Author/Baked bun under the stars
Edit/Spinach Starry Sky
Typography/Fried liver under the stars
This year, photoresist, which accounts for less than 1% of the entire semiconductor market, has attracted countless attention from the capital market.
The 213 earthquake in Japan at the beginning of the year put about 80% of the photoresist supply led by Japanese companies in an emergency. Sure enough, after 3 months, Japanese photoresist began to cut off supply to China, firmly stuck in the neck of the Chinese. At the same time, China's enterprise Shanghai Xinyang (300236) announced that the independently developed KrF thick film photoresist products have recently passed customer certification and successfully obtained the first order.
On the one hand, the photoresist faucet was cut off, and on the other hand, the domestic research and development made substantial progress, allowing the stock price to take off directly and rise for 3 months.
Photo: Photoresist index increase
This also makes us realize that China wants to develop its own photoresist, and this matter cannot be delayed. No, in order to cultivate its own chip production supply chain, Huawei Hubble increased the capital of a photoresist company Xuzhou Bokang by 300 million yuan, which is the largest single semiconductor industry chain investment in Hubble's history.
But is photoresist really an industry that can be effective just by throwing money? Domestic substitution has been shouted for so many years, when will there be a real day? Today, I will take you to take a good look at the internal logic of this.
First, high-end photoresist, we also have 1%
First, in plain language, what photoresist is introduced.
Lithography, as the name suggests, is the process of carving a delicate pattern with light. The engraving here refers to exposure. Photoresist is an resist that reacts with light to allow the desired precision circuit pattern to appear on the chip material.
Give you a simple set of data and you'll be able to understand the key to this step of lithography. The lithography process time accounts for about 40-50%, the total cost accounts for about 35%, and the total cost of photoresist materials accounts for about 5-6%.
Photo: Lithography process flow
With different light engraving, you have to match different photoresists, just like how big the foot wears how big the shoes, such as 248nm light wave corresponding to KrF photoresist. The quality and performance of photoresist will directly affect the yield of integrated circuit manufacturing. The more precise the circuit pattern is, the better the performance of the chip.
Image source: City Boundary
With more than 8 billion market size photoresists, it can be used not only in semiconductors downstream, but also in PCB boards (printed circuit boards) and LCD (liquid crystal displays).
PCB, LCD, semiconductor three main application scenarios, the annual demand for photoresist is basically the same. However, the difficulty of research and development of photoresists and the technical threshold range from low to high. It can be seen from the degree of localization:
1. The wet film photoresist in PCB photoresist can achieve more than 50% of domestic production;
2. Color photoresist and black photoresist in LCD photoresist, about 5% can achieve domestic substitution;
3. KrF and ArF in semiconductor photoresists as high-end photoresists, China's market share, only 1%. And this 1% has also become a must for domestic players.
Image: Downstream application of photoresist
Today, we are mainly talking about semiconductor photoresists. I am reminded of a classic quote by Li Yunlong in "Bright Sword":
Lao Tzu fights the elite.
Second, china's players, in the end, where is the difference?
Since China only has a market share of 1%, who eats 99% of the cake?
Photo: Key players in the photoresist market
Throughout the history of the development of the photoresist industry, Japan has performed a good play of latecomers.
In fact, the United States Kodak is actually the earliest application of lithography technology. In 1980, IBM in the United States had already broken through KrF lithography technology. However, in 1986, the semiconductor market began to enter a sluggish cycle, which made the Semiconductor Companies in the United States suffer a heavy blow.
Japan's revolt began in 1976. With Nikon, Canon and other companies fully layout lithography machine, things began to take a turn, and since then a number of photoresist players have emerged in Japan. Tokyo Yinghua also developed KrF photoresist in 1995 and achieved large-scale commercialization, with better performance and lower cost, marking the photoresist officially entered the era of Japanese manufacturers' hegemony. In 2011, JSR and SEMATECH jointly developed EUV photoresist, which has been at the top of the pyramid.
The favorable time and place laid the foundation for the rise of Japan. In the global semiconductor photoresist market, in addition to DuPont in the United States, five of the top six seats are occupied by Japanese companies, and these 5 have eaten more than 70% of the cake. Global photoresist look at Japan, there is no problem at all.
Image source: TECHCET
Shu Dao is difficult, it is difficult to go to the blue sky. So where is China's photoresist industry lagging behind? The author thinks there are four main reasons:
01, the lithography machine is stuck neck
Lithography machine is an important equipment for the development of high-end photoresist, the price of a lithography machine ranges from tens of millions of dollars to hundreds of millions of dollars, and the world's most advanced EUV lithography machine is priced at 120 million US dollars, which shows that the performance verification cost of photoresist is extremely high. The annual production quantity of high-end domestic lithography machine is 0. The production capacity of more than 400 lithography machines in the world every year is mainly in the hands of ASML, and foreign countries are still restricting the export of lithography machines. For example, Jingrui Electric Materials (300655) can only buy second-hand goods eliminated by SK Hynix in South Korea when buying a lithography machine.
02. Long certification time
Photoresist to get the nod of consent from downstream customers, generally takes 2-3 years. And once the downstream customers have certified the photoresist, in order to ensure the stability of their own products, they are actually not willing to easily replace other products. This means that there is a strong binding situation in the upstream and downstream, and the conversion cost is very high. This also makes photoresist new entrants lack motivation.
03. The patented technology is controlled by foreign countries
As mentioned above, the production process of photoresist is complex, and the purity requirements are high, and the formula varies according to the different needs of downstream customers. In order to meet the differentiated needs of downstream customers, long-term research and development and experience accumulation are required. China's entry into the field of photoresist is short, and a large number of patented technologies are in the hands of overseas leading enterprises, and there are extremely high technical barriers. The author roughly counted the technical patents of JSR in photoresist, and there are more than 2,000 patents published alone.
04, raw materials also rely on imports
Raw materials are the most direct factor affecting the purity of photoresists, such as in the field of photoinitiators, resins and other important raw materials for photoresists, Japan still has a high degree of monopoly. The upstream and downstream of the industrial chain are controlled by Japan, and we want to achieve a single-point breakthrough in photoresist, and the difficulty can be imagined.
Therefore, to put it beautifully, our photoresist has a lot of imagination space in domestic substitution, and realistically speaking, if you want to eat more from the tiger's mouth, you must first have a shotgun in your own hand.
Third, the pace of domestic substitution is closely following, but it is still a long journey
It's hard for us to break through the nets laid down by Japan, but it's not necessarily a lack of opportunities.
Perhaps taking the road of rural encirclement of the city, our photoresist can find some light:
01, policy and capital first, inject confidence into the industry players
Although it is said that the chip industry chain is definitely not something that can be smashed out with money, if there is no temple to use the policy from the macro level to promote the development of this capital-intensive industry with a long recycling cycle, I am afraid that the profit-seeking capital will hardly have the motivation to enter.
02, starting from the low end, to the high end of the force
In an industry with such high technical barriers, it is actually difficult to eat a big fat man in one bite. However, if you enter the countryside first, that is, enter the PCB and LCD photoresist, and accumulate experience and technology a little bit, you will have the capital to enter the high-end market. For example, PCB, China is the largest output value country, the market size in 2020 is 35.2 billion US dollars (accounting for 54%), and the downstream with the increase in demand for 5G, cloud computing and so on. Whether domestic players can seize the photoresist market during this wave of PCB dividend period is worth looking forward to.
03, upstream and downstream collaboration
Monofilaments do not form lines, and lone trees do not form forests. From the development process of photoresist, it is not difficult to see that the rise of Japanese photoresist is inseparable from the help of Nikon's lithography machine (although it has been surpassed by ASML due to the wrong technical route), as well as the upstream photoresist raw material industry cluster that has formed a scale. Therefore, the development of photoresist requires upstream and downstream collaborative promotion to have a way out.
04. Talents are indispensable
Although as the saying goes, three stinky cobblers, the top one Zhuge Liang. However, the author firmly believes that this sentence is difficult to apply in the field of photoresist. China's photoresist field of talent is scarce, research and development capabilities are not strong, it is urgent to introduce overseas technical experts and talent teams, but the premise is the need for capital to help.
Whether it is the immediate gouge, or the poetry and the distant fields, is a very real problem before every expert.
Therefore, in order to no longer be subject to people, the localization of photoresist is the trend of the times. But in achieving the goal of localization, we still have a long way to go.
It has formed a domestic head enterprise that has formed a spark of stars, and it is good and cherished.
Note: This article does not constitute any investment advice. The stock market is risky, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. There is no harm in buying and selling.