Problems in China's MEMS industry

Although China's MEMS industry faces good development opportunities, it cannot be ignored that compared with foreign MEMS industries, the current development of the domestic MEMS industry has the following problems:

1. Lack of support from the MEMS industry chain. If China wants to develop the MEMS industry, it must establish a complete industry chain support from device models, simulation tools, manufacturing and processing to packaging and testing, just like the semiconductor industry. Although China currently has a good industrial foundation for developing the MEMS industry chain, the foundries and packaging plants are unfamiliar with the emerging MEMS industry and have not carried out related MEMS business. In addition, foundries and packaging plants also lack relevant technology sources. The above factors have led to China's construction of the MEMS industry chain being basically blank.

2. Lack of high-end R&D personnel. Compared with developed countries in Europe and the United States, our R&D level is relatively low, and we are lagging behind in basic research. We also lack experienced local MEMS engineers, which makes industrialization difficult.

3. Without the industrial accumulation of the MEMS industry, some domestic research institutes are still in a state of exploration, basically focusing on the manufacture of special MEMS sensors in small batches that do not consider costs and meet specific purposes, such as national defense applications.

4. The domestic entrepreneurial environment is poor, and it is difficult for many MEMS start-ups to raise funds.

Due to the above-mentioned development obstacles, the gap between domestic and foreign MEMS technology is widening. At present, the technical capabilities of most domestic MEMS companies can only reach the primary level of pressure sensors. Only Suzhou Minxin Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Minxin") has made breakthroughs in the field of silicon microphones, which is more technically difficult, and its technical capabilities have reached the international advanced level. In contrast, foreign companies have made continuous breakthroughs in fields with relatively high technical difficulty, such as micro projectors, single-chip cameras, micro fuel cells, silicon oscillators, etc.

If the domestic MEMS industry is not supported in time, the MEMS industry is likely to follow the footsteps of the semiconductor industry and fall into a vicious cycle of weak competitiveness and low return rate. Specifically, as an emerging technology, MEMS has a long R&D cycle and huge capital investment. If China cannot keep up with the pace of foreign R&D in time, over time, even if China masters certain core technologies in the future, it may fall into the trap of intellectual property rights. Similar to the case of Qualcomm's monopoly on the CDMA market, in some large MEMS markets , foreign large companies have actually formed a monopoly on technology and intellectual property rights, such as Texas Instruments' monopoly on the DLP (digital projector) market, HP and other companies' monopoly on the inkjet print head market, and so on.