SUMCO, the leader of silicon wafers, plans to invest 10 billion yuan to expand production and accelerate the large-scale trend that domestic manufacturers are catching up head-on.

Japanese wafer maker SUMCO plans to spend 228.7 billion yen (13.438 billion yuan) to speed up the production of advanced 300mm (12-inch) semiconductor wafers, the Nippon Keizai Shimbun reported on Oct. 1.

Of this amount, 201.5 billion yen is invested in the new plant next to the existing facilities in Saga Prefecture, Japan. Construction and equipment installation will begin next year. The plant is scheduled to be launched in stages from the second half of 2023 and fully put into production in 2025. The remaining 27.2 billion yen will be used to expand the factory operated by its subsidiary. SUMCO did not elaborate on the scale of production expansion, but quoted the contract relationship as saying that it had signed a five-year contract with customers at a fixed price and quantity.

SUMCO is the leading manufacturer of silicon wafers in the world. According to Siltronic, the top five wafer manufacturers in 2020 are Japan Shinyue, SUMCO, Global Wafer, SK Siltron and Siltronic, which together account for 87% of the semiconductor wafer market.

Data show that silicon wafer is the semiconductor material with the highest proportion of value. According to SEMI statistics, the sales of silicon wafers and silicon-based materials accounted for 36.64% of the global wafer manufacturing materials market in 2020.

Compared with photovoltaic silicon wafers, semiconductor silicon wafers require higher purity (more than 99.9999999%), so the value of manufacturing barriers and duration is correspondingly higher. Generally speaking, the larger the size of the silicon wafer, the smaller the edge loss of the silicon wafer cutting, the more chips can be cut per wafer, the higher the semiconductor production efficiency and the lower the cost. Therefore, the evolution of silicon wafers to large size can effectively improve the production efficiency of silicon wafers and reduce the cost, which is the development direction of semiconductor silicon wafers in the future.

At present, the most mainstream product specifications in the global semiconductor wafer market are 300mm wafer and 200mm wafer, in which the proportion of 300mm wafer continues to rise.

It is worth noting that semiconductor wafers are ushering in a pattern of simultaneous rise in volume and price. According to SEMI, the global silicon wafer shipping area grew 6% in the second quarter of 2021 from the same period last year, up 12% from a year earlier to 3,534 million square inches, surpassing the all-time high set in the first quarter. With Shin Yue and Shenggao and other Japanese silicon wafer companies signing 2022 long contracts with customers and smoothly increasing prices, Taiwan silicon wafer factories have also signed 2022 long contracts with customers one after another. among them, the contract price of 6-inch and 8-inch silicon wafer has increased by about 10%, and the contract price of 12-inch silicon wafer has increased by about 15%.

The upward boom will continue. It is reported that the capacity utilization of silicon wafers has reached 100% at present, but the opening of new capacity in the next 2-3 years is very limited, as evidenced by the fact that SUMCO's new plant will be launched in batches as early as the second half of 2023.

Domestic 4-6-inch wafers have been self-sufficient, and many manufacturers have achieved breakthroughs from 8-inch to 12-inch semiconductor wafers. In the future, domestic manufacturers are expected to fully benefit from the high-profile demeanor of the industry.

Among the A-share related listed companies, Shanghai Silicon Industry took the lead in realizing the large-scale sale of 12-inch semiconductor silicon wafers, which is expanding rapidly. Lion Micro's large-size silicon wafers were obvious in the first half of this year. Among them, the production capacity of the 8-inch silicon wafer production line has been fully released, and the 12-inch silicon wafer has achieved large-scale production and sales. With the coordinated development of photovoltaic and silicon wafers, Central is also in a leading position in the field of semiconductor large-size silicon wafers in China.

In addition, Jingsheng electromechanical Jingsheng has successfully developed silicon epitaxial equipment and silicon carbide epitaxial equipment, and the company's semiconductor monocrystalline silicon equipment industry chain is becoming more and more complete.