The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics will be a grand gathering of "armed" achievements in China's scientific and technological innovations. Every piece of technological hardware is the pride of the Chinese people. Behind these enterprises, there are also service providers.
Recently, Christie Optics, a manufacturer of high-end optical equipment and machine vision light sources, completed its C round of financing of nearly 400 million yuan. This round of financing was jointly led by SMIC, Minsheng Equity Investment Fund, and Hongtai Fund. Investment and other follow-up investment.
This is the second round of financing that Christie Optical has completed in less than a year. In June 2021, it has completed the B round of financing of 75 million yuan led by Shenzhen Huihe Assets.
This continuous financing all demonstrates the commercialization results of Christie Optics' own technology.
From a single scene to empowering the entire production line
Christie Optics was established in June 2011. At the beginning of its establishment, it focused on machine vision light sources and light source control systems. The products are mainly used in visual positioning, measurement and appearance inspection of high-end intelligent equipment in various fields.
In 2015, with the steady growth of global PCB output value, machine vision light source manufacturers ushered in new opportunities for development. The R&D team of Christie Optics applied the light source technology to the PCB field, and developed a domestically leading near-ultraviolet LED exposure machine, embarking on the road of domestic substitution of high-end exposure equipment.
In the following three years, in 2018, Christie Optics developed the first double-sided double-frame solder mask semi-automatic LED exposure machine in China, which obtained a national invention patent and solved the technical problem that the solder mask process can only be exposed on one side.
At present, the traditional green oil solder resist film exposure machine is still the main production equipment of most PCB companies in China; however, due to the process capability defect of the traditional green oil solder mask film exposure machine, it is difficult for this type of machine to produce high-precision products , and the scrapping of products caused by various exposure defects will further increase the manufacturing cost. Therefore, PCB companies urgently need solder mask DI digital lithography machines to replace traditional film exposure machines to improve precision and yield.
In 2019, Christie Optics developed a high-capacity near-ultraviolet automatic solder mask exposure machine, which overcomes the technical problems of lithography light sources in terms of energy, precision, multi-wavelength matching, light source life, cost and efficiency. The production capacity reaches 4.5PNL/min, becoming the core equipment supplier in China that can solve the technical problems of Mini LED solder mask exposure.
In addition, it can be seen from the company's innovative word cloud that its patents mainly focus on PCB boards, exposure machines, lithography machines, light source devices, LED lamp beads, fully automatic and other related fields.
In the field of machine vision, Christie Optics has served more than 1,500 companies including Hikvision, Daheng Technology, Han's Laser, Pioneer Intelligent, Microwell, AAC Acoustics, Lyric Robot, Bozhong Seiko, Truking Technology, etc. Enterprise, is one of the leaders of machine vision light source and control system in China.
Although Christie Optics has a leading technical level, from the market point of view, the so-called leading technology means that there is a "relative gap" in the market. This requires not only the existence of competitors of similar products, but also the development of technology. Can the future keep pace with the times.
The dilemma behind the chip "money printing machine"
From the perspective of development history, machine vision is not actually a new track. The machine vision industry chain is regarded as the coordinate axis, and the abscissa is the five major applications, namely: display panel, optical communication, photovoltaic, medical treatment, and machine vision; the ordinate It consists of seven stages, namely materials, chips, equipment, manufacturing, sensors, modules, algorithms and complete machines.
As the most basic component of electronic products, PCB is also ushering in rapid development. According to the WECC report quoted by the China Electronic Circuit Industry Association, in 2020, the global PCB output value will reach 73.097 billion US dollars, and the local PCB output value will reach 48.672 billion US dollars, accounting for 66.59% of the global market.
Ordinary lithography machines can no longer meet the current production needs. PCB companies urgently need solder mask DI digital lithography machines to replace traditional lithography machines. This is precisely the important logic of Christie Optical's hard technology track ahead of market size, annual growth rate, application scenarios and other considerations: "domestic substitution".
The high-end lithography machine can be called the flower of the modern optical industry, and its manufacturing is so difficult that only a few companies in the world can manufacture it, mainly with the three major brands of ASML in the Netherlands, Nikon in Japan and Canon in Japan. From the early cognitive difficulties to the current technical competition, the development of lithography machines is also iterative with twists and turns.
All technologies have certain limitations, and the implementation of the technology needs to be combined with the characteristics of the corresponding scene. There are also various challenges in the application process of the near-ultraviolet LED exposure machine of Christie Optics.
The lithography machine is the core equipment of the lithography process, with high value content and high technical requirements. Photolithography is a key link in IC manufacturing, the process is the most difficult, and the requirements for technology and equipment are also the highest. As the core equipment of the lithography process, the lithography machine is also the equipment with the highest technical content among all semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
According to Moore's Law, the number of components that can be accommodated on an integrated circuit doubles every 18 months. This means that the integration level of integrated circuit chips increases by four times approximately every three years, and the feature size of semiconductor devices shrinks by two times approximately every three years.
The smaller the size of the chip, the faster the signal transmission speed will be when the electron speed is constant, and the more information will be transmitted within a certain period of time. As the size of the chip becomes smaller, more transistors can be carried in the same area, and high integration means high performance of the chip. It can be seen that the size of the transistor is of great significance to the performance of the chip, and the lithography machine determines the size of the transistor.
It is precisely because of this that the technical threshold and capital threshold for lithography machine research and development are very high, and there are very few manufacturers that can produce high-end lithography machines. When it comes to the most advanced 14-7nm lithography machines, only ASML can produce them. Japan’s Canon and Nikon has basically given up on the research and development of lithography machines.
In addition to technical problems, another pressure for business operations lies in technological breakthroughs and the focus and continuous development of talent teams. Due to the relatively weak technical foundation, not only the technical difficulties must be overcome, but also the management problems in the process of overcoming must be solved.
epilogue
When Moore's Law reaches its limit, there are several paths that are the key to extending its life, one of which is the breakthrough of lithography machine technology. Chip miniaturization and miniaturization are irreversible trends. The progress of lithography machines represents an advanced process. In addition, the industry is also actively looking for other ways to keep chips small while maintaining high performance.
At present, the global chip manufacturing industry is expanding production, and both advanced and mature processes have entered a period of rapid development. These provide rare opportunities for the development of industries related to lithography machines.
AI and 5G applications promote the miniaturization of chips. To achieve advanced processes such as 5nm and 3nm, it means that more novel technical support is needed for processing and manufacturing. In the future, it may also pose more challenges to Christie Optics.
Source: New Industry Insights