IC Carrier is about to usher in a historic opportunity

Recent chip industry chain to keep autonomous control referred to the unprecedented height, due to China's chip industry has emerged a large number of backbone enterprises grasp core technology, such as the upstream design of huawei haisi, smic middle chip manufacturing, downstream encapsulated long telegram, science and technology in the process of the international semiconductor industry constantly shift to the mainland, IC board will benefit in the process, today we discuss the potential at the key industry.

What is IC board

IC carrier is a technology developed with the continuous progress of semiconductor packaging technology. In the mid-1990s, a new form of IC high-density packaging represented by ball grid array packaging and chip size packaging came into being, and IC carrier emerged as a new packaging carrier.

IC board is developed on the basis of HDI board. As a high-end PCB board, it is characterized by high density, high precision, miniaturization and thinness.

IC board is also called packaging substrate. In the field of high-order packaging, IC board has replaced the traditional lead frame and become an indispensable part of chip packaging. It not only provides support, heat dissipation and protection for the chip, but also provides electronic connection between the chip and PCB motherboard, playing the role of "connecting the top and the bottom".Passive and active devices can even be embedded to achieve certain system functions.

Ii. Product introduction of IC carrier plate

IC board products are roughly divided into five categories, including memory chip IC board, MICRO-electromechanical system IC board, radio frequency module IC board, processor chip IC board and high-speed communication IC board, etc. They are mainly used in mobile intelligent terminal, service/storage, etc.

According to the different packaging process, IC carrier can be divided into lead bonded IC carrier and inverted IC carrier.Among them, lead bonding (WB) USES a thin metal wire, and USES heat, pressure and ultrasonic energy to make the metal lead closely welded with the chip bonding pad and substrate bonding pad, so as to realize the electrical interconnection between the chip and substrate and the information exchange between the chips. It is widely used in the packaging of rf modules, memory chips and micro-electromechanical system components.

Different from lead bonding, flip chip (FC) encapsulation USES a welding ball to connect the chip to the substrate. The ball is formed on the solder pad of the chip, and then the chip is flipped onto the corresponding substrate. The heated fused ball is used to realize the combination of the chip and the baseplate.

Iii. Industry analysis of IC carrier plates

Wafer fab capacity expansion, driving IC board market demand.The main task of a wafer is to etch it into wafers, the raw materials for the chips. Demand and sales of wafers directly determine the number of chips that can be produced and indirectly determine the fate of IC boards.

From 2018 to 2020, the newly built wafer fabrication plants in China will directly increase the demand for IC boards, and the leading domestic PCB enterprises are bound to increase their investment in IC boards, so that the board market will get better development in the competition.

At present, the global IC board market has reached us $8.311 billion, and the corresponding IC board for storage occupies about 13% of the market share, which means the market size is about US $1.1 billion.

With the development of 5G technology and the continuous practice of the concept of the Internet of Things, 5G and the Internet of Things are expected to lead the world's fourth cycle of silicon content increase, continue to drive the growth of the semiconductor industry, and thus boost the demand for upstream IC boards and other materials.It is estimated that China's IC board industry market size is expected to reach about 41.235 billion yuan by 2025.