The semiconductor industry is a high-tech industry with high technology threshold and high output value. The global semiconductor industry is expected to achieve an output value of 500 billion dollars this year. Semiconductor manufacturing requires not only advanced lithography machines, but also materials, including silicon chips, photoresists, high-purity reagents, and CMP materials. Sputtering targets are also one of them. Jiangfeng Electronics, a leading company in the sputtering target industry in China, said recently that the company has mastered the core technology of metal sputtering target for 7nm process nodes and is actively communicating with customers about evaluation.

The high-purity metal sputtering target mainly refers to the metal target with a purity of 99.9% - 99.999%. The physical meteorological deposition (PVD) process applied to the manufacturing of electronic components is the key material for preparing electronic films. Sputtering is one of the main technologies for preparing thin film materials. It uses ions generated by an ion source to accelerate the aggregation in vacuum to form a high speed ion beam, bombards the solid surface, and the ions exchange kinetic energy with the atoms on the solid surface to make the atoms on the solid surface leave the solid and deposit on the substrate surface. The bombarded solid is the raw material for depositing thin films by sputtering, which is called sputtering target.

According to the data of Jiangfeng Electronics, the company mainly produces four kinds of metal sputtering targets: aluminum, titanium, tantalum and tungsten titanium targets. In addition, other products produced by the company include sputtering targets such as copper targets, nickel targets, cobalt targets, chromium targets, ceramic targets, metal evaporites, carbon fiber composite parts for LCD (mainly including carbon fiber support, carbon fiber drive shaft, carbon fiber fork arm), etc. At the same time, the company sells tantalum targets (including tantalum rings) and titanium targets (including titanium rings) recovered from clients, and provides customers with cleaning and refurbishing services for rings.

At present, the purity of metal targets produced by Jiangfeng Electronics is as follows:

报错

In terms of metal sputtering targets, Jiangfeng Electronics is the leader in the domestic industry. According to the company's 2018 semi annual report released on August 29, the operating revenue in the first half of 2018 was 296 million yuan, up 18.11% year on year; The net profit attributable to the parent company was 25 million yuan, up 19.48% year on year. However, Honeywell, the global industry leader, had a revenue of US $21.3 billion in the first half of this year, of which the revenue of advanced materials business including sputtering target reached US $1.455 billion in the first half of 2018.

In terms of sputtering targets used in the new generation of manufacturing process, Jiangfeng Electronics announced today that it has mastered the core technology of metal sputtering targets in the 7nm node process, and is actively communicating with customers about evaluation matters, but the company did not mention specific details.

The customers of Jiangfeng Electronics include TSMC, Globalfoundries, Unicom, and SMIC International. However, only TSMC has mass production at the 7nm node. GF and Unicom have withdrawn from advanced process research and development. SMIC's 7nm process is still in the early stage of exploration.

In addition, the metal target for mastering the 7nm process is different from that for mastering the 7nm process, and the target does not affect the advanced level of the process. In addition, the acceptance of new products and technologies by the semiconductor industry will take a long time for the certification test process. Jiangfeng Electronics spent 5-8 years when it first entered the TSMC supply chain, but the certification time has been significantly reduced to 1-2 years.