At present, semiconductor industry has become a strategic highland for major countries in the world to compete for. Due to the late start, there are still many weaknesses in the development of semiconductor industry, especially in the upstream equipment field. Some high-end equipment and core components of equipment are still highly dependent on foreign brands.
In the field of semiconductor equipment, it is imperative to improve the localization rate and promote autonomy and control.
We learned that not long ago, a domestic PV equipment head supplier solved a key bottleneck link — special cascaded temperature controller for semiconductor equipment. The product has successfully passed the production line verification of domestic PV leading enterprises, which not only realizes domestic replacement, but also outperforms foreign brand products in the improvement of PV yield. In the national scientific and technological achievements appraisal by industry experts assessed as the international advanced.
It is reported that the cascade temperature controller is independently developed by Xiamen Yudian Automation Technology Co., LTD. (hereinafter referred to as: Yudian), a domestic manufacturer that has been deeply engaged in the field of temperature control for more than 30 years. The successful launch of domestic series thermostat for semiconductor equipment fills the domestic gap in this field in the past years. With the successful introduction of the product in the photovoltaic manufacturing production line, the product will next expand into the broader semiconductor manufacturing field such as microelectronics, advancing the domestic replacement of instruments for upstream semiconductor devices.
Instead of foreign brands, domestic thermostat to achieve a breakthrough in the field of photovoltaic semiconductor
A thermostat, as the name implies, is a device that measures and regulates temperature. It reads the measured value of the temperature sensor, and executes the complex intelligent control algorithm through the computer program, and uses the connected executive device to precisely adjust the temperature of the heater and other loads. It is an essential core accessory for industrial production and automatic production line.
Different from the ordinary PID thermostat, the cascade thermostat used in many processes of semiconductor production equipment, such as diffusion, oxidation, etching, PECVD, etc., requires high-end complex adjustment algorithms to deal with the problems of large temperature control lag and many disturbances in semiconductor equipment. As the high-end market of temperature controller applications, the semiconductor manufacturing field has very strict requirements on the product accuracy, reliability, anti-interference and stability of temperature controller.
As one PV industry insider points out, temperature control is the soul of crystalline silicon solar cells. For example, the diffusion furnace needs to heat the temperature in the furnace to about 700℃-1040℃ at a certain heating rate, and to quickly stabilize the temperature fluctuation within ±0.5℃, which has extreme harsh requirements for the accuracy, reliability and stability of temperature control. Once the temperature deviation occurs, the product performance will be greatly reduced or even scrapped.
The high technical threshold means that only a few cascade thermostat manufacturers can enter the semiconductor field. In the past, only a few brands such as AZBIL of Japan, PMA of the UK and EUROTHERM of WATLOW of the US could meet the requirements. And the newly launched AI-8 cascade temperature controller for semiconductor equipment of Udeon successfully entered the photovoltaic manufacturing field last year, becoming the only domestic temperature controller company whose products have been verified by the photovoltaic semiconductor market.