Global demand for 12-inch silicon wafers is strong, capacity is almost sold out next year

Xu Xiulan, chairman of Silicon Wafer Global, said that the industry's economic recovery has been better than expected due to the new wave of applications such as 5G. The 12-inch silicon wafer market has bottomed out in the fourth quarter and has a quarterly recovery in 2020. Full load. The 8-inch inventory is still being removed, but demand has picked up slightly, and the recovery time is expected to be later, and 6-inches will be even later.

Xu Xiulan pointed out that in the second half of this year, customers from major international tier one manufacturers such as TSMC, Intel, and Micron have grown, and released optimistic news. At present, Global Crystal's customer demand in many factories in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea is better than expected. She said that she was quite worried about the first quarter of next year, but now it looks healthy.

The large-scale recovery is the first to start. Benefiting from the foundry customers' advanced production capacity of 16, 7 nanometers and other advanced processes, orders have recently been restarted. Epicrystalline silicon wafers for 12-inch logic processes have been in short supply. Next year, there will be 1 factory remaining. On completion, orders for non-epicrystalline silicon wafers such as polished wafers have continued to increase, and capacity is currently tight. Overall, the market situation of 12-inch silicon wafers has significantly improved, and next year's performance will be better than this year.

Recently, the market has reported that demand for orders including CMOS image sensors (CIS), power management ICs, large-size panel driver ICs, and power semiconductors has rebounded, resulting in tight production capacity for 8-inch wafer foundries. Xu Xiulan said that because customers still hold Certain stocks, Universal Crystal as upstream, visibility is 1-2 quarters later than customers.

In order to meet the strong demand from customers, Universal Crystal is actively expanding its production globally. For example, the South Korean factory opened in late November mainly provided 12-inch silicon wafers for memory products. Xu Xiulan is expected to reach full capacity quickly next year. The US plant will also expand its production capacity and will start in the first quarter of 2020, focusing on 8-inch silicon-on-insulator (SOI) products.

In addition, Global Crystal recently announced that it intends to repatriate about NT $ 10 billion overseas to Taiwan in the first quarter of next year, mainly for upgrading the existing Zhuke plant, and also expects to build a clean room in the idle space of the Sino-German factory. In the fields of silicon carbide (SiC), green energy, and high-end processes, new capacity will be added in 2021.