Significant! my country's photoresist welcomes new breakthroughs, paving the way for EUV photoresist
Latest update time：2024-04-03
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In addition to photolithography machines, photoresist is also an area that has been stuck in our country for a long time.
Data show that the current self-sufficiency rate of domestic photoresists is:
EUV is 0%, ArF is 1%, and KrF is 5%.
In 2022, Eric Johnson, CEO of Japanese photolithography giant JSR, also said wildly: "Even if the ingredients are known, China cannot make EUV photoresist."
Despite this, domestic photoresist has been struggling to move forward. In the past few days, my country's new photoresist technology has made new breakthroughs.
Electronic Engineering World (ID: EEworldbbs)丨Comprehensive
It is expected to break through the common problems in photolithography manufacturing
It is expected to break through the common problems in photolithography manufacturing
According to the official news from the public account "Hubei Jiufengshan Laboratory", this fully independent intellectual property technology can not only solve common problems in photolithography manufacturing, but its performance is also better than most commercial photoresists, and it can also provide EUV photoresist. Focus on developing technical reserves.
As an indispensable material for semiconductor manufacturing, photoresist quality and performance are key factors affecting the electrical properties, yield and reliability of integrated circuits. However, the threshold for photoresist technology is high, and there are only a handful of photoresist products on the market that have high process stability, wide process tolerance, and strong universal applicability.
When semiconductor manufacturing nodes enter 100 nm or even below 10 nm, how to produce photolithography patterns with high resolution, excellent cross-sectional morphology, and low line edge roughness has become a common problem in photolithography manufacturing.
In response to the above bottleneck problem, Jiufengshan Laboratory and Huazhong University of Science and Technology formed a joint research team to support the Huazhong University of Science and Technology team to break through the "chemical amplification photoresist with dual non-ionic photoacid synergistically enhanced response" technology.
Through ingenious chemical structure design, this research uses two photosensitive units to construct a "chemical amplification photoresist with dual non-ionic photoacid synergistically enhanced response", and finally obtains photolithographic image morphology, excellent line edge roughness, and space pattern width. The value is normally distributed with a very small standard deviation (SD) (approximately 0.05) and performs better than most commercial photoresists. Moreover, the time required for each step of photolithography and development fully meets the requirements for throughput and production efficiency in semiconductor mass production manufacturing.
Relying on the Jiufengshan laboratory process platform, the above-mentioned photoresist system with independent intellectual property rights has completed preliminary process verification on the production line, and simultaneously completed the detection and optimization of various technical indicators, realizing a comprehensive process from technology development to achievement transformation. The chain is opened.
Photoresist is monopolized by Japan and the United States
Photoresist is monopolized by Japan and the United States
According to the different exposure wavelengths, the photoresists currently used on the market can be divided into five types: g-line, i-line, KrF, ArF and EUV. The shorter the photoresist exposure wavelength, the higher the processing resolution and the ability to form smaller and finer patterns.
With the continuous advancement of integrated circuit manufacturing technology and the continuous reduction of device feature sizes, the current most advanced photoresist exposure wavelength has reached the extreme ultraviolet wavelength range, which is what we call EUV. The exposure wavelength is 13.5nm, and The previous generation ArF photoresist was 193nm. Just looking at the numbers, you can understand how difficult it is.
From a global market perspective, it is basically monopolized by Japanese and American companies.
Four Japanese companies, JSR, Tokyo Onka, Shin-Etsu Chemical and Fujifilm, occupy more than 70% of the global market share, and their overall monopoly position is stable.
Data from 2020 shows that Tokyo Yinghua ranks first with a share of 26%, DuPont ranks second with a share of 17%, JSR and Sumitomo Chemical, the world's top four manufacturers, have a cumulative market share of nearly 70%, and the industry concentration is high. .
The global distribution of photoresist downstream applications is relatively balanced, with panel photoresist accounting for 30-35% of total photoresist consumption, PCB photoresist and semiconductor photoresist both accounting for 25%-30%, and other categories Photoresist accounts for 15~20%.
In contrast, in China, relatively low-end PCB photoresist still accounts for about 94% of domestic supply, while high-end panel photoresist and semiconductor photoresist account for very little.
Specific to semiconductors, the current self-sufficiency rate of g-line and i-line photoresists suitable for 6-inch silicon wafers is about 10%, the self-sufficiency rate of KrF photoresist suitable for 8-inch silicon wafers is less than 5%, and the self-sufficiency rate of KrF photoresists suitable for 12-inch silicon wafers is less than 5%. The ArF photoresist for wafers basically relies on imports, and the research and development of more advanced EUV is still in a very early stage.
In terms of production capacity, only g/i line photoresist products of domestic companies have been applied in batches, and only a few companies with leading R&D progress in KrF have been applied in small batches.
China’s Photoresist Road to Advance
China’s Photoresist Road to Advance
The development history of China's photoresist industry can be traced back to the end of the 20th century. At that time, there were only a few photoresist manufacturers in the country and the production scale was small.
In 1967, China's first KPR negative photoresist was put into production. In 2018, the National Science and Technology Major Project completed research on the design, preparation and synthesis process of key materials for EUV photoresist. In 2019, photoresist, its key raw materials and supporting reagents were selected into the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Key New Materials Guidance Catalog. Photoresist With the rapid development of the domestic semiconductor industry, the demand for photoresist market continues to increase, the photoresist technology continues to advance, and domestic photoresist companies are gradually rising. At present, China has become one of the largest photoresist markets in the world.
At present, domestic photoresist companies are mostly distributed in the field of PCB photoresist, which has low technical difficulty, accounting for more than 90%. The semiconductor photoresist market, which is the most technically difficult, mainly includes Beijing Kehua, Xuzhou Bokang, Nanda Optoelectronics, Jingrui Electrical Materials and Shanghai Xinyang are among a few.
Looking at some of the financing cases of domestic photoresist companies from 2021 to 2024, 50% of angels are in the A round, and 50% are in the B round and beyond.
It can be said that China's photoresist is making continuous breakthroughs, and I believe that this achievement will also help the domestic photoresist industry continue to move forward.
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