Challenges in the Sapphire Industry

In 2010, the popularity of sapphire substrates increased significantly, making it a darling of the capital market. A large amount of capital poured into this industry, and emerging sapphire companies emerged like mushrooms after rain. From the end of 2010 to the present, the number of sapphire enterprises in China has rapidly increased from less than 5 to dozens. The increase in supply and low price competition have led to a sharp drop in the price of sapphire substrate sheets, from a peak of $35 to the current $7-8 per sheet (2-inch sapphire substrate). At the same time, downstream applications are penetrating towards high-power lighting, so the quality and technical requirements for upstream products are becoming increasingly high. The market has brought dual challenges of cost and quality to both new and old sapphire enterprises.



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The establishment of sapphire enterprises often requires large-scale investment, and a large number of emerging manufacturers encounter market downturns as soon as they join the industry, and basically have to bear significant losses. So, under various pressures, these emerging sapphire companies often adopt a blind approach; Improvement” We hope to reduce production costs in a short period of time and make profits as soon as possible through the rapid advancement of technology and efforts to increase crystal size. Although the spirit of adventure is worth encouraging, the losses caused by the detours taken are difficult to recover.



The growth of sapphire crystals is very precise and sensitive, with high requirements for the environment, technicians, and operators. Emerging sapphire companies, whether purchasing imported equipment from abroad or domestically produced equipment, have generally encountered problems with unstable technology and processes. There is no problem with growing a furnace of good ingots, but the challenge we face is how to sustain long-term and large-scale growth of good ingots.



Due to the difficulty in controlling crystal growth equipment and the lack of independent technical team support among most domestic crystal growth manufacturers, many emerging crystal growth enterprises have gone through an initial exploration stage of suffering losses from defective crystal ingots. With the increasing sales of large-sized sapphire substrates, many companies are pursuing large-sized crystals unilaterally when the process and technology for small-sized crystals are not yet mature. However, in the context of low performance indicators and yield rates of sapphire substrates in domestic related enterprises, and a lack of professional talents in sapphire substrate material growth, blindly pursuing large sizes is not advisable. Crystallization is a complex process that requires close collaboration with equipment manufacturers to ensure optimal conditions for both equipment and environment. Every step and tiny detail in the process has a critical impact on crystal growth. Enterprises should prioritize stable processes and technologies, steadily stabilize the growth of 85kg grade ingots, strive to grow each ingot well, and then pursue 100kg grade, 120kg grade, and even larger crystals, taking every step steadily.



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Increasing the size of crystals is not the ultimate goal. It is very simple to simply pursue increasing the size of the crystal, simply by adding more alumina raw materials into the crucible of the growing crystal, or by filling the gaps with raw materials and continuing to fill them. However, in fact, an increase in crystal size does not necessarily lead to an improvement in yield. In addition to the EFG method, after crystal growth, it is necessary to extract the crystal rod from the ingot and perform further processing to ultimately produce a sapphire substrate. The size, geometric shape, and internal area of the crystal that can be used for LED ultimately determine the yield of the crystal rod, which basically determines the yield of the subsequent processing. Without considering other factors, simply increasing the size of the crystal will increase the requirements for equipment and processes, and the available area of the LED may decrease. In addition, increasing the crystal without changing the equipment mainly increases the height of the crystal, not necessarily the shape that is more suitable for pulling the rod.



But it doesn't mean that increasing the size of crystals is not advisable. By improving the process and calculating the number of cutting rods based on the expected size of the grown ingots, the yield of cutting rods can be further increased while increasing the crystal size, achieving the stability of the process and technology for growing larger sized ingots. In this case, the cost of finished products can be reduced, thereby winning the market for large-sized sapphire substrates in the future.