High-Performance Silicon Carbide Parts Vital for Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Processes

 

Semiconductor manufacturing is the cornerstone of the development of modern science and technology, with the industry's continuous pursuit of smaller, faster, more efficient integrated circuits, the precision and technical complexity of the manufacturing process is also increasing, every step is inseparable from high-performance, high-quality and high-precision semiconductor equipment. As a structural ceramic material with excellent performance, silicon carbide (SiC) has the characteristics of high density, high thermal conductivity, high bending strength, high elastic modulus, strong corrosion resistance, high temperature resistance, etc. It is not easy to produce bending stress deformation and thermal strain, and can adapt to the strong corrosion and ultra-high temperature reaction environment of wafer epitaxy, etching and other manufacturing links. Therefore, it has been widely used in semiconductor manufacturing processes such as grinding and polishing, epitaxial/oxidation/diffusion heat treatment, lithography, deposition, etching, and ion implantation.

 

Wafer manufacturing is inseparable from oxidation, diffusion, annealing, alloy and other heat treatment processes, and the semiconductor equipment used in the heat treatment process has oxidation furnaces (which are divided into horizontal furnaces and vertical furnaces), rapid heat treatment (RTP, RapidThermalProcessing) equipment. Due to the high operating temperature, the performance requirements of the components in the reaction chamber are also high. High-purity sintered silicon carbide parts have the characteristics of high strength, high hardness, high elastic modulus, high specific stiffness, high thermal conductivity, low thermal expansion coefficient, etc., and are indispensable parts in the reaction chamber of integrated circuit heat treatment equipment. It mainly includes vertical boat, pedestal, inner tubes and heat insulation Baffle Plates.

 

At present, most of the market share of high-purity sintered silicon carbide market for semiconductor equipment is mainly dominated by foreign companies such as Japan Kyokera Group and the United States Quastai. Through long-term technological accumulation and innovation, they have developed not only a complete range of products, but also the processing technology of material properties, precision and complex structure has reached the industry leading level. It can provide special components for integrated circuit core equipment such as photolithography machine, plasma etching equipment, film deposition equipment and ion implantation equipment.