According to many people familiar with the matter, Chinese mainland’s panel leaders BOE and Huaxing Optoelectronics, as well as AUO and Innolux in Taiwan Province, have set up teams to adjust the panel manufacturing technology to be used for chip packaging and assembly.
Chip packaging is the last step of the chip production process, which has low technical requirements, but it is the next frontier field of semiconductor technology development, so it has attracted attention.
According to sources, the main material suppliers of these panel factories, including Corning of the United States and AGC(Asahi Glass), a Japanese glass manufacturer, are also investing resources to develop glass carriers for advanced chip packaging.
In order to make the chip more powerful, the traditional method is to put more transistors on the same wafer. However, as the distance between the transistors is shrinking to only a few nanometers, the traditional method becomes more and more difficult. Therefore, advanced chip packaging and stacking technology is helpful to package several different types of chips together and become a more powerful single chip.
In this regard, TSMC, Samsung and Intel are all developing their own advanced chip stack technology, and even Huawei is actively developing this technology. This also gives panel manufacturers new opportunities. They find that it is cheaper to use display "glass" for packaging than to use round silicon wafer for packaging. The glass carrier is usually rectangular, which is much larger than the largest 12-inch chip on the market.
BOE and Innolux actively entered the field of chip packaging.
BOE has always been the most active player in expanding its chip business. In 2017, BOE formed an alliance with Taiwan Province IC packaging and testing company Haobang to purchase a part of the equity of Suzhou Haozhong, a subsidiary of the latter. Since then, investment funds related to BOE have invested in many semiconductor-related enterprises, including chip production materials, equipment and manufacturing fields. In addition, the company also cooperates with Huawei to jointly develop advanced chip packaging technology.
Innolux is another company that joined the war earlier. As early as 2019, it began to develop panel-level packaging. According to several sources, Innolux is transforming the old 3.5 generation panel production line into a panel-level chip packaging production line.
Innolux said that it has been committed to the non-traditional application of panels in the past few years, and the so-called panel-level "Fan-Out Panel-Level Packaging" is one of its efforts.
Corning also said that it is providing customers with "high-precision glass carriers" for advanced chip manufacturing. Because the company has a mature global supply chain, it has shipped more than 500,000 wafers to high-end customers.
It may take time to adopt these new technologies on a large scale.
However, since this is a new process, it may be far away to adopt these technologies on a large scale. People familiar with the matter believe that these plans may be affected by the delay in the delivery of equipment in the chip industry, and persuading chip factories to adopt new packaging technology is also a big challenge.
A person familiar with the Innolux plan believes that this is a new technology, and it needs to incorporate new equipment into the production process. It also needs customers to verify the technology. There are still many things that must be implemented before mass production, but the company hopes that this will activate their production.
At the same time, informed sources revealed that AUO is testing the process of panel-level packaging, and Huaxing Optoelectronics has purchased additional equipment to study the feasibility of chip packaging business.
Qiu Yubin, senior research vice president of TrendForce Jibang Consulting, said that considering the vulnerability of the panel industry to demand fluctuations, it is reasonable for manufacturers to seek new growth drivers. Samsung and LG Display have also invested a lot of resources in chip packaging technology. However, he stressed that in view of the complexity of chip packaging and market competition, it remains to be seen whether panel manufacturers can really enter the chip industry and maintain their strategic position.
Source: Science and Technology News
For more in-depth market information of panel industry, click to learn about TrendForce Jibang Consulting’s Panel Industry Chain Supply and Demand and Price Report.
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