Back in 2019, before the pandemic, the semiconductor equipment industry suddenly faced a huge slowdown coupled with severe technical impediments, which are still looking for an accurate solution. In 2017, the same equipment sector witnessed a colossal demand and the same has been extended into Q1 of 2018. But, interestingly, in the middle of 2018, the review film memory market started decaying, which in the end forced the vendors of DRAM and NAND to extend or rather reject their equipment orders. Experts on the other hand already predicted that the momentum of this downturn will be carried out throughout 2019 and will hamper the equipment manufacturers with exposure of NAND and DRAM. After that, geopolitical tension appears, and the business tussle between China and the US is a matter of serious concern even though the indelible collision remains unclear.
But, before proceeding further we must understand what the semiconductor equipment is all about. In the fab, there is an imperative process, which is IC manufacturing and there the semiconductor equipment plays an important role. Then, the semiconductor wafer fabrication is utilized to craft circuits that are further utilized in electrical and electronic products. Now, during semiconductor device fabrication, a vast range of procedures are utilized to alter a bare silicon wafer into a circuit. The different procedures comprise CMP (chemical-mechanical planarization), PVD/CVD (physical or chemical vapor deposition), and RTP (rapid thermal processing) plasma etch, photolithography.
The semiconductor wafer fabrication entails important steps of the photolithographic and chemical process that makes a semiconductor product. On the other hand, the device fabrication requires four steps that comprise different procedures ranging from removal to modification of electrical properties, and deposition. When the fabrication process is completed, silicons are used to manufacture the wafers. Silicons are cooled, melted, and purified to shape an ‘ingot’ that is then cut into wafers. In order to assure the state-of-the-art quality of the semiconductor equipment, a wafer test is performed to supervise the damages because it aids in monitoring whether the processing can be completed or not.
Now, the question is why the demand of this market is augmenting. Various characteristics such as the escalating demand from the consumer and B2B electronics industry coupled with ever-increasing technological improvements in the semiconductor and telecom industry are speculated to spearhead the demand for the semiconductor wafer fab equipment market from 2019-2030. There are some additional factors like equipment and silicon wafer that would assist in analyzing the concerned market in the coming years. Most importantly, new-fangled innovation in wafer technology has crafted a denser packaging of devices like transistors and MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical system) are speculated to create a way for the foundation of innovative opportunities that can be leveraged by various global firms.
