The United States is really doing everything in its power to suppress and demonize China.
On December 15, 2021, the United States blacklisted eight Chinese technology companies for investment, which is not known to be the first time to suppress China's technology industry.
According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, on December 16, local time, the US Treasury Department announced that it would include 8 Chinese companies, including artificial intelligence giant Megvii Technology, in the investment blacklist.
The sanctions on semiconductor devices such as chips have attracted public attention due to events such as Huawei's mobile phone forced to stop production, but why is China's high-tech industry that lacks independent production capacity not only chips? 80% of China's high-end sensor market is dominated by foreign products! Throughout the world, the main suppliers of sensors are still overseas giants, and the top ten sensor companies are all overseas companies that control the high-end sensor market. It can be seen that there is still a certain gap between domestic sensor technology and foreign imported flowmeters.
The world's TOP 30 MEMS sensor manufacturers
Development of continental sensors
Mainland China began to get involved in sensor manufacturing as early as the 1960s.
- In 1972, the first batch of piezoresistive sensor development and production units in China were established;
- In 1974, the first practical piezoresistive pressure sensor in China was successfully developed;
- In 1978, China's first solid-state piezoresistive accelerometer was born;
- In 1982, the first research on silicon micro-mechanical system (MEMS) processing technology and SOI (silicon on insulator) technology began in China.
- After entering the 1990s, absolute pressure sensors, micro pressure sensors, ventilator pressure sensors, polycrystalline silicon pressure sensors, and low-cost TO-8 encapsulated pressure sensors of silicon micromachining technology were introduced and produced.
- In the past 30 years of reform and opening up, the mainland sensor technology and its industry have made great progress, mainly in the establishment of the State Key Laboratory of Sensing Technology, the State Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano, the National Engineering Center of Sensing Technology and other research and development bases; MEMS, MOEMS (micro-optical electromechanical system) and other research projects have been listed in the national high-tech development priorities; in the "Ninth Five-Year" National Key Science and Technology Research Project, sensor technology research has achieved 51 varieties and 86 specifications of new products. The sensitive components and sensor industry was initially established.
Sensors provide a breakthrough point for enhancing the development of modern information technology in the mainland and promoting the development of industrialization. From a global perspective, in fact, the overall start of the mainland's sensors is relatively late, the technology gap between the mainland and foreign countries is large, and now it is the key link in the transformation from traditional to new sensors, and it is possible to achieve curve overtaking in the case of proper layout. From technology research and development, design schemes, the sensor industry has developed into a complete industrial chain system.
The use of sensors is also mainly based on the middle and high-end, but the technology in some segmented areas has also begun to rank at the world-class level. At present, China's sensor industry is in a critical stage of development from traditional to new sensors, which reflects the general trend of new sensors to miniaturization, multi-functionality, digitalization, intelligence, systematization and networking.
However, as sensors usher in the spring, the Chinese public still seems to be seeing a feast for foreign semiconductor giants. Industry insiders believe that although China's sensor market is developing rapidly, there is still a big gap between local sensor technology and the world level.
This gap, on the one hand, is manifested in the backwardness of the sensor in perceiving information, on the other hand, it is manifested in the technological backwardness of the sensor itself in terms of intelligence and networking. Due to the lack of sufficient large-scale applications, the domestic sensors are not only low in technology, but also high in price, and it is difficult to be competitive in the market.
At present, the global sensor market is mainly dominated by several leading companies in the United States, Japan and Germany. The United States, Japan, Germany and China together account for 71% of the global sensor market share, of which China accounts for about 11%. Compared with the more than 20,000 varieties of products produced in the world, China can only produce about 1/3 of them, and the overall technical content is also low, which is a state that needs to be changed urgently.
The gap between China's sensor development and foreign countries
Domestic sensor manufacturers occupy the low-end market, from the perspective of development, domestic sensor manufacturers have three situations:
First, the products of private or joint ventures occupy the low-end market;
Traditional technology and equipment means can meet the manufacturing requirements of the vast majority of products, and the market development is in good condition. In addition to individual manufacturers in terms of individual varieties of chips produced abroad to the domestic packaging of related products, occupying a larger share of the market, other high-end products are monopolized by foreign manufacturers.
Second, with the rise of emerging industries such as the Internet of Things, the sensor industry has become an important field for countries around the world to compete in the development of high and new technologies;
In recent years, the sensor industry in mainland China has grown rapidly, and the application mode has become increasingly mature. However, due to the low industrial grade and poor technological innovation ability, the domestic sensor industry presents a market pattern of low-end surplus and high-end monopoly by foreign countries. The lagging development of sensor technology has hindered the smooth progress of domestic strategic emerging industries.
At present, from materials, devices, systems to the network continent has formed a relatively complete sensor industry chain. Great progress has been made in network interfaces, sensor and network communication integration, and Internet of Things architecture. However, the industrial grade is low, the scale of the enterprise is small, the technological innovation ability is poor, and many enterprises only introduce foreign components for processing, and the homogenization is serious.
The backward production equipment and unstable process cause the product indicators to be scattered and the stability is poor. Imitation products are also not satisfactory in terms of agility. In the relatively prominent areas, the basic development of industrialization has been neglected, and the development of commercialization has seriously lagged behind.
At present, there are about 6,000 kinds of sensor products in the mainland, while more than 20,000 foreign countries have reached more than 20,000, which is far from meeting the needs of the domestic market. The import of high-end sensors accounts for 80%, and the import of sensor chips is 90%, and the localization gap is huge. Among them, there is a serious shortage of high-tech products such as digitalization, intelligence, and miniaturization. The high-end products required for major national equipment mainly rely on imports.
When it comes to sensors and intelligent instruments required for national security and major projects, foreign countries often impose restrictions on the mainland. Foreign-funded enterprise products occupy the vast majority of the market share in the domestic high-end market, and will continue to control the high-end market for a long time to come, and this momentum will not be fundamentally changed in the short term.
Third, the development of state-owned enterprises is in a state of steady growth, on the whole, can not keep up with the pace of the latest foreign technological development, except for a few manufacturers, the overall gap has a tendency to widen.
This is due to the rapid development of sensor technology, the rapid updating of process and manufacturing equipment, and the inability of many new equipment manufacturers to manufacture. And the single price of equipment is as little as hundreds of thousands of dollars, more than millions of dollars, the vast majority of manufacturers rely on their own accumulation is difficult to buy new equipment, resulting in many new technologies, new processes can not keep up with the pace of rapid development of foreign enterprises.
The current situation of the domestic sensor industry
The sensor manufacturing industry in mainland China is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises
The sensor manufacturing industry in mainland China is dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises. Due to the small scale of small enterprises, affected by capital and talent constraints, the level of technology is low, most of them are concentrated in the production of low-end products, mainly price competition; High-end products are concentrated in leading enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises, mainly in terms of technological competition and brand competition.
China has been paying attention to the research of sensor technology since about 1980. After years of efforts, the level of development in sensor research is relatively good. However, the technological progress in productization is not very ideal, many sensor technologies, in fact, the domestic laboratory research level is not very bad, but unfortunately it has not been fully utilized, and it has not been transformed into mature products that have entered the market.
Compared with relatively large instruments and equipment, the investment required for sensors in the process of productization is generally not very large, so it is more suitable for small business investment. In this regard, China should have an advantage. However, if considered from another perspective, this is also a shortcoming.
A feature of the sensor industry is that the sensor itself has a high technical content, but the price of a single sensor is generally not high. One result of this feature is that, despite the high technical added value of sensors, it is difficult to rely solely on sensors to form a considerable output value.
The main reason for the gap in the development of continental sensors
First, the core manufacturing technology is seriously lagging behind foreign countries, and domestic products are not satisfactory.
New technologies, new products, new processes, and new materials of foreign sensors continue to emerge, sensor digitization, intelligence, miniaturization has become a trend, most products have become a reality, and are constantly improving and upgrading.
Although the mainland's sensors are basically the same as those of foreign countries, they are still seriously lagging behind foreign countries in some core manufacturing process technologies, so they differ greatly in depth and breadth, mainly as follows:
1, the product variety is incomplete, the specifications are small, and the new products are lacking.
At present, the number of sensor product varieties in China is about 6,000, while foreign countries have reached more than 20,000, and the satisfaction rate of product varieties is only about 60%-70%, which is far from meeting the domestic sensor market demand.
From the perspective of the industry's product structure, the proportion of old products accounts for more than 60%, new products are missing, high-tech products are less, digital, intelligent, and miniaturized products are seriously lacking From the overall point of view, the variety is not matched, the series is incomplete, there are many low-grade products, there are few high-end products, and there is a lack of market competitiveness.
2. Poor scientific and technological innovation, few products with independent intellectual property rights.
The ability of enterprise independent development and technological innovation is poor. Due to a variety of factors, domestic enterprises still manually produce products with low technical content or that have been discontinued abroad.
Many new companies are foreign products salesmen and agents, in most colleges and research institutes, the tracking of high technology and the research and development capabilities of high-tech value-added products is still OK, but its results are mostly samples, far from industrialization, independent development and scientific research results with independent intellectual property rights are not much.
Second, the process equipment is backward, and the product quality is poor.
After years of development, although a number of processes and products have been developed, due to the stability and reliability of the mass production process, the problems of stability and reliability of the mass production process have not been fundamentally solved, which limits the development of its application fields and industries.
From a technical point of view, due to the relatively backward domestic sensor production process and process equipment, micro-mechanical processing technology and packaging technology is not advanced enough, manual operation is more, detection means are not standardized, etc., resulting in the main performance indicators and foreign difference of 1-2 orders of magnitude, service life difference of 2-3 orders of magnitude.
Therefore, in major projects in the fields of chemical industry, power station, metallurgy, petroleum, environmental protection, machinery and other fields, many high-performance sensors still rely on imports.
Third, the lack of human resources and insufficient industrial development.
One of the characteristics of sensors and their industries is technology-intensive, and due to the intensive technology, it is also natural to require talent-intensive.
Judging from the current domestic situation, there is a relative shortage of high-level scientific research teams and young and middle-aged scientific and technological experts, technical managers and academic leaders who can meet the needs of today's sensor technology development, which makes the pace of technological upgrading in the industry slow and the industrial development stamina insufficient.
Fourth, the overall planning is insufficient, and the investment is insufficient.
At present, the existing problems are repeated dispersion, insufficient overall planning, low intensity of scientific research investment, backward scientific research equipment, and disconnection between scientific research and production, which affects the transformation of scientific research results and makes the comprehensive strength of mainland sensor products low.
Secondly, due to the lack of government attention, in the process of information technology development, the understanding of the importance of sensor technology lags behind computer technology and communication technology, and the scale and intensity of resource investment in development needs are too small, so that the development speed of sensor technology is slow, which restricts the rapid development of information technology.
Distribution of sensor industry in mainland China
At present, mainland sensor companies are trying to catch up with foreign enterprises, and there are regional sensor enterprise clusters, enterprises are mainly concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta region, and gradually form a regional spatial layout dominated by Central Cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Shenyang and Xi'an.
Yangtze River Delta region: shanghai, wuxi, Nanjing as the center. Gradually form a relatively complete sensor production system and industrial supporting facilities including thermal, magnetic, image, weighing, photoelectric, temperature, gas sensitivity, etc.
Pearl River Delta region: centered on the central city of Shenzhen. Foreign-funded enterprises in nearby small and medium-sized cities are composed of sensor industry system based on heat sensitivity, magnetic sensitivity, ultrasonic and weighing.
Northeast Region: Mainly Shenyang, Changchun and Harbin. It mainly produces MEMS force sensors, gas sensors, and moisture sensors.
Beijing-Tianjin area: mainly based on universities. Engaged in the research and development of new sensors, in some areas to fill the domestic gap. Beijing has established the State Key Laboratory of Micro/Nano.
Central region: mainly Zhengzhou, Wuhan and Taiyuan. The industry-university-research model is closely integrated, and it has developed well in the industries of PTC/NTC thermistors, inductive digital level sensors, and gas sensors.
From the perspective of application fields, industrial, automotive electronics, communication electronics, and consumer electronics are the largest markets for sensors. Sensors in the domestic industrial and automotive electronics sector account for about 42%, and the fastest growing market is the automotive electronics and communication electronics application market.
The continental sensor industry will follow five major directions in the future:
1. Focus on industrial control, automobile, communication and information industry, and environmental protection;
2. Focus on sensors, elastic components, optical components and special circuits, and develop original technologies and products with independent intellectual property rights;
3. With the main goal of increasing variety, improving quality and economic benefits, accelerate industrialization, so that the variety share of domestic sensors reaches 70%-80%, and high-end products reach more than 60%;
4. Based on MEMS (Micro Electromechanical System) process;
5. Relying on integrated, intelligent and networked technologies, strengthen the development of manufacturing processes and new sensors and instrument components, so that the leading products can reach and approach the advanced level of similar foreign products.
It is one of the top ten sensor companies in China
At present, China's sensor industry cannot compete with the chip industry in terms of output value or attention. This is based on both development priorities and considerations of the extent to which it affects national life.
Some institutions have made predictions that by 2030, China's chip industry will likely catch up with the international advanced level.
Appendix: Excellent enterprises in various segments of mems in China
| Pressure sensors (in no particular order) | ||
| serial number | Company name | Territorial |
| 1 | DunAn Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province |
| 2 | Microphone Sensors, Inc | Baoji City, Shaanxi Province |
| 3 | Suzhou Minxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd | Suzhou, Jiangsu Province |
| 4 | Mattel Electronic Technology Co., Ltd | Shijiazhuang City, Hebei Province |
| 5 | Kunshan Shuangqiao Sensor Measurement and Control Technology Co., Ltd | Kunshan City, Jiangsu Province |
| 6 | Wuxi Nano Microelectronics Co., Ltd | Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province |
| 7 | Beijing BlueBird Yuanxin Microsystem Technology Co., Ltd | Beijing |
| 8 | Longwei Technology Wuxi Co., Ltd | |
| 9 | Suzhou Nanocore Microelectronics Co., Ltd | |
| 10 | Suzhou Sensor Core Microsystem Technology Co., Ltd | |
| Top 10 companies with inertial (combined) sensors (in no particular order) | ||
| Beijing Xingwang Yuda Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Sshendi Semiconductor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd | Shanghai | |
| Meixin Semiconductor (Wuxi) Co., Ltd | ||
| Shanghai Silicon Rui Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Beijing Newei Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Xi'an Zhongxing Measurement and Control Co., Ltd | Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province | |
| Suzhou Mingyao Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Anhui North Core Lianke Microsystem Technology Co., Ltd | Bengbu City, Anhui Province | |
| Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd | Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province | |
| Top 10 Radio Frequency (RF) MEMS Devices (in no particular order) | ||
| Suzhou Nengxun High Energy Semiconductor Co., Ltd | ||
| Beijing Zhongke Hantianxia Electronic Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| North (Tianjin) WeChat System Co., Ltd | Tianjin Municipality | |
| Shenzhen Feijun Technology Co., Ltd | Shenzhen, Guangdong Province | |
| Rydike Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd | ||
| Weijie Chuangxin (Tianjin) Electronic Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Jiangsu Micro-core Microsystem Technology Co., Ltd | Nantong City, Jiangsu Province | |
| Suzhou Ximei Micro Nano System Co., Ltd | ||
| Beijing Times Minxin Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| TOP 10 MEMS Microphone Companies (in no particular order) | ||
| Goertek AG | Weifang City, Shandong Province | |
| AAC Technology Holdings Limited | Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province | |
| Gongda Electroacoustic Co., Ltd | ||
| Wuxi Xinao Micro Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Suzhou Minxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Handley (Changzhou) Electronics Co., Ltd | ||
| Huajing Sensing Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd | ||
| Shanghai Weilian Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Top 10 Companies in Uncooled Infrared Thermal Imaging and Detectors (in no particular order) | ||
| Zhejiang Dali Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Shanghai Lihengguang Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Wuhan Gaode Infrared Co., Ltd | Wuhan, Hubei Province | |
| Yantai Ruichuang Micro-nano Technology Co., Ltd | Yantai City, Shandong Province | |
| Guangzhou Sater Infrared Co., Ltd | Guangzhou, Guangdong Province | |
| North Guangwei Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Northern Night Vision Technology Co., Ltd | Kunming, Yunnan Province | |
| Shanghai Juge Electronic Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Wuhan Gaoxin Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Yantai Arrow Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Top 10 Gas Sensor Companies (in no particular order) | ||
| Wuhan Juzheng Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Hanwei Technology Group Co., Ltd | Zhengzhou City, Henan Province | |
| Hefei Kemait intelligent sensing technology Co., Ltd | Hefei, Anhui Province | |
| Suzhou Huiwen Nano Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Hefei Micro-nano Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Wuhan Micro-Nano Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Suzhou Nuolianxin Electronic Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Shenzhen Davy Lai Sensing Technology Development Co., Ltd | ||
| Suzhou MaiMaosi Sensing Technology Co., Ltd | ||
| Suzhou Tantalum Kr Electronic Technology Co., Ltd |
Source: CCID Consultants "2021 China MEMS Sensor Potential Market and Excellent Local Enterprises in The Field of Segmentation"