ALD and 300 mm Wafer processing - Fabs, Applications & OEMs

IC Insight has released a number of reports now in December (see links below). One of them is the new Global Wafer Capacity 2017-2021 and here it is clear - when it comes to high volume production and wafer size it is clear that 450mm is dead - nobody is going down that path. For the top ALD OEMs the main revenue is on 300mm wafer processing tools, single wafer, multi wafer and large batch furnaces.

Since Samsung went ahead with high volume manufacturing using an ALD High-k as node dielectric at 90 nm for DRAM MIS Capacitors ALD has mainly been employed on 300 mm wafers. I am guesstimating that 80 to 90 % of the total annual revenue for ALD equipment are 300 mm wafer processing equipment. The top suppliers in annual revenue for the 300 mm market in descending order according to my estimates for 2015 was: 

1. ASM International

2. Tokyo Electron

3. Kokusai

4. Lam Research

5. Jusung Engineering

6. Wonik IPS

7. Aixtron

8. Applied Materials

9. Picosun

10. Ultratech. 

Adding to that there are a number of OEMs in South Korea besides Jusung and Wonik IPS that are supplying 300 mm ALD tools but I lack insight into them and therefore I am rather leaving them outside the list. By the end of the 1st quarter 2017 there will be new numbers available for a estimation for 2016 and it will be interesting to see if Applied Materials and Lam Research have taken market shares in ALD for the booming 3DNAND, patterning business and maybe BEOL applications where ASM is not that strong and Large Batch Furnaces are more seldom used (TEL & Kokusai).

Following the table below from IC Insight you can see that  the top 10 manufacturers having 300 mm fabs and thats´s where you will find a majority of those ALD reactors shuffling 300 mm wafers for the major ALD process modules that are:

• DRAM Capacitors
• HKMG Transistor stacks
• Liners & Spacers
• Multipple patterning
• 3DNAND Gate stacks
• Cu seed, barries and caps inBEOL interconnects

Most interestingly the memory companies (Samsung, Micron & SK Hynix) are shuffling the most amount of 300 mm wafers, almost 50% of them, and besides the big ALD install base in Logic Gate stacks and patterning you will find a huge amount of installed ALD tools in those DRAM and NAND flash fabs. 

Total Memory Market Forecast to Increase 10% in 2017
-- December 20, 2016
Number of IC Manufacturers Using 300mm Wafers Less than Half Using 200mm Wafers-- December 16, 2016
Five Suppliers Hold 41% of Global Semiconductor Marketshare in 2016-- December 06, 2016