South Korean companies see an opportunity and are trying to enter the Chinese market as Chinese companies can no longer get advanced chip-making tools from American, Japanese or Dutch companies due to restrictions from the United States.
South Korean manufacturer of optical wafer inspection equipment, Nextin, is expanding its presence in the Chinese semiconductor market, according to South Korea's Theelec. Nextin is said to have signed a 7 billion won ($5.39 million) deal with an undisclosed Chinese customer to purchase an AEGIS 3 machine. The detection speed of this model is 30% faster than AEGIS 2, and the computational performance is 147tflops。
Nextin not only provides optical inspection tools to SK hynix China, but also to some Chinese chip manufacturing companies. It is unclear whether Nextin continues to use U.S.-derived technology in its products shipped to China.
Optical pattern wafer defect inspection equipment is divided into two categories: brightfield and darkfield, the main difference between the two is: brightfield equipment collects the light signal reflected vertically on the wafer surface to analyze defects, while darkfield equipment collects the light signal scattered back from the wafer surface for analysis. If the surface of the wafer is flat and free of defects, the light reflected back by the brightfield device is relatively complete incident light, while the incident light of the darkfield device is fully reflected, and it receives the scattered light signal. With the continuous development of the equipment industry, the definitions of brightfield and darkfield are also changing, and now brightfield generally refers to the illumination optical path and the acquisition optical path sharing the same microscope objective in the adjacent wafer segment, while darkfield refers to the fact that the illumination optical path and the acquisition optical path are completely separated in physical space. Because of the difference between the vertical reflection and scattered light signals, brightfield devices have higher detection sensitivity than darkfield devices, but brightfield devices also have slower scanning speeds.
Nextin's AEGIS devices can inspect both 200 mm and 300 mm wafers and can operate in both brightfield and darkfield modes. The brightfield method uses reflected light to find defects as small as 15 nanometers. At the same time, darkfield methods that rely on scattered light can detect defects up to 30 nanometers.
The sensitivity, accuracy, productivity and reaction speed of the measurement equipment and other performance indicators have been continuously improved with the progress of the manufacturing process. Defects of the same size are non-fatal in mature processes, but may be fatal defects that lead to circuit failure in advanced processes, which puts forward higher requirements for the sensitivity of quantitative inspection equipment. Some special integrated circuit structures, such as ultra-thin films (thickness less than 10 angstroms), extremely high aspect ratio, non-destructive graphics and other structures, also put forward special requirements for the 3D imaging ability of the measurement equipment, the consistency of multiple measurements and other indicators. Nextin's AEGIS tool resolution doesn't sound particularly high by today's standards, but a defect at 15nm can still wreak havoc or impair the operation of structures in 14nm or 7nm production nodes, so its detection is critical. Optical inspection tools are faster than electron beam or multi-electron beam tools, and these are widely used today. The customer is not only a fab, but also a storage product manufacturing plant.
In 2022, the global testing equipment market size will exceed 80 billion yuan, and the domestic market size in China will be about 17.6 billion yuan in 2021. The market for mass testing equipment presents a highly monopolistic pattern, and the top 5 in the industry are Kelei, Applied Materials, Hitachi, and Terley Optoelectronics Innovation Technology. The market share is 508%，11.5%，8.9%，5.6%，5.6%, the top 3 in the industry occupies more than 70% of the market share. The market as a whole is controlled by American and Japanese companies.
Market share of measurement equipment companies, **Caitong**.
Kelei is the world's largest manufacturer of quantity testing equipment. In 2022, the operating income will be 92$1.2 billion, up 3314%；of which 191 billion US dollars, accounting for 2074%；Equipment revenue 730.1 billion US dollars, accounting for 7926%。The company's R&D expenditure in 2022 reached 110.5 billion US dollars. Its product range is rich, covering almost all sub-categories of testing equipment. In the field of macroscopic crystal shape detection, no pattern defect detection, pattern defect detection, mask detection, and engraver error measurement. In fiscal year 2022, Kelei has 26$600 million in revenue came from Chinese mainland, accounting for 2888%；Income from Taiwan is 25$2.8 billion;Accounting for 2745%。
The type of quantity testing products of Kelei company, **Caitong**.
It is difficult to measure testing equipment, and the localization rate of measurement testing equipment in 2020 is only 2%. Among the optical quantity detection equipment, the proportion of pattern detection equipment is about 31%;The non-pattern detection equipment accounts for about 10%, the mask plate detection equipment accounts for about 13%, the optical key size measurement accounts for about 10%, the overlay error measurement accounts for about 7%, and the thin film measurement accounts for 3%. One of the representative optical testing companies in China is Zhongke Flying Measurement, which covers a wide range of optical quantity detection fields. The Company's products are mainly used in front-end wafer manufacturing and advanced packaging, which are divided into two categories: testing equipment and measurement equipment. The testing equipment includes non-patterned wafer defect inspection equipment and patterned wafer defect inspection equipmentMeasurement equipment includes three-dimensional topography measurement equipment, film thickness measurement equipment, overlay measurement equipment, etc. At present, the equipment products have been applied to the integrated circuit production line of 28nm and above in China.
From the data point of view, the import value of optical semiconductor testing equipment in Chinese mainland in 2022 will be 33$1.4 billion (220.0.)5.6 billion yuan). During the same period, the import value of electron microscope and diffractometer in Chinese mainland was 12$2.6 billion (8.0 billion2.1 billion yuan, some of which are electron microscopes and diffractometers for the production of integrated circuits). With such a big market opportunity, who can fill the vacant market due to policy restrictions?
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