Domestic packaging equipment breaks the monopoly in many fields, and Plasin calls for coordinated growth of the industry chain

Since the second half of 2020, the semiconductor industry has recovered, and market demand has exceeded expectations, resulting in a shortage of production capacity in the entire industry chain, and the downstream market is no exception. Data shows that the total operating income of the entire packaging and testing industry in December last year reached nearly 26 billion yuan, with an annual growth rate of 8.5%, setting a historic high for the monthly revenue of the packaging and testing industry! And according to the latest industry survey by the agency, due to the overseas epidemic, overseas packaging and testing manufacturers have been unable to resume work, and China has taken on more orders. At the same time, coupled with the strong demand for domestic substitution, industry insiders predict that this tight packaging and testing capacity will continue until the first half of this year.

Faced with the huge demand for packaging and testing capacity, industry leaders and newcomers have continued to invest heavily in expanding production, driving a substantial increase in semiconductor equipment. SEMI data shows that global semiconductor equipment spending increased by 16% in 2020 to US$69 billion, of which packaging equipment ranked first with a growth rate of 30%. For my country's packaging and testing industry, mainland manufacturers already account for 30% of the top ten global rankings, which is enough to prove the rapid development of the mainland's packaging and testing industry in recent years. However, from another perspective, the localization rate of packaging and testing equipment does not exceed 5% as a whole, and the localization rate of individual packaging and testing production lines is only 1%, which is significantly lower than the overall localization rate of 10%-15% of process equipment.

Plasin breaks the foreign monopoly in multiple fields of packaging equipment

"Among IC packaging equipment, the most difficult ones, including wire bonders, die bonders, and grinding machines, have a localization rate close to zero. Among them, the main suppliers of wire bonders are K&S and ASM Pacific in the United States, the main suppliers of die bonders are ASM Pacific and Besi, and the main suppliers of grinding equipment are DISCO and Tokyo Precision, etc." Meng Jinhui, general manager of Plassign, told Jiwei.com, "Driven by the dual power of market growth trend and domestic substitution, the market demand for semiconductor packaging equipment is growing rapidly, and domestic equipment manufacturers are ushering in an unprecedented window of opportunity."

Meng Jinhui, General Manager of Plasin

Taking the die bonder as an example, Meng Jinhui said that it is one of the key equipment in the packaging process of LED, chip, and camera mounting. It is widely used in various packaging forms, and its main function is to bond the chip to the bracket. In simple terms, its work is mainly divided into the following steps. First, the chip and bracket plate are identified and positioned, and then the given position of the bracket plate is glued, and then the chip is accurately placed at the glue point using a suction device. The whole set of equipment requires high-precision positioning control, pneumatic suction control and other related technologies of optomechanical and electrical systems, and has very high technical barriers. Different fields such as LED and IC packaging have different performance requirements for die bonders. The former has low position accuracy requirements and basically no angle accuracy requirements. Low-cost swing arm solutions are widely used. This type of machine has relatively low technical difficulty and is relatively well domestically produced. IC-level high-speed die bonders and high-precision die bonders for optical communication sensors are still monopolized by imported equipment.

In view of this, a group of senior experts in the fields of motion control, algorithms, machine vision, linear motors, semiconductor equipment and automation equipment founded Prisin Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in November 2017, determined to empower China's manufacturing industry with world-class advanced technologies, build an internationally leading platform-type enterprise in the field of high-end equipment, and realize the intelligent upgrade of China's manufacturing industry. "After three years of hard work, Prisin has now built an underlying technology platform with independent intellectual property rights, including high-speed and high-precision motion control platform technology, servo drive, linear motor, machine vision, modeling and algorithm and other advanced technologies, and combined with specific semiconductor processes, various intelligent equipment and intelligent solutions such as die bonding machines, winding machines, high-end CNC machine tools developed for the semiconductor packaging and testing industry, optical communication industry, electronic components industry and precision processing industry have reached the international advanced level, have been recognized by the industry's leading enterprises, and have been shipped in large quantities." Meng Jinhui pointed out.

According to him, at present, Plastron mainly focuses on several major markets such as IC packaging, advanced packaging, optical communication packaging, and MiniLED packaging. Among them, the 8-inch/12-inch high-end IC-level die bonder has reached the international advanced level. With the slowdown of Moore's Law, advanced packaging is a way to achieve higher performance and lower cost. The latest fully automatic flip-chip and die bonder DA1201fc is aimed at advanced packaging, supporting two modes of flip-chip and high-precision die bond, which is convenient for customers to switch processes according to needs; the high-precision COB die bonder has a mounting accuracy of ±3μm and a rotation angle of ±0.3°. It is specially designed for high-precision packaging products such as high-end optical modules and silicon photonics, breaking the monopoly of international manufacturers; the newly released MiniLED flip-chip COB mass transfer solution - ultra-high-speed flip-chip die bonder XBonder, can achieve a maximum hourly production capacity of 180K, breaking the mass production technology bottleneck of the MiniLED industry, supporting the high-speed transfer of real MiniLED-level chips, and using a similar process to the only mass-produced MiniLED backlight of an international company, and has its own patents.

In the field of die bonding machines, Plassign has filled the gap in domestic linear IC-level die bonding machines, solving the pain point that domestic IC and semiconductor packaging and testing factories have long relied on expensive imported equipment from abroad and there is no equipment that can meet the process conditions in China; in the field of optical communication packaging equipment, the COB high-precision die bonding machine series products, once launched, broke the monopoly of companies such as MRSI, and achieved domestic substitution for high-precision 40G, 100G and 400G high-end optical communication module packaging equipment, promoting the development of my country's 5G optical communication industry; in the field of MiniLED packaging, the ultra-high-speed die bonding equipment designed specifically for MiniLED packaging, exclusively adopts the flip-chip COB die bonding process in the thorn crystal mode, and is the world's most advanced similar equipment. It is believed that with the launch of XBonder, the mass production bottleneck that has plagued the MiniLED industry will be solved.

Calling for collaborative development of the semiconductor industry chain, determined to be "No. 1 in China"

In early February this year, Plasin received a RMB 100 million Series B financing led by Yuanhe Houwang, with participation from old shareholders Yunqi Capital, Lightspeed China, and Fupu Capital. This financing greatly assisted Plasin in advancing the research and development and mass production of advanced packaging equipment, MiniLED mass transfer equipment and other products, helped the company fully master advanced technologies, and accelerated the localization of semiconductor packaging equipment. At the same time, it helped the company expand its production capacity to meet the growing market demand, establish an East China branch and promote its products in the global market.

Meng Jinhui pointed out that Plasin was founded in Dongguan, and the vast terminal and manufacturing market in South China has become a fertile ground for the company's growth. It has been recognized and strategically cooperated with many foreign and domestic listed companies such as Foxconn, Fuman Electronics, Huawei, Luxshare Precision, AAC Optoelectronics, and Mentech Optoelectronics. In the early days of its establishment, the company acquired rich technical accumulation through self-research, cooperative development and the acquisition of Hanwei Intelligence, and has obtained a total of 164 invention patents, utility model patents, software copyrights, technical standards, papers and other technical achievements. Meng Jinhui emphasized that another common challenge encountered by domestic semiconductor equipment is patents. "When we are doing research and development, we will avoid the existing patent layout to innovate, and we have also made strong patent reserves."

In the field of packaging equipment, unfortunately, not all equipment has good domestic competitors. This is a cruel reality. "For example, wire bonding machines have not been well developed in the IC field so far. The domestic market mainly produces surface mount equipment. Prisin is already a leading domestic company, but there is still a certain gap compared with foreign manufacturers." Prisin pointed out that Prisin is a technological leader in IC packaging equipment in China, and its performance is basically compared with imported equipment. "Being able to enter Foxconn's supply chain means that we have defeated overseas competitors."