Laser Equipment and Technologies for Semiconductor Manufacturing

Key Features

• Manufacturing process flows
• Supply chain evaluation
• Emerging technologies
• Technical roadmaps
• Market shares
• Five-year forecasts for tool shipments and revenue
• Key laser equipment suppliers by process step
• Focus on four main process steps: wafer dicing, debonding, annealing and marking.
• Emerging technologies: ingot wafer slicing, pulsed laser deposition
• Other applications: glass microbonding and capping, wafer-level trimming and drilling.

What's new

• Emergence of ultra-short pulse (USP) lasers
• MicroLEDs are redefining displays and offer huge opportunities for laser equiment manufacturers
• Full distinction of the semiconductor and advanced substrate ecosystems
• 5-year forecasts: finer breakdowns for applications, devices and/or laser technologies.
• Updated technical roadmaps
• Special attention to laser lift-off and laser mass-transfer processes

Product objectives

• Highlighting new technologies and market trends that have taken place since 2017
• Providing an overview of laser technological trends
• Summarizing laser technology’s current adoption status and the various laser types available on the market with a closer focus on USP lasers that have strongly emerged over the past five years
• Providing an overview of laser technology trends  

3D Micromac, 4Jet, Accretech, Applied Materials, Amplitude, ASMPT, Astrum, Avonisys, Beijing U-Precision, Bloom Lasers, Coherent, Corning, Delphi Laser, DISCO, FitTech, E&R Engineering, Ekspla, EO Technics, EV Group, Femtika, Hamamatsu Photonics, Hanmi Semiconductor, Han’s Laser, HG Tech, Innolas Semiconductor, IPG Photonics, JSW Aktina, K&S, LAM Research, Light Conversion, LPKF, Lumentum, Max Photonics, MKS Instruments Mitsuboshi Diamond Electric, MKS Instruments, Posalux, Quark, Scientech, SCREEN LASSE, SMEE, Sumitomo, Süss Microtec, Synova, Tazmo, Trumpf, Ushio, Veeco/Ultra Tech, Y.A.C. Beam and more.

Laser equipment market

The laser equipment market will grow at a solid 6.6% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) over the 2022-2027 period. This is driven by the need to process increasingly complex architectures and non-silicon materials for More-Than-Moore devices.

The laser wafer dicing market is the largest over this whole period, followed by laser annealing. The wafer dicing market is thriving as manufacturers process thinner wafers, smaller dies and More-Than-Moore materials.  The laser annealing equipment market is boosted by both logic and power SiC applications. Nonetheless, the fastest growing markets by far will be the laser lift-off and laser-induced forward transfer equipment markets, although the latter are strongly dependent on the advent of microLEDs.

Ecosystem

The laser equipment ecosystem is extremely diverse because the various process steps involved are very different. Also, new players are emerging, mostly in the laser lift-off and laser mass-transfer markets that are strongly associated with microLEDs. This market is very promising and attracts both new and established players that want to be well-positioned before any high-volume manufacturing takes place. Overall, DISCO dominates the global laser equipment market, mostly due to its strong position in the wafer dicing market. Merger, acquisition and partnership activities have been particularly active over the past five years, with at least two or three taking place each year. The usual motivation is to acquire a specific technology, often associated with a specific application and/or material. There is a growing trend for tool suppliers to internally develop their own laser source. Yet there often exist very close relationships between tool suppliers and laser source manufacturers, as these two trends are not mutually exclusive.

Technology and future trends

The past ten years have witnessed tremendous technological progress from solid-state laser sources. Every year they become more reliable, compact, and powerful, including in the ultra-short pulse regime, while also becoming cheaper. This trend offers equipment manufacturers new possibilities for processing multilayer architectures and small and sensitive dies. Interestingly, we are starting to see laser technologies being combined with non-laser techniques such as plasma etching/dicing, or different laser configurations being used together in the same equipment. We expect this trend to continue and strengthen, to provide more process flexibility to device manufacturers.

MicroLEDs perfectly fit these different trends. Laser processing appears to be one of the best ways to process them via lift-off of GaN epilayers deposited on sapphire, mass transfer of the microLED dies and even possibly bonding of the latter directly on an integrated circuit backplane. Therefore, laser processing can cover a significant part of the fabrication chain of microLEDs and hence contribute to the next disruption in the display industry.

Glossary​

Report objectives​

Report scope​

Methodologies & definitions​

About the author​

Companies cited in this report​

What we got right, what we got wrong​

3-Page summary​

Executive summary​

Introduction, definition & classification ​

• Laser source technologies​
• Key laser equipment suppliers ​
• Laser processed materials/substrates​
• Process flow​
• Key metrics

Market forecasts​

• Laser Wafer Dicing ​
• Laser Bonding and Debonding​
  • Temporary bonding/debonding​
  • Laser Lift-Off​
  • Laser Induced Forward Transfer​
• Laser  Annealing​
• Laser Wafer Marking​

Market shares ​

• Laser Wafer Dicing ​
• Laser Bonding and Debonding​
  • Temporary bonding/debonding​
  • Laser Lift-Off​
  • Laser Induced Forward Transfer​
• Laser  Annealing​
• Laser Wafer Marking​

Supply chain, ecosystem​

• Laser Wafer Dicing ​
• Laser TB/DB, LLO and LIFT​
• Laser  Annealing​
• Laser Wafer Marking​

Processes​

• Laser Wafer Dicing ​
• Laser Bonding and Debonding​
  • Temporary bonding/debonding​
  • Laser Lift-Off​
  • Laser Induced Forward Transfer​
• Laser  Annealing​
• Laser Wafer Marking​

Technology trends and roadmaps​

• Examples of equipment​
• Roadmaps​

Emerging technologies​

• Laser ingot slicing​
• Pulsed Laser Deposition​

Other applications​

• Glass microbonding and capping​
• Laser Wafer-Level Trimming​
• Laser drilling​

Conclusions​

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