Wanhua’s 10-ton disilane production line will be put into production at the end of the year
Looking forward to the future of science and technology, a number of innovative applications such as mobile phones, computers, the Internet of Things, 5G, AI, automotive electronics, blockchain and AR/VR will promote the long-term and rapid development of the chip industry. Disilane is a key material for advanced chip processes and related high-end process processes. With the replacement of new semiconductor technologies and processes, the demand for disilane in 14nm, 7nm and other chips is increasing. At present, domestic companies are facing technical barriers, and the market is highly monopolized by foreign companies.
“With the commissioning of the disilane production line, this technical barrier will be broken.” Recently, the person in charge of Yantai Wanhua Electronic Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Wanhua Electronic Materials) introduced. The project will officially start construction in 2022, with a designed disilane production capacity of 50 tons/year. At present, most of the monomers in the first phase of the project have completed the main structure, and the 10-ton disilane production line is expected to be put into production by the end of the year.
High-purity disilane is mainly used in 3D NAND memory chip manufacturing. The manufacturing of 3D NAND chips can be understood as the “plane” of a tall building. The more complex the “building” structure is, the higher the aspect ratio and the better the thin film stacking deposition and epitaxial growth are needed. This has high requirements for indicators such as “thickness and uniformity of deposited film, uniform coverage of high aspect ratio channels” in the chip manufacturing process. High-purity disilane will become an irreplaceable deposition material for this process with its advantages. Today, 3D NAND has developed from the initial 24 layers to 300 layers, and experts predict that it can be stacked to 1,000 layers. In the future, the battle for the number of layers and production capacity of major global storage manufacturers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Micron, and Yangtze Memory will continue. The overall market for electronic special gases is constantly expanding, and the market demand for disilane will also increase further.
In recent years, with the improvement of social science and technology and people’s living standards, electronic special gases have already stood on the hottest industry track in fields such as chip manufacturing and solar cells. In order to expand the upstream semiconductor industry chain, Wanhua Energy Conservation Group initiated the establishment of Wanhua Electronic Materials, which specializes in the research and development, achievement transformation and industrialization of high-purity disilane, a “bottleneck” material in the large-scale integrated circuit industry and optoelectronic technology field.
The research and development process was not smooth sailing. “At the beginning, we tried to introduce technology and built a 600m2 laboratory, but we failed to overcome the core technology after two years of experiments. Finally, we realized that technology with real market potential cannot be bought. So, we burned our boats and started independent research and development, formed a technical research team, studied foreign literature and patents, repeatedly debugged and tested, digested, absorbed and innovated the technology, and finally overcame the technical difficulties in two years. At present, our high-purity disilane preparation technology has reached the international advanced level after the scientific and technological achievement appraisal organized by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. After it is put into production, it can achieve the domestic substitution of high-purity disilane.”
In the next stage, Wanhua Electronic Materials will accelerate the industrialization construction process of high-purity disilane, continuously develop other electronic special gases including “ethyl orthosilicate, diborane, germane”, enrich the product structure, create an industry-leading enterprise with general contracting capabilities, enhance the local supply capacity of key supporting materials in the industrial chain, realize the independent control of key core technologies, and contribute corporate strength to China’s “core infrastructure”.
