When you think of Japan, what comes to mind?
Island country? cherry blossom? Or Mt. Fuji?
What you may not know is that for decades, Japan has locked the throat of a Chinese manufacturer with a core technology: a vacuum evaporator that goes hand in hand with lithography machines.
Speaking of lithography machine, its importance is self-evident, if the lithography machine is the "heart" of chip manufacturing, then in OLED panel manufacturing, the importance of vacuum evaporation machine is no less than that of lithography machine, according to international practice, monopoly means having the right to speak.
Due to Japan's monopoly position on high-end vacuum evaporators, even for $700 million, vacuum plating machines are a "scramble" competition for enterprises, and more importantly, even if you have money, it is difficult to buy.
So, since the vacuum evaporator is an expensive and important tool, why is it so "cattle"?
Vacuum evaporators are a fairly unfamiliar name to most people, but in fact, they occupy a very important place in the production of TVs, mobile phones, wearables and many cutting-edge screen panels.
Why do you say that?
Because we are now using the OLED screen of the mobile device, almost all the evaporator light-emitting materials of the evaporator, the evaporator and the evaporation process is one of the most difficult processes in the production of organic light-emitting diode OLED screens, in the process of producing organic light-emitting diode panels, the original OLED organic light-emitting materials must be evaporated to the glass substrate by vacuum evaporation machine.
Subsequently, the screen panels began to receive information, and like other "technology seeds", the more sophisticated the equipment, the more competitive the performance of the incubator screen. In the increasingly competitive screen supply market, only high-performance vacuum evaporation machines can become the real ticket for the production of OLED screens.
But one such important high-end technology has been monopolized by Japanese company Canon for decades. Founded in 1967, Canon is located in the north-shore port city of honshu island in the center of Japan's honshu island, surrounded by rice paddies, and employs just over 300 people.
The seemingly humble rural Japanese company has almost monopolized the organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that make the screens.
According to CCID Think Tank, as of 2018, Japan's Canon Tokki is a major producer of OLED distillation equipment, with a market share of up to 90%, if you want to manufacture a distiller is not difficult, but as with most manufacturing processes, the manufacturing difficulty of vacuum evaporator is not as high as the "Shangqingtian" evaporator.
Many companies can develop their own evaporation equipment, such as SNU in South Korea, there is more than one manufacturer of evaporation equipment in the world, but why does Canon have a 90% market share?
Because the real difficulty is not the entry threshold, but the accuracy, the accuracy of the evaporation equipment, directly related to the yield of the OLED screen, in order to make a competitive screen, the error of the vacuum evaporation machine is controlled to a small extent, and this test is the real technology.
After more than 20 years of research, Canon? Since it is difficult for equipment to successfully target glass substrates and fine metal meshes used as pixel templates during production, an accurate and feasible way to apply machine vision to the production process of equipment was explored. This method can be solved well by camera tracking, which can reduce the margin of error to less than 5 microns.
What is the concept of 5 microns?
CanonTokki, who is about the diameter of human tissue cells — more intuitively, only 1% of the diameter of a hair — has more than 300 people — monopolized the world and became the leading manufacturer of high-end evaporators with this amazing error control.
Once the high-precision, high-quality control vacuum evaporation machine is "born", it will naturally become a hot "fragrant food", and even Apple has made it clear that the screen panel panel is not allowed to enter the Apple industry system without the processing of the high-end steam plating machine of Japanese companies.
This move has made the screen panel manufacturers more eager to win the favor of Apple, and Canon's multi-base evaporation machine panel manufacturers have used all their strength to break the convention.
Unfortunately, as the heart of OLED panel manufacturing, the evaporation machine is a hard bone to gnaw on, it is huge and complex, and the vacuum production line alone is up to 100 meters long.
CanonTokki has the ability to produce high-end evaporation machines, but due to the limitations of its own research and development technology, it is impossible to achieve cost control and large-scale mass production, and can only produce about a dozen steamers a year, so the global supply of high-end steamers is small and the output is low.
Other companies want to buy, sorry, you have to wait in line at the back.
So the question is, as an international big international company, why can Samsung become a "connected person" with a VIP pass?
The second is the "brotherhood" between the two companies. In fact, when OLEDOLED appeared in 2000, the market was not optimistic, and even more than 40 companies poured into the OLED industry at that time, not claiming to belong to the OLED boom era, on the contrary, due to various reasons such as immature technology, there was a very low yield and high cost.
At that time, the market acceptance of OLED was extremely low compared to LCD, and OLED's reputation also declined all the way until the crisis really struck in 2006, when customers cancelled orders, causing Tokki's manufacturer Samsung to be in trouble.
It turns out that Samsung's persistence is worth it and it's worth it. 2007 was a turning point in The history of Tokki Canon Canon Became Canon's business development, with the support of Samsung, Canon survived the bankruptcy crisis, icing on the cake, ushered in the Canon snow charcoal spring, Canon has not forgotten to support his big brother.
After a successful respite, Canon Tokk reached a "friendly deal" with Samsung, promising that the equipment it produces will be delivered to Samsung first. Therefore, in the first few years, Canon provided Samsung with 3-4 units per year, providing all the vacuum evaporators in exchange for the support of that year.
Just as Samsung bet on CanonTokki, CanonTokki's return, Samsung consolidated its advantage in the field of display, quickly positioning itself to occupy 95% of the 95% OLED field after prioritizing the high-end evaporator "buff".
In 2020, its OLED panel shipments accounted for 68% of global shipments, while the same period accounted for 5.7%, and it was also lower than Samsung in terms of yield rate, with the highest shipment accounting for 80%, while Samsung's shipments were 90%.
Seeing this report card, recalling the persistence of that year, I think even in the dream, Samsung will smile!
Not only that, but the "friendly agreement" between the two companies has also become a means for Samsung to curb the development of other OLED panel manufacturers.
Although Samsung's business map is all over the world, but a bunch of companies still hover outside the door of CanonTokk, not even the "admission ticket" has not been obtained, as long as Samsung does not slacken, other companies' advanced manufacturers will lose the foundation to compete with it, and the pressure on Chinese manufacturers by rising stars is more obvious.
Until 2017, CanonTokki produced 7 units per year, and LGD and BOE produced 1 unit each. In the context of growing global demand, the mainland's demand for OLED panels is particularly strong, it is initially expected that by 2022, the demand for tablet pCs in the mainland will reach 450 million pieces, with the continuous improvement of material living standards, China's demand for mobile phones, wearable devices, TVs and other products is also growing.
However, due to the lack of core technology, domestic manufacturers often have high costs and low returns, especially in the field of panels, OLED panels made in China have been unable to compete with foreign manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, so no matter how high the demand is, it will not reduce or waste costs.
Imagine how likely it is to defeat this group of weapon-equipped opponents on the battlefield with your bare body.
The results are already obvious, but it is too hasty to blame the lag in the development of domestic screens on the lack of evaporation machines, and China is now a major producer of OLED panels, accounting for nearly half of the global market share.
But the scale is not large, the strength is not strong, in addition to the screen field in the latecomer advantage, another reason is that the mainland OLED enterprises are mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches of the industrial chain such as panels and mobile phones, showing that there are more applications of terminal products, and the upstream core production equipment is too dependent on imports, and the final result can only be decided by others.
Fortunately, China has successfully broken through the technical barriers abroad and can produce its own vacuum evaporation machine.
In October 2019, China's first OLED evaporation mass production line was successfully ignited, which is the first self-designed OLED lighting G2.5 generation line in China, and the multi-color OLED lighting panel was successfully ignited, which is a major breakthrough in the key technology of OLED equipment in mainland China.
In addition, after years of research and development, Hefei Ryder Equipment Technology Co., Ltd. has not only successfully developed a high-quality vacuum evaporation machine, but also put into production, truly breaking the monopoly of Japan and making China's panel manufacturers unmatched.
More importantly, the error of the domestic OLED evaporation machine is within 1.5um, but at this point, it is far ahead of Japan on the mainland, and its standard is still around 3um, and the accuracy of the domestic evaporation machine has been able to reach or even exceed the international advanced level.
But this is just a microcosm of China's vacuum evaporation machine industry, in addition to Hefei Ryder, the industry's good news continues to flow, as early as 2015, OLED evaporation machine key technology research and development has been promoted by Hefei Xinzhang, in the past two years, Hefei Xinzhang has been writing a new chapter of technological breakthroughs.
So, the successful research and development of the domestic vacuum evaporation machine, in addition to boosting morale, what are the practical impacts on the mainland economy?
One, breaking the chain monopoly, in recent years, under the support of national policies and funds, the gap between the research and development and production of China's OLED panels and foreign manufacturers has gradually narrowed, but the lack of core technology is a hard disease, and the surface prosperity is difficult to cover up the root cause.
Even domestic mobile phone manufacturers have also removed OLED panels from domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and LG, and domestic manufacturers have also avoided OLED panels, and China's high-end OLED market will be robbed by foreign manufacturers sooner or later, and profits will flow to other countries.
Therefore, the successful research and development and mass production of domestic vacuum evaporation machines will break this passive situation, improve the status quo of Chinese manufacturing, transform strong demand into real profits, and leave "fertilizer water" in their "fields".
Second, to open up new markets, in recent years, the concept of flexible screens has become more and more popular, it is as flexible as paper, can be folded, not only better color, but also will not be harmed by blue light, all these selling points make flexible screens become people's attention to magnesium light.
Major manufacturers around the world are also following suit and deploying flexible screens, and the best distilled organic layer organic layer plastic substrate plastic lining to achieve this goal covers OLED panels. Therefore, the production of vacuum evaporation machines is becoming more and more important.
In fact, in the current market, has launched a variety of flexible screen mobile phones, loved by many technology enthusiasts, flexible screen foldable, space-saving and other characteristics, the future will be applied to tablet computers, smart watches and other fields.
From this point of view, China's breakthrough in vacuum evaporation machine technology is of great significance, as India said: China has made great progress in the field of science and technology, is it still far from the development of lithography machines?
At present, the world's first-class lithography machine evaluation standards are 7 nanometers and 5nm, China's lithography machine technology is 28, although there is still a lot of room for improvement, but the breakthrough in technology, is not from scratch, from the process of excellence?
But when the self-made evaporation machine appears, China's high-end manufacturing industry is also trying to overcome some obstacles, we can not expect to truly conquer the manufacturing power to the day of manufacturing power, the future of China's manufacturing industry will continue to develop to the high-end field, I hope that whether in the chip or on the screen, can make more breakthroughs in the country, so that foreign companies can completely subvert the era of China's technology monopoly.