The semiconductor industry is the lifeblood of the country's industry, but its core materials, devices, equipment almost all rely on imports. According to public data, the global market demand for semiconductor materials exceeds US $40 billion, and the demand in China accounts for more than 50% of the global demand, exceeding US $20 billion. At present, 32% of semiconductor key materials are still blank in China, and about 70% rely on imports. The following is the market space data for import substitution of semiconductor materials, the data show that the localization rate of semiconductor materials is generally low, and the import substitution space is huge. Among them, photoresist, high-purity sputtering target materials, chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) materials, and Fine Metal Mask (FMM) are all investment areas that can be focused on.

Semiconductor Material Import Substitution Market Data

Photoresist is one of the key materials for micrographic processing in microelectronics technology, and its cost accounts for about 30% of the entire chip manufacturing process, which is the most core process in semiconductor manufacturing. At present, the self-sufficiency rate of photoresist in China is only 10%, which is mainly concentrated in PCB fields with relatively low technical content. The self-sufficiency rate of g/I line photoresist for 6-inch silicon wafers is about 20%, the self-sufficiency rate of KrF photoresist for 8-inch silicon wafers is less than 5%, and no domestic enterprise can produce ArF photoresist for 12-inch silicon wafers on a large scale.

High-purity sputtering target is a key material in the manufacturing process of integrated circuits, according to the application field, divided into semiconductor targets, panel targets, photovoltaic targets and so on. High-purity sputtering target manufacturing process has high technical threshold and large equipment investment. The number of enterprises in each link of the sputtering target industry chain presents a pyramid distribution. The number of enterprises with large-scale production capacity is relatively small, and the industry concentration is very high. The top five manufacturers account for more than 80%, mainly distributed in the United States, Japan and other countries and regions.

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is a key process to achieve global uniform planarization of wafers in the process of integrated circuit manufacturing. It is a combination of chemical action and mechanical polishing technology to achieve the removal of micron/nano-scale different materials on the wafer surface, so as to achieve the high (nano-scale) planarization effect of the wafer surface. Polishing material is an indispensable consumable in CMP process, which has the characteristics of high technical barriers and long customer certification time, and has been in the pattern of oligopoly. The global chip polishing liquid market is mainly monopolized by enterprises in the United States, Japan and South Korea. At present, China has realized localization of polishing liquid in low-end fields such as stainless steel, aluminum and tungsten. Anji Microelectronics has taken the lead in breaking foreign monopoly in high-quality polishing liquid technology and entering the polishing liquid field. Global CMP polishing pads are almost all monopolized by Dow, occupying 80% of the market. Chinese companies are almost blank in the high-end polishing pad market. In recent years, Dinglong shares have gradually made breakthroughs.

The fine metal mask (FMM) is a consumable core component in the OLED evaporation process. Its main function is to deposit RGB organic substances and form pixels in the OLED production process, accurately and finely deposit organic substances where needed, and improve resolution and yield. If you need to manufacture high-precision FMM, you need INVAR alloy with low thermal expansion rate. At present, the only INVAR alloy manufacturer on the market that can meet the requirements of FMM use is Hitachi Metals. At present, FMM materials in China are in the research and development stage.