Two new markets with great potential in the eyes of packaging equipment leaders
Latest update time：2020-07-22
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Driven by human demand for quality, the technology industry has achieved leapfrog development in the past few decades. In recent years, we have ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm. For example, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, new energy vehicles, autonomous driving, and AR/VR have emerged, which has forced the upstream chip industry to move forward to meet these new demands. Different manufacturers are also planning for the future based on their own product layout to avoid missing the next wave of opportunities.
Mr. Zhang Zanbin, Executive Vice President of Kulicke & Soffa Group
In the view of Mr. Zhang Zanbin, Executive Vice President of Kulicke & Soffa Group, the LED chip market and power device market, including Mini/Micro LED, will be huge growth drivers in the future.
Positioning the Big Market Behind Mini/Micro LED
Mini LED refers to LED chips with a size of 100 microns. When used in panel backlight, it can achieve display effects and thinness comparable to OLED panels at a lower cost, while also having the ability to be mass-produced, longer life, and lower power consumption. "It is precisely because of these advantages that Mini LED has a huge market scenario in the LCD backlight panel market," said Mr. Zhang Zanbin in an interview with Semiconductor Industry Observer. However, while bringing an upgraded experience, Mini LED also brings new technical challenges to related chip manufacturers.
Source: Yole Development
Source: Yole Development
According to Mr. Zhang Zanbin, from production to integration into display screens, a Mini LED die needs to go through four steps: sorting, mixing, spacing adjustment, and transfer, as shown in the figure below. In this process, the challenges of sorting and spacing in Mini LED die production and the subsequent transfer of a large number of Mini LED dies to the backlight panel in the display screen are the most challenging. Kulicke & Soffa has already provided a reliable solution to these Mini LED problems in 2018, PIXALUX.
Mr. Zhang Zanbin told the reporter of Semiconductor Industry Observer that this product is the result of the cooperation between Kulicke & Soffa and Rohinni. He further pointed out that Rohinni, who excels in manufacturing technology, has developed a technology to install micro LEDs on the surface of substrates and meet the requirements of speed and precision in large-scale mass production. Kulicke & Soffa can help significantly improve the production efficiency of Mini LEDs by cooperating with them.
It is understood that PIXALUX can provide a mounting speed of 50 LEDs per second, which is far ahead of the solution providers at that time. At the same time, the grain size that this equipment can "transfer" can cover about 50μm to 100μm, as long as the probe can touch the detection range. Relevant information further pointed out that when this equipment is working, 10 wafers can be stacked each time, and each wafer can produce more than 300,000 grains. This also greatly improves the work efficiency per square meter.
From Mr. Zhang Zanbin's introduction, we learned that in the Mini LED market with a size of 75μm to 300μm, the equipment they currently provide is sufficient to cope with it, and the existing LED chip factories can meet the production needs by upgrading their existing wafer factories accordingly. However, for the Micro LED market with a size below 10μm, chip factories need to improve the equipment production capacity and even cleanliness of the wafer factories to meet the demand. Manufacturers including Kulicke & Soffa are also stepping up their layout in the relevant market.
"In addition to the traditional LED market, the Mini LED market will have strong growth momentum. Most of its application markets are backlight. For this reason, we believe that this market will have a large growth rate from the end of this year to the first half of next year. As for Micro LED, I think it will grow rapidly starting from next year. The applications are mainly focused on markets including AR/VR, automobiles and TVs. I believe this technology will replace traditional LCD and OLED technologies in the future (2023 to 2024)," added Mr. Zhang Zanbin.
Targeting the traditional LED market, Kulicke & Soffa brought the new ULTRALUX automatic wire bonding machine to this year's Semicon China, which can effectively reduce LED production costs by up to 10%.
It is reported that due to the use of new technology and materials, the new generation of ULTRALUX ball welding machine can reduce the production cost of LED chips by 10%, and further improve the production efficiency. This is mainly due to its lightweight and high-load XYZ reinforced design, which enables an advanced fully closed-loop servo system and a robust miniaturized lens design, which enables more precise image spacing recognition, thereby maximizing the image pre-recognition performance.
In addition, the alarm automatic repair function has been expanded for SHTL, NSOP and NSOL, and the optimized arc trajectory control and line type achieve high reliability;
Finally, this new equipment can also achieve the shortest evaluation and certification time. It is understood that ULTRALUX's Quick LED Suite includes Quick Bond, Quick Stitch, and Quick Loop process kits, which can not only optimize the process but also significantly shorten the time to market.
The packaging opportunities brought by power devices should not be missed
Power devices are another market that Mr. Chang is optimistic about. Indeed, as shown in the figure below, IGBT will maintain a 2.6% compound annual growth rate in the next few years due to the demand for computers and PCs, home applications and automotive electronics; electric vehicles should also drive the growth of power modules; and electric vehicles bring demand for Li-ion batteries, and the packaging opportunities behind them are also what Kulicke & Soffa has paid close attention to and can provide over the past few years. The company's acquisition of Orthodyne in 2008 is their technical pillar in this regard.
According to information, Orthodyne, headquartered in Irvine, California, is a leading supplier of wedge bonders and bond tip tools for the power management and hybrid component markets. In August 2008, Kulicke & Soffa announced that it would acquire Orthodyne for approximately 7.1 million shares of K&S common stock plus $80 million in cash.
Commenting on the transaction, Scott Kulicke, then President and CEO of Kulicke & Soffa, said: "The acquisition of Orthodyne is consistent with our clear strategy, positioning K&S to leverage our equipment manufacturing capabilities and further solidify our leading position as a supplier of interconnect solutions. Orthodyne is a fast-growing, profitable market leader that will enable us to gain deeper access to the discrete component segment of the semiconductor market, particularly the attractive power management and hybrid component markets."
Mr. Zhang Zanbin also said that with the support of Orthodyne technology, the company has also launched multiple series of power component packaging product lines in the past decade. In the corresponding equipment market for discrete components, Kulicke & Soffa also has more than 90% market share. The Power C wedge bonder released at Semicon China recently is a new series of product lines launched by the company for this market.
According to reports, the Power-C ultrasonic wedge bonder is designed for single-row TO power device packaging. The linear drive system, welding head, ultrasonic generator and wire feeding system, as well as the extended graphic recognition function of the Power-C ultrasonic wedge bonder have been reliably verified and can bring industry-leading productivity and reliability to customers.
As the successor of the PowerFusion series, Power-C integrates all the advantages of the former. "Years of experience have enabled us to gain a firm foothold in the automotive discrete device packaging market, which has relatively high reliability requirements," Mr. Zhang Zanbin emphasized.
In addition to the technical fundamentals, due to the Sino-US trade disputes in recent years, whether these foreign companies can continue to supply certain Chinese manufacturers or suppliers of certain manufacturers has become the focus of industry attention. In response to this issue, Mr. Zhang told the Semiconductor Industry Observer reporter: "K&S's current business in mainland China is in good condition. It continues to serve domestic customers and continuously provide innovative packaging solutions." In addition, the reporter also learned that in the first three quarters of fiscal year 2020 (K&S's fiscal year statistical cycle is from October 1 to September 30), K&S's business in China has completed more than 90% of the annual target. With these new products, K&S will provide better services to Chinese customers in the future.
Founded in 1951, Kulicke & Soffa is about to celebrate its 70th anniversary. As a global leading semiconductor equipment design and manufacturing company, we are looking forward to what new surprises they will bring us in the future.
*Disclaimer: This article is originally written by the author. The content of the article is the author's personal opinion. Semiconductor Industry Observer reprints it only to convey a different point of view. It does not mean that Semiconductor Industry Observer agrees or supports this point of view. If you have any objections, please contact Semiconductor Industry Observer.
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