LED industry Watch: MOCVD four re asking

At present, "cost control" and "price" has become the key semiconductor lighting market development, "in front of the LED industry is angry, but after a particular application of the industry has become a laughing" two years of record industry collective like sketch. And in 2011 was quite eye-catching MOCVD market, due to the rapid expansion of the previous year has also entered a moratorium on the growth of digestion period, and some equipment manufacturers have even sent a substantial layoffs news.

Nevertheless, the issue of MOCVD technology development has always been hot, MOCVD future technology trends will show what characteristics? 2012 MOCVD market supply and demand will be how to change? In particular, the domestic and foreign MOCVD production and research and development enterprises in the near future what are the latest developments? The localization of MOCVD process has some "whirling", China has a major role in the LED industry to reduce the cost, is the urgent needs of the industry, but to make a really suitable for production equipment, stability, reliability and security are very important, "when will the prototype from the 'real' applying for project funding to the production line? When we can really use the domestic equipment, such topics are quite concerned about the industry.

Future development trend

For MOCVD, the future of the rapid development of LED industry and epitaxial wafer mass production especially the high-speed development of general lighting mainly rely on low cost and high yield to promote, enhance productivity and improve product performance will become the future trend, so large-scale, intelligent, excellent performance of new equipment will be more room for development.

"MOCVD equipment development trend will focus on how to enhance the stability of equipment, improve product yield and reduce the amount of material used for the design, at this point, Veeco senior technical engineer James Pratt said:" reduced extension cost mainly from two aspects at the same time and capacity to improve yield; the main means is to improve the stability of the machine, increase production capacity at the same time pay attention to intelligent and reduce manual operation, reduce the use amount of the development of MO source products, the development of multi chamber furnace, extension 2011, pay attention to the application of market demand and service Veeco in the area Chinese growth compared to the previous year growth of nearly 80%, can earn pours.

"Aixtron was launched in November 2011 to the new -CRIUS MOCVD system CRIUS series (R) II-XL, through the new CRIUS II-XL reactor 19x4 inch specifications can be compared to CRIUS (R) II increase 46% capacity, with the largest LED industry equipment capacity and optimization of operation cost," March 16, 2012, training and demonstration the center of the German Aixtron in Suzhou set up the successful opening of Aixtron MichaEL, vice president of research Heuken said in an interview with reporters, the large size substrate is a trend, while the 4 inch, 6 inch, 8 inch substrate is an inevitable trend. Because it meets the needs of low price, high capacity, high automation and maximum utilization of substrate. At this point, the vice president of Aixtron Greater China Christian Dr Geng thinks: the substrate size increases, will directly lead to a reduction in yield, consistency and yield so effective process control has become a key issue.

Michael Heuken said at the same time, the development in silicon substrate LED production machine is an important research direction of MOCVD machine, the main characteristics of the silicon substrate can be used in the production of chips, and can greatly reduce costs, according to him, in 2001, Ace has a strong study on this technology was first published in the journal Science. The current Aixtron in the R & D investment 60 million euros to establish a research center in Germany, is the study of silicon substrate technology.

It can be said that the MOCVD device is the most critical equipment for the growth of epitaxial materials and the production of chips, not only determines the performance of LED products, but also determines the production cost of LED. At present, MOCVD can provide industrial production equipment manufacturer Co., the high degree of concentration, mainly in Europe and Japan, only Aixtron, Veeco and Sanso three in Japan, Germany and the United States Aixtron company Veeco companies dominate the MOCVD equipment market, Japan Sanso company's GaN-MOCVD original equipment only the Japanese market, but this year will be 4 inch substrate of MOCVD equipment as the center began to layout China market (a business in Shanghai has three sets of Japanese Sanso MOCVD equipment).

Applied materials (the MOCVD customers include Samsung, Toshiba, Silan azure, TSMC, micron and IMEC) and South Korea week star company is also developing MOCVD equipment, ready to enter the market China. The application materials company has a 4 inch device in Silan azure trial, while South Korea since the second half of 2009 to promote LED equipment homemade program, scheduled for 2010-2012 years 3 years to invest 50 billion won (about $45 million) for the promotion of R & D funds, MOCVD, the introduction of self-made equipment manufacturing automation system, MOCVD development in 2010 in the field of joosung Engineering Co. Ltd. plan leading enterprise status of homemade MOCVD equipment in South korea.

Another concern is that the next 4 inch MOCVD devices will become mainstream, the present stage Taiwan extension manufacturers already have production capacity of 4 inches and 6 inches in technology, but because of cost considerations, the majority of Taiwan manufacturers or 2 inch MOVCD equipment for the production of the main line, most of Europe and the United States and South Korea manufacturers already used 4 inch MOVCD equipment. The market is expected to once 4 inches epitaxial material costs significantly reduced, the device will be gradually replaced by a 2 inch MOCVD inch, then a large number of domestic purchase of MOCVD is bound to face the process of upgrading again.

Figure 1 MOCVD equipment vendors revenue comparison

Localization difficulties