In chip manufacturing, yield and efficiency are key. The Automated Material Handling System (AMHS) came into being in response to this requirement.
AMHS has become standard for 12-inch fabs
In a fab, AMHS is responsible for the automated handling of materials throughout the wafer production process, typically including conveyors, storage devices, and scheduling systems. From the perspective of specific solutions, there are three main AMHS solutions currently used in fabs: aerial walking unmanned transport vehicle (OHT crane), clean storage system (STK) solution and mobile robot (AGV) ground solution. In fact, in the early wafer fabs, engineers used manual handling or semi-automatic methods to coordinate materials, but in the 8-inch era, wafer fabs began to gradually introduce AMHS's AGV ground solution and OHT crane solution. Today, in 12-inch fabs, the AMHS crane solution has become the industry standard. Why does 12 inches need AMHS more than 8 inches? This is because the larger the wafer size, the construction area of the corresponding fab will be expanded, for the 12-inch Fab, a single full wafer FOUP weight has reached 8-15 kg, the volume is twice that of the 8-inch wafer cassette, and manual handling can no longer make up for the unsmooth and stable problems of material transfer, so full automation is a necessity in today's fab.
Figure | Miao Feng, founder and CEO of Mifei Technology, is introducing the current situation of the AMHS industry and non-network filming
According to Miao Feng, founder and CEO of Mifei Technology, a 12-inch 40nm 40,000 wafer fab with a monthly production capacity usually contains a crane transmission system composed of about 200 cranes, about 25-30 large-scale storage devices and more than 10,000 aerial cache units, as well as various forms of transmission, storage and purification equipment. It is reported that in TSMC's factory, there are 1,800 of the world's most advanced overhead cranes in operation.
The AMHS market is growing steadily and has been monopolized by Murata and Daifuku for many years
Nowadays, AMHS can realize dust-free automatic handling of materials between the production lines of semiconductor fabs, reduce the vibration of the handling process, meet the needs of precision production of semiconductors, and improve the production efficiency of semiconductors, which has become a necessary core equipment of wafer fabs. Looking at the front-end manufacturing of semiconductors, let's take a look at the proportion of AMHS in it. According to Gartner's 2021 data, production automation and control equipment accounts for 4.1% of wafer front-end equipment, while AMHS accounts for nearly 7% of this category, that is, AMHS accounts for about 3% of the entire semiconductor front-end equipment market.
Figure | AMHS system operation display, source: Mifei Technology official account
Focusing on the AMHS market, according to market statistics, at present, in the field of semiconductors, the global AMHS market size is about 3.6 billion US dollars (~26.5 billion yuan), with a compound annual growth rate of about 16%, and the global market has been basically monopolized by Japan's Murata Machinery and Japan's Daifuku for many years, with a market share of more than 95%. Facing the Chinese market, 12-inch wafer fabs have become a hot spot for semiconductor transformation and upgrading, according to the 12-inch wafer fab procurement of a complete set of AMHS system (including software + hardware) accounts for about 3% of the total investment in wafer fab equipment, it can be expected that in the next 4 years, the average market demand of AMHS system in domestic wafer fabs is about 5.2 billion yuan/year. In addition to the 12-inch incremental market, there are also updates and iterations of the 8-inch stock market, and the current 8-inch wafer fab is in urgent need of automation system upgrades to improve efficiency. According to the 2022-2025 announced investment and expansion plan for crystal fabs in mainland China, the average equipment investment of wafer fabs (8-inch and 12-inch) in the past four years is about 173.2 billion yuan/year.
The localization rate of AMHS is 5%, and Mifei Technology contributes 90%
The semiconductor chip manufacturing process is complex, with thousands of production processes, and the technical requirements of the wafer manufacturing process are high, so AMHS is a complex automated handling system. At the same time, AMHS does not account for so much of the investment in the entire front-end manufacturing equipment, so the wafer factory is extremely cautious in choosing AMHS system suppliers, which greatly raises the entry barriers of domestic manufacturers, which is why it has been monopolized by Japan's Murata Machinery and Japan's Daifuku for so many years. However, due to the impact of the international anti-globalization environment, China urgently needs to establish a complete semiconductor supply chain system to achieve industrial self-sufficiency. At present, the localization rate of AMHS is about 5%. It is worth mentioning that in this batch of AMHS localization army, we see that the domestic substitution market share of Mifei Technology has exceeded 90%, has served more than 30 wafer factories in total, and has successfully entered 4 of the world's top five wafer fabs, becoming the leader of China's semiconductor wafer fab AMHS subdivision track.
The localization of AMHS solutions is driving the localization of the entire supply chain
Throughout the growth of Mifei Technology, it was still a company focusing on technical services at the beginning of its establishment in 2014, and the real start of AMHS research and development began in 2018, when an area was divided into a warehouse in Suzhou Industrial Park to do the research and development of mobile robots, and later began to do purification equipment and storage equipment, and thrived in the process of continuously delivering new products.
Figure | The opening ceremony of the Lingang production base and global R&D center of Mifei Technology and the scene of the media open day, and the non-network filming
Miao Feng said at the opening ceremony of the Lingang production base and global R&D center of Mifei Technology and the media open day: "It takes about 3 years for each product of Mifei Technology to go from R&D to real mass production, so in the past, we launched an average of 4 new products to the market every year, and have delivered more than 30 semiconductor equipment to customers so far, which reflects our market competitiveness. Today, the opening of the new Lingang production base and global R&D center, covering an area of about 8,000 square meters, and the construction of a 2,000-square-meter standardized demonstration line of clean room AMHS overall solution with the crane as the core, marks a new stage for Mifei Technology. It should be emphasized here that from simulation to verification, to the final implementation and delivery, Mifei Technology adopts the idea of forward research and development, rather than reverse engineering.
Figure | Dr. Hongwei Li, CTO of Mifei Technology, is introducing the company's R&D strategy and non-network filming
In this regard, Dr. Li Hongwei, CTO of Mifei Technology, said: "The goal of Mifei Technology is to become the world's top three AMHS systems and suppliers in the semiconductor field by 2026. At present, we have launched more than 30 kinds of AMHS equipment and software scheduling systems, such as crane core transmission equipment, collaborative robots, wafer storage equipment, mask storage equipment, buffer storage equipment, loading and unloading port purification equipment, etc., and have completed the evolution from AMHS product supplier to AMHS system-level supplier. Our R&D system adopts a four-generation strategy, namely R&D generation, reserve generation, development generation, and deployment generation, to meet the needs of the fast-growing industry. Faced with the gap with the two major international manufacturers, Li Hongwei said frankly: "First of all, they have accumulated rich practical experience, so they have advantages in terms of data volume and algorithm robustness; The author noted that in the third quarter of 2023, Mifei Technology's AMHS system-level solution has been verified and successfully delivered to Xinyueneng Semiconductor. At the 2023 Beijing Microelectronics International Symposium and IC WORLD Conference, Miao Feng revealed: "In the fourth quarter of 2023, Mifei Technology will further realize the mass production and delivery of 8-inch and 12-inch semiconductor wafer fabs AMHS, which means that the monopoly of overseas oligarchs on the semiconductor AMHS segment in the past 20~30 years will be completely broken." In addition to the evolution of the AMHS industry itself, we also see that while these system-level solutions are localized, they are also driving the localization of the entire supply chain, including the main control, contactless power supply system, communication network, etc.
Write at the end
Facing the future, in the eyes of Mifei Technology, the next innovation point of the fab is the comprehensive digitalization of the fab, which realizes the predictability, monitoring, optimization and adjustment of the process. In this wave, as a domestic force, while continuously cultivating the local market, Mifei Technology will also increase the layout and investment in the overseas plan, including a new assembly plant in Malaysia to meet the needs of customers in Southeast Asia.