU Module: Equipped with Biren Technology's "Bili™ 166L" liquid-cooled module, offering ultra-high-density computing power (BF16) via CoWoS 2.5D packaging and efficient cooling.
Native Software Platform: Powered by ZTE's self-developed software, it provides flexible resource scheduling, second-level node replacement, and minute-level resume capabilities for large model training.
The deployment of thousands of these cards demonstrates the viability of optical switching in real-world scenarios. Looking ahead, Biren Technology aims to expand this solution beyond 128 cards to build fully independent domestic computing power pools, accelerating China's entry into the era of multi-card AI collaboration.
Generation of deep-sub-cycle optical pulses via inverse Compton scattering in a mid-infrared laser field
Sub-cycle optical pulses with extremely high temporal gradients represent a forefront direction in ultrafast science. Although such pulses can provide ultrahigh temporal resolution for probing ultrafast dynamics, the ultimate half-cycle limit of pulse duration (i.e., pulse width smaller than half an optical cycle) has remained unbroken. To address this challenge, we recently proposed a scheme to generate deep-sub-cycle optical pulses via inverse Compton scattering (ICS) between a relativistic electron bunch and a deep-subwavelength confined terahertz (THz) optical field. Here, we extend this concept by replacing the THz field with a mid-infrared deep-subwavelength confined optical field, which can significantly enhance the energy of the emitted photons with similar electron-bunch incidence. For instance, when a 2-MeV, 50-as electron bunch interacts with a mid-infrared confined field with a peak wavelength of 4.4 μm and a pulse duration of 100 fs, the ICS process can generate a 0.26-cycle, 99-as extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) unipolar pulse with a peak frequency of 2.6 PHz. A trade-off between the temporal confinement and single-pulse photon number is also discussed. |
Silan Microelectronics signed a supplementary agreement for its 12-inch chip production line project, introducing new investors to accelerate project construction.
Silan Microelectronics has officially signed a supplementary investment agreement with three new local investors to accelerate the construction of its 12-inch high-end analog integrated circuit chip manufacturing production line in Xiamen. The deal involves significant capital injection totaling RMB 3.6 billion, which will be directed toward the project company, Xiamen Silan Jihua Microelectronics Co., Ltd. The new investors include Xiamen Haixia Liantou Investment Partnership, which steps in to take over the original obligations of Xiamen Semiconductor Investment Group; and two additional partnerships, Xinyi Xincheng and Chantou Xinhua, which assume RMB 2.1 billion collectively from Xinyi Technology's prior commitment.
Following this capital increase, Silan Microelectronics' registered capital will rise to RMB 5.11 billion. The equity structure will be adjusted so that Silan Microelectronics retains a 29.55% stake by contributing RMB 1.51 billion, while the new investors collectively hold the remaining 70.45%. Specifically, Haixia Liantou is set to own 29.35% of the shares with a RMB 1.5 billion contribution, and each of Xinyi Xincheng and Chantou Xinhua will hold 20.55% with RMB 1.05 billion contributions respectively. This round of investment marks Silan Microelectronics' first step in what is expected to be a larger capital expansion to RMB 6.01 billion, further diluting its shareholding to approximately 25%.
A crucial aspect of this restructuring is the change in how Silan Microelectronics accounts for its subsidiary, Jihua. Prior to this investment, Silan held a 100% stake and consolidated all financial results from Jihua into its own statements. After the transaction completes, Silan's shareholding will drop to 29.55%, causing it to cease consolidating Jihua's finances. Instead, the subsidiary will be accounted for using the equity method, with investment income recognized based on this new partial ownership ratio.
Company officials stated that introducing these strategic partners and optimizing the equity structure is essential for speeding up the long-term construction of the 12-inch production line. By leveraging its unique advantages in the integrated design and manufacturing (IDM) model, Silan aims to enhance its core competitiveness in high-end analog chips. This move is also designed to position the company better to capitalize on emerging opportunities in industries such as new energy vehicles, computing servers, and robotics, thereby driving sustained growth despite the capital expenditure.
bright-dark field EUV mask inspection tool.
BYD filing Silicon Nitride ceramic patent to serve as the core packaging material for third-generation semiconductor (silicon carbide) power modules
silicon nitride ceramic substrates have come to be regarded as the ceramic material with the best overall performance, thanks to their exceptional properties: high hardness, superior mechanical strength, excellent high-temperature resistance and thermal stability, low dielectric constant and dielectric loss, as well as resistance to wear and corrosion. Consequently, they have gained favor in IGBT module packaging applications and are gradually replacing alumina and aluminum nitride ceramic substrates.
my thread on Helium supply and import in light of the Gulf of Hormuz blockade. I think China is still well supplied from Russia, although it may need to import more from US for high purity stuff for semi processes.