Just now, China and the world's largest MEMS foundry Sai Microelectronics officially announced that its first domestic BAW filter based on MEMS technology has achieved mass production, what impact will it have? Chinese mobile phones are expected to use domestic 5G and 6G RF chips to achieve 5/6G communication functions?
According to the announcement, it has signed a long-term purchase agreement with a customer, the details of which are shown in the text.
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Just now, China and the world's first MEMS foundry Sai Microelectronics officially announced that its first domestic BAW filter has achieved mass production, what is the situation? A long-term purchase agreement has been signed with a customer!
Just now (July 16, 4:35 pm), China and the world's largest MEMS wafer foundry Sai Microelectronics officially announced that its first domestic BAW filter achieved mass production.
▲Source: Sai Microelectronics official public account
According to the "Announcement of Beijing Sai Microelectronics Co., Ltd. on the Launch of Mass Production of BAW Filter of Holding Subsidiary of Cymicroelectronics", its series BAW (Bulk Acoustic Wave) filter manufactured by MEMS process for a customer has completed the small batch trial production stage, and has signed a long-term procurement agreement with a customer and started mass production:
On July 15, 2023, the customer signed a long-term purchase agreement with Celex Beijing, and Celex Beijing began commercial mass production of BAW filters.
▲Source: Cymicro Electronics Announcement
According to the reputation of the reception agency of Sai Microelectronics on July 3, the initial production capacity of the BAW filter production line is 2,000 wafers / month, and will be extended to 10,000 wafers / month in the later stage:
The Beijing 8-inch BAW filter joint production line jointly built by the company and Wuhan Minsheng in the form of joint purchase of equipment has been completed at the end of 2022, and the two parties have been carrying out related work on several BAW filters, the process development and trial production work are in line with expectations, the number of special line product categories has increased, the yield level has been greatly improved, and mass production is actively being prepared. The line will initially have a capacity of 2,000 wafers per month and can later be expanded to 10,000 wafers per month.
About BAW filter and its role in communication: it is one of the most critical technologies for the neck of domestic mobile phone 5G/6G communication card!
Previously, Huawei released P50 Pro, Mate 50 and other flagship mobile phones that block 5G functions and only 4G networks, which is both regrettable and criticized.
Mobile phones to use 5G, in addition to baseband chips are not enough, there must also be RF front-end modules/chips, used to send and receive signals, the field of RF devices is one of the key technologies that restrict the development of mainland industry. Among them, an important core device in the RF front-end chip can not be domestically mass-produced - this is the BAW filter using the MEMS process.
The RF front-end module is composed of filters, low-noise amplifiers (LNA), power amplifiers (PA), RF switches and other devices, as shown in the figure below:
▲RF front-end module structure (Source: Founder Securities)
The filter is the most important discrete device in the RF front-end, and the output value of the filter accounts for more than 50% of the entire RF front-end module. In the RF front-end module, the most important and critical neck node of the continent is here in the filter.
The function of the filter is to attenuate other frequency components through a specific frequency, thereby improving the signal immunity and signal-to-noise ratio.
With the gradual evolution of 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G and even the future 6G, more and more frequency bands and standards need to be used, and the frequency bands are getting higher and higher, so the requirements for filters are getting higher and higher, and the demand is increasing.
At present, a 5G mobile phone generally needs 70+ filters, and the unit price is much more expensive than that of 4G filters.
▲Changes in the number of mobile phone filter requirements (Source: Toubao Research Institute)
Filters are mainly divided into two types: table acoustic wave filter (SAW filter) and bulk acoustic wave filter (BAW filter), of which SAW filter is more suitable for frequency bands around 2GHz and below, and the advantage of BAW filter is the performance advantage of medium and high frequency bands, such as smaller insertion loss, higher out-of-band suppression, etc., so BAW filters become the key to 5G and even future 6G communication.
▲Filter technology classification and introduction (Source: Founder Securities)
At present, the global filter market is basically monopolized by foreign manufacturers, only a few domestic enterprises can produce, mass production and market share are not good, most of the product performance is not as good as the same products of international giants.
According to data, in 2020, more than 60% of the world's filters are based on SAW technology, of which 95% of the market is basically monopolized by Murata, TDK, Taiyo Yuden, Skyworks and Qorvo.
U.S. manufacturers such as Broadcom and Qorvo are concentrated in BAW filters (Broadcom is mainly FBAR), and the two companies occupy more than 90% of the global market share, and this market situation continues to this day (2023).
▲Source: Founder Securities
After 2 years, Sai Microelectronics and Wuhan Minsheng have cooperated to tackle the production of BAW filters, and the performance is comparable to that of international giants!
On August 13, 2021, Cymicroelectronics issued an announcement on the signing of the "Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement" by a holding subsidiary, the main signing object of this announcement is the domestic filter design enterprise Wuhan Minsheng, which is the first time that Cymicroelectronics disclosed the information on the design and production of the first domestic BAW filter.
In the cooperation announcement, it is clearly mentioned that "involving 8-inch wafer foundry capacity cooperation investment for 'RF filter chips'", and jointly invest resources to jointly build an 8-inch RF filter large-scale production line. Sai Microelectronics believes that this cooperation with Wuhan Minsheng:
On the one hand, it will be conducive to the company's wider exchanges and cooperation with downstream companies in the industrial chain, and jointly promote the technological maturity and commercial mass production of local domestic BAW filters; On the other hand, through the cooperative investment model, it is conducive to the company to accelerate the construction and expansion of the second-phase production capacity of the Beijing MEMS factory, which will further promote the company's local formation and improvement of independent and controllable BAW filter manufacturing capabilities.
Source: Cymicro Announcement
One year later, on June 13, 2022, Cymicroelectronics issued an announcement "Announcement on the Verification and Trial Production of BAW Filters of the Holding Subsidiary Passed the Verification", which was known as the start of trial production of the production line.
According to the announcement, a certain BAW manufactured by the Beijing FAB3 production line OEM of Cymicroelectronics has passed customer verification, and after the reliability verification of the batch of BAW filters in many aspects such as frequency band suppression, the performance and yield have reached or exceeded the design index requirements, which is comparable to the product indicators of the same category of international RF giant manufacturers.
At present, the customer has signed a trial production order at the same time, and Beijing FAB3 has started the small batch production of the first batch of BAW filter 8-inch wafers.
▲Source: Cymicro Electronics Announcement
Today (July 16), Sai Microelectronics issued an announcement that it completed the small batch trial production stage and signed a long-term cooperation agreement with a customer, Sai Microelectronics and Wuhan Minsheng, two outstanding MEMS enterprises in China, after two years of cooperation, its first domestic BAW filter was officially mass-produced!
About Cymicroelectronics
Beijing Sai Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sai Microelectronics"), is the world's and China's largest pure MEMS foundry, listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2015, focusing on the development of MEMS process development and wafer manufacturing business, in 2016 wholly acquired Swedish MEMS chip manufacturer SilexMicrosystems AB, providing pressure, inertia, infrared, micromirror, optical switch, silicon microphone and other MEMS process development and wafer manufacturing services.
According to the 2021 data compiled by Yole Development, a semiconductor market research institution, Silex Microsystems AB has ranked first in the global MEMS pure wafer foundry ranking for three consecutive years, and the global MEMS chip foundry market (excluding the statistics of IDM manufacturers' own manufacturing parts) occupies about 8%.
In June 2021, the first phase of Beijing 8-inch MEMS production line (Beijing FAB3, Celex Beijing) was completed and produced, with a production capacity of 10,000 pieces / month in the second phase, and the filter production line built in cooperation with Wuhan Minsheng has been included in the second phase of production capacity.
About Wuhan Minsheng
Wuhan Minsheng New Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Wuhan Minsheng") is a well-known enterprise in the domestic RF front-end BAW filter industry, according to the official website, it was founded by Professor Sun Chengliang of the Institute of Industrial Sciences of Wuhan University and 14 internationally renowned industry experts. The company takes RF filters as its flagship products, and covers piezoelectric microphones and piezoelectric ultrasonic sensor chips, and is committed to becoming an enterprise integrating design, production and sales. The company has complete independent intellectual property rights, has registered more than 100 patents, and established multi-dimensional and multi-level patent barriers.
Wuhan Minsheng's own intellectual property rights of radio frequency front-end body acoustic wave filter (BAW) belongs to the RF filter in the technical threshold and value of the high value of the product, this kind of product market application space is broad, long-term monopoly by foreign manufacturers, its RF device field is restricting the development of mainland industry "neck" one of the key technologies.
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