TSMC's investment in LED production impact on Taiwan's industry

On March 25, 2010, TSMC held an opening ceremony for the LED lighting technology R&D center and mass production plant in the Hsinchu Science Park, marking an important milestone for entering the new cause of green energy.

Taiwan's TSMC officially announced its entry into LED production at Zhuke Construction LED Factory, which is bound to cast a lot of variables for Taiwan's LED industry. This article will analyze the possible impacts of the LED industry and the possible changes in the future LED industry in Taiwan. The investment in the first phase of the plant and production equipment of this LED plant is NT$5.5 billion. At least 10 MOCVD machines will be placed in the initial stage. It is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2010 and mass production will begin in the first quarter of 2011; As for the second phase of the project, it will be carried out in accordance with future development needs. In the future, TSMC will continue to produce from Epi/Chip to package, and integrate light, electricity and heat treatment on the silicon substrate, ship it as a light engine module, provide the components required for lighting products, and open up the B2B enterprise customer application market.

Impact Analysis

(I) Vertical integration to improve industrial capital and market entry barriers

Taiwan's LED industry has been developing for 30 years. In the past, the industry has been focusing on professional division of labor. Jingdian, Yuyuan, Taigu, Guangguang, etc. focus on epitaxial and grain manufacturing, Yiguang, Guangbao, Dongbei, etc. The manufacturer focused on LED packaging manufacturing. It was only after nearly two to three years that Qi Li, Ronda and TSMC successively invested in the industrial structure of the professional division of labor. After the investment of TSMC, it began to plan to manufacture LED modules, which will be electricity, light and heat. At the same time, it is solved to facilitate the application of downstream manufacturers.

After the investment of Kellett, Ronda and TSMC, Taiwan's LED industry began to vertically integrate. If the vertically integrated business model can be successful, the LED industry will enter the threshold, including capital and market. In terms of capital, due to the vertical division of labor, if the manufacturer chooses to enter one end, the required funds are less than the vertical integration. Therefore, the new entrants will greatly increase the capital threshold in the future, and will also make Taiwan's LED industry continue to move toward the larger Evergrande. situation.

In the market segment, vertical integration will make it impossible for epitaxial/die or package manufacturers to enter the supply system. For example, in the past, upstream manufacturers only provided die, so the main customers are downstream packaging plants, but if TSMC is vertical Integration will inevitably not buy Chips with the upstream epitaxial/grain factory, thus significantly increasing market barriers.

In addition, through vertical integration, responsibility can be clarified more clearly and contribute to technological advancement. Vertical integration will solve the problems caused by the professional division of labor in the past. When the division of labor is professional, if there is a problem with the LED, it is impossible to clarify the responsibility. After the vertical integration, the products are internally manufactured by the upstream epitaxial, die and package. It is the responsibility of the company to produce, so that product quality control and responsibility will be more clear. In addition, vertical integration will also be of great help to the technical improvement. For example, if a certain phosphor needs to be matched with a special specification of a blue chip, the best luminous efficiency can be achieved, but due to the professional division of labor in the past, Epitaxial plant may not be willing to manufacture special specifications of blue chip, but after vertical integration, due to the consistent production of epitaxial, die and package, the internal is bound to support special specifications to pursue better luminous efficiency.

(2) Changing the technical characteristics from the process type to the standardization process (technology-oriented to management-oriented

In the past, the LED industry has been positioned as a process-based industry. It is necessary to adjust the machine to the best condition through the experience of engineers and equipment. However, due to the different experience of each engineer, the LED manufacturing process has been unable to significantly improve the specification yield.

In addition, Taiwan's LED industry is mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. Therefore, equipment investment cannot be supported by large companies. Therefore, investment in automated production equipment will be limited by insufficient funds and cannot be quickly imported into standardized/automated production. In the past, Taiwan's LED industry faced competition with semiconductor and TFT industries. Most semiconductor manufacturers and TFT factories with excellent prospects for selecting talents made the LED industry better in process management than semiconductor industry.

After TSMC enters the LED industry, TSMC will inevitably introduce the semiconductor efficient management process into the LED industry, and the process will be standardized and automated, reducing the interference of human factors; If it succeeds, it will make Taiwan's LED industry from the past process industry to standardization/automated production, and solve the LED specification yield problem in one fell swoop, which will greatly increase the LED specification yield.

If the LED specification yield can be greatly improved, the effective production capacity will be greatly increased, which will cause the LED price to continue to decline, which will be of great help to the application marketing. If TSMC can significantly increase the effective production capacity, the competitiveness of existing manufacturers will also change. If the existing manufacturers cannot improve the effective production capacity, the competitiveness will decline; and because the current specifications are not high, the manufacturers can only rely on The expansion plant can produce the required products. Therefore, if the specification product yield can be greatly improved, does it mean that the current production capacity may be sufficient to supply the market demand, and whether it is necessary to continue to expand the factory in the future is worthy of attention.

(3) Development of silicon package substrates

TSMC has invested in the development of LED silicon substrate packaging technology before it was built. Recently, it has published 8 吋 wafer-level LED silicon-based packaging technology, which is regarded as a new breakthrough in high-power LED packaging by the industry; The 8-inch wafer-level LED silicon-based packaging technology is based on a patented miniaturized semiconductor micro-electromechanical process that uses an exclusive technology such as silicon vias, mold lenses, and uniform phosphor coating to cut the entire package. Mass production and cost reduction; thermal resistance in single crystal LED package products is expected to drop to 2 ° C / W, and significantly reduce interface temperature

Figure 2 Si heat dissipation capability assessment (Source: Caiyu Technology)

In the traditional LED structure packaging method, chip heat dissipation is often limited by the sapphire substrate with low heat transfer coefficient. The sapphire substrate has a heat transfer coefficient of only 40 W/mK, and the thickness of the sapphire substrate is usually about several tens of micrometers, which increases the difficulty of the overall heat transfer. Therefore, the conventional chip bonding structure is not an efficient heat dissipation design. At present, the flip-chip chip package attracts people's attention because it can provide a better heat dissipation system, and the heat generated by the active light-emitting layer can be conducted outward by a large area of ​​solder bumps underneath, thereby improving the efficiency of LED light-emitting.

(4) Development of LED Light Engine (Light Engine), reducing communication costs from component to system and accelerating LED lighting development

The silicon substrate to be developed by TSMC has a good thermal conductivity and a thermal conductivity of 80150 W/mK. It can also integrate the circuit to form an LED light engine module, which will make the downstream application manufacturers more convenient to use. LED lighting application expansion has been a great help, and there is an opportunity to accelerate the development of LED lighting applications.

The continued decline in the price of LED components seems to be the same phenomenon in the industry. Therefore, TSMC is currently targeting the company's shipments with LED light engine modules, hoping to increase the added value of the products. However, in addition to the light source part, the LED complete set of lamps includes optical design (Optic), thermal (Thermal and Metal Bending), power supply (Power Supply), components (Assembly), but in the LED industry, although LED The technology continues to improve, but due to the wide range of LED applications, even if 100 lm/W products are commercialized, there are still other applications in the past, such as toys, Christmas lights, etc., so that new products can be sold. It has been continuously developed, but the old products are not easy to be eliminated. The price only has room to continue to fall, and the gross profit is difficult to maintain.

In addition, according to the two working meetings held by the US DOE in April and June 2009 respectively, it is pointed out that for the key issue of LED lamp cost, from the blueprint of LED lamp cost development in Figure 3, DOE is expected in 2015. The overall cost of LED lamps in the year is only about 1/4 of the current one. Among them, LED components have the largest decline. It is inevitable that LED prices will continue to decline in the future. Therefore, in the future, TSMC will be the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer to cross the LED manufacturing industry. Whether it can use the experience of semiconductor manufacturing to greatly improve the LED process yield, thereby improving the LED gross profit, will be the focus of observation.

MT3-Normal Size Dustproof Micro Switch

Features

â—† Designed For Water and Dust Tight(IP67)

â—† Customized Designs

Normal Size Dustproof Micro Switch,Normally Open Micro Switch,Normally Closed Micro Switch,Momentary Dust Proof Switch

Ningbo Jialin Electronics Co.,Ltd , https://www.donghai-switch.com