Plasin is making full efforts in the field of domestic substitution of semiconductor packaging equipment

Recently, according to people familiar with the matter, the construction of Plasin's Dongguan branch has officially started, covering an area of ​​about 3,000 square meters, and the East China branch has been established. It has recruited a lot of people and made full efforts to replace domestic semiconductor packaging equipment. It is expected that the production capacity will be more than doubled in 2021 to meet the growing market demand. In early February this year, Plasin received a 100 million yuan B round of financing led by Yuanhe Houwang, followed by old shareholders Yunqi Capital, Lightspeed China, Fupu Capital, etc., to help Plasin further expand its production capacity and accelerate the localization of semiconductor packaging equipment.

According to SEMI data, the global semiconductor equipment market grew by 18.9% in 2020 to reach US$69 billion. In 2020, the semiconductor equipment market in mainland China grew by 39.3%, becoming the world's largest semiconductor equipment market for the first time. Among them, packaging equipment ranked first in growth rate, reaching 30%. Among semiconductor packaging equipment, die bonders, dicing machines, wire bonders, etc. accounted for a large market demand.

However, the overall localization rate of packaging and testing equipment does not exceed 5%, 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. Among the die bonding equipment, LED die bonding machines have the highest localization rate, reaching more than 90%; the localization rate of high-end IC die bonding machines is relatively low, less than 10%, and has long been monopolized by international companies such as ASM Pacific, Besi, and K&S. With the dual drive of "demand + capital" in the domestic semiconductor industry, there is huge room for domestic substitution.

It is reported that the semiconductor equipment company Plasin was established in November 2017. It is a high-end equipment platform enterprise with independent intellectual property rights in motion controllers, servo drives, linear motors, machine vision, algorithms and other underlying core technologies. In combination with specific processes, it has developed two major product lines: semiconductor packaging equipment and precision winding equipment. It provides high-end equipment and intelligent solutions for industries such as IC packaging, advanced packaging, optical communication packaging, MiniLED packaging, and inductors. After three years of development, it has become a representative domestic enterprise of semiconductor packaging equipment.

In the field of IC die bonders, Plasin has filled the gap in domestic linear IC-level die bonders. Plasin's 8-inch/12-inch high-end IC-level die bonders have been mass-produced and entered mainstream packaging companies, covering a variety of relatively technically demanding packaging forms such as QFN, DFN, SIP and MEMS, and is moving towards the advanced packaging field.

In the field of optical communication packaging equipment, Plassignal's high-precision COB die bonder has a mounting accuracy of ±3μm and a rotation angle of ±0.3°. It is specially designed for high-end optical modules, silicon photonics and other high-precision packaging products, breaking the monopoly of international manufacturers and being widely adopted by the optical communication industry.

In the field of MiniLED packaging, the newly released flip-chip COB mass transfer solution - the ultra-high-speed flip-chip die bonding equipment XBonder, has broken the mass production technology bottleneck of the MiniLED industry. It uses a similar process to the only mass-produced MiniLED backlight of an international company and has its own patents.

During the SEMICON China 2021 exhibition, Meng Jinhui, general manager of Plasin, said in an interview with Jiwei.com reporters: "At present, Plasin's semiconductor equipment has been recognized and strategically cooperated with many listed companies at home and abroad, including Foxconn, Fuman Electronics, Huawei, Luxshare Precision, and Mingpu Optoelectronics. This year, Plasin's production capacity is in the climbing stage, and the Dongguan branch will greatly improve our production capacity delivery capabilities. The equipment delivery time of foreign suppliers is already more than 60 days, and some equipment is even scheduled for 120 days later, while Plasin's delivery time is only half, about 30 to 45 days. The monthly production capacity of semiconductor packaging production line equipment is more than 20 units. It is planned to expand the production capacity by more than double this year, but it is still far from meeting the surging packaging market demand. This year's revenue is expected to exceed 200 million yuan, and strive to reach 300 million yuan. We will fully focus on domestic substitution of semiconductor packaging equipment and aspire to be "China's No. 1."