[News] China’s Semiconductor Equipment Industry Booming, Self-Sufficiency to Reach 50% by 2025?

According to TechNews, China is accelerating its efforts to localize semiconductor production. Among these efforts, semiconductor equipment serves as the cornerstone of the industry, and its level of localization directly determines the overall autonomy and control of the semiconductor supply chain.

Recently, some reports have indicated that by 2025, China’s overall self-sufficiency rate in semiconductor equipment is expected to reach 50%. This news has drawn significant attention from the industry, raising the question: what is the actual progress?

The following provides an overview of the development of semiconductor equipment manufacturers in China.

China’s Semiconductor Equipment Self-Sufficiency Progress Accelerates

As noted by TechNews, based on information from SEMI, China is the world’s largest semiconductor consumer market. Strong market demand has provided significant momentum for the development of the semiconductor equipment industry.

In recent years, Chinese semiconductor equipment companies have continuously made progress in technological breakthroughs. As the report from TechNews points out, companies such as NAURA, AMEC, and ACM Research Shanghai have achieved notable success in technology R&D and market expansion, gradually becoming key players in market competition.

The report indicates that as of 2024, China’s semiconductor equipment self-sufficiency rate has risen to 13.6%. In the markets for etching, cleaning, photoresist stripping, and CMP equipment, the self-sufficiency rate has surpassed double digits. Meanwhile, although China still lags behind the most advanced international standards in the development of lithography equipment, continuous progress has been made.

Front-end and Back-end Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturers in China

From a technical classification perspective, semiconductor equipment can be divided into single-crystal growth equipment, front-end wafer fabrication equipment, and back-end packaging and testing equipment, as highlighted by the report.

As noted by the report, the single-crystal growth process includes crystal growth, wafer slicing, polishing, and epitaxy. Apart from crystal growth, slicing, polishing, and epitaxy are typically classified as front-end equipment. Front-end equipment mainly covers exposure, etching, thin-film deposition, cleaning, and ion implantation, encompassing the entire process from wafer processing to chip formation. Back-end equipment includes wafer dicing, packaging, and testing equipment.

The report indicates that the world’s top five semiconductor equipment manufacturers, including Applied Materials, ASML, Tokyo Electron (TEL), Lam Research, and KLA, all focus on front-end equipment applications.

The Development of Platform-Type Equipment Manufacturers

Among them, Applied Materials, Tokyo Electron, and Lam Research are platform-type companies with businesses spanning multiple fields, including etching, thin-film deposition, cleaning, and ion implantation, whereas ASML and KLA are leaders in specific niche segments.

As noted by the report, Chinese companies like NAURA, AMEC, ACM Research Shanghai, and Wanye Enterprises are platform-type equipment manufacturers.

Among China’s platform-type equipment enterprises, NAURA developed earlier and has already achieved scale, making it the only fully-developed platform-type equipment company in China. AMEC and ACM Research are in a phase of accelerated growth and have reached a certain scale. Wanye Enterprises is still in its early development stage, as the report indicates.

Meanwhile, Piotech, Kingsemi, Hwatsing, Changchuan Technology, Jingce Electronics, and Skyverse Technology are specialized semiconductor equipment manufacturers.

According to the report, based on a review by TrendForce and information from China Semiconductor Industry Association, China has a relatively high self-sufficiency rate in photoresist stripping, cleaning, and etching equipment. In the fields of CMP, thermal processing, and thin-film deposition, China has also achieved advancements in recent years.

However, in metrology, coating and developing, lithography, and ion implantation equipment, China still remains relatively weak, as the report points out.

Read more

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• [News] China’s Chipmaking Equipment Spending Likely to Drop below USD 40 Billion in 2025 amid U.S. Tensions

(Photo credit: AMEC)