Application of non-ferrous metals in the semiconductor industry 3

This part mainly involves raw material supply and production equipment manufacturing. Raw materials include various types of high-purity metals, non-metals, and compounds. Taking high-purity metals as an example, to prepare copper targets that meet the semiconductor grade, the copper raw materials need to be purified to 6N or even higher purity, which requires extremely high purification technology and process equipment.
The main methods of metal purification include chemical purification and physical purification. Chemical purification is mainly divided into wet purification and fire purification. The main metal is precipitated through electrolysis, thermal decomposition, and other methods. Physical purification is to purify the main metal through evaporation crystallization, electromigration, vacuum melting, and other steps.
The global high-purity metal industry is concentrated in the United States, Japan, and other countries. Most of the high-purity raw materials for domestic targets rely on imports, and a small part of copper, titanium, and aluminum can be self-sufficient. Norwegian Hydro is the largest company in the world for 5N5 grade high-purity aluminum. A few domestic enterprises have initially possessed the production technology of target raw materials, and they can be roughly divided into two types of enterprises: one is the original metal production enterprise that cuts into the preparation of high-purity metal products; the other is the target enterprise that extends to the preparation of upstream raw materials to increase added value.
In terms of equipment, key equipment such as high-precision smelting furnaces, advanced powder metallurgy equipment, high-performance binding equipment, etc., and their manufacturing technology are mostly in the hands of companies in developed countries such as Europe, the United States, and Japan. This equipment determines the efficiency, quality, and consistency of target production and has a significant impact on the production capacity and product quality of midstream target manufacturing companies.

This part is the target manufacturing link, which is the part with the highest technical content and the most complex process in the entire industry chain. The manufacturing process covers multiple processes such as smelting, molding, processing, and binding.
Melting requires precise control of temperature, time and atmosphere to ensure the uniformity and purity of material components; molding processes such as powder metallurgy, casting, etc. are each suitable for different materials and target types, and need to be accurately selected according to target performance requirements; the processing link requires extremely high accuracy, and the target size accuracy error needs to be controlled at the micron or even nanometer level; the binding process is related to the reliability of the connection between the target and the backplate, which affects the stability of the sputtering process.
Midstream companies need to invest a lot of R&D resources to continuously optimize processes and improve product quality and yield rate to meet the strict requirements of downstream semiconductor manufacturers.

The main coating processes are physical vapor deposition (PVD) and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). PVD technology is currently the mainstream coating method, and the sputtering process is widely used in semiconductors and display panels. CVD technology mainly produces thin films through chemical reactions. One or several gas phase compounds or elements containing thin film elements are introduced into the reaction chamber at high temperature, and a chemical reaction is performed on the substrate surface to form a thin film.
During the sputtering coating process, the sputtering target needs to be installed in the machine to complete the sputtering reaction. The sputtering machine has strong specificity and high precision. The sputter coating market has long been monopolized by American and Japanese multinational groups.

The application of sputter coating is mainly concentrated in the field of semiconductor chip manufacturing, including wafer manufacturing, wafer packaging, and testing. In wafer manufacturing, sputtering targets are used to form key structures such as the metal interconnect layer, barrier layer, and gate of the chip, which play a decisive role in chip performance, power consumption, integration, and other indicators. As the semiconductor industry expands into emerging fields such as high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and 5G communications, chip performance requirements continue to rise, which in turn drives the demand for high-quality sputtering targets. For example, data center server chips continue to increase the number and integration of chip transistors in order to improve computing speed and processing capabilities. This requires targets to achieve more precise thin film deposition in smaller processes, promoting technology upgrades and product iterations in the target industry.