The challenge of the sapphire industry

In 2010, the thermal expansion of sapphire substrate became the darling of the capital market. A large number of capital poured into this industry. New Sapphire businesses sprung up. From the end of 2010 to now, the sapphire enterprise in our country has grown from 5 to dozens. The increase of supply and low price competition resulted in the price of sapphire substrate fell sharply, from the peak period of 35 US dollars to the current 7-8 US dollar (2 inches sapphire substrate). At the same time, the downstream application is penetrated to high power lighting, so the quality technology of the upstream products is getting higher and higher. The market has brought double challenges to the cost and quality of the new and old sapphire enterprises.

The stable process is to improve the quality and reduce the cost of the basic

The establishment of sapphire enterprises often requires large scale investment. A large number of emerging manufacturers just join the industry and encounter the market downturn. They all need to bear large losses. Then, under pressure, these emerging enterprises tend to adopt sapphire, blind “ improved ” technology, hard method to increase the crystal size. The torrent, hope to be able to reduce the cost of production in a short period of time to profit. Although the spirit of adventure is worth encouraging, it is difficult to recover the loss caused by the detours.

The growth of sapphire crystal is very precise and sensitive, and is very demanding for the environment, technicians and operators. New Sapphire enterprises, whether buying foreign equipment or domestic equipment, have encountered the problem of unstable technology and unstable technology. It is not a problem to grow a good crystal ingot, but how to grow a large number of ingots for a long time is the challenge we face.

Because the long crystal equipment is difficult to control and the domestic long crystal manufacturers are mostly lack of independent technological team support, many emerging long crystal enterprises have gone through the exploratory stage of the first long bad crystalline ingot loss. As the sales of large size sapphire base tablets are rising, many enterprises pursue large size in a one-sided way under the conditions of small size crystal technology and technology. However, in domestic related enterprises, the performance index and yield of sapphire substrate are still low, and the background of sapphire substrate growth is also lacking. Long crystal is a complex process. It needs close cooperation with equipment manufacturers to ensure the best condition of equipment and environment. Every step and tiny detail in process has a key impact on crystal growth. The enterprise should put the stable process and technology as the first priority, the sense of the stable growth of 85 kilograms of crystal ingot down to long every ingots, then go on to pursue 100 kilograms, 120 kilograms, or even larger crystals, stabilize each step.

Increasing the crystal size is not the final goal


It is not the ultimate purpose to increase the size of the crystal. The mere pursuit of increasing the size of the crystal is very simple. We only need to invest more alumina raw materials in the long crystal crucible, or fill the gaps after filling the raw materials. But in fact, the increase in crystal size does not necessarily lead to an increase in yield. In addition to the EFG method, after the long crystal, it is necessary to produce a crystal rod from the ingot, and then make further processing. Finally, it is made into sapphire substrate. The size and geometry of ingot, and the area that can be used in the crystal area of LED ultimately determines the yield of crystal rods, which basically determines the yield of subsequent processing. Without considering other factors, only increase the crystal size of the equipment and technology requirements will increase, the available area LED may decrease, also does not change in the case of the device is mainly to increase the increase of the crystal, crystal height, and not necessarily more suitable for dig stick geometry.

But it is not to say that increasing the size of the crystal is not advisable. Through the improvement of technology and the size of the ingot that is expected to grow, we can calculate the number of the rods, increase the size of the crystals, and further increase the yield of the rods, and achieve the stability of the technology and technology of larger size ingot growth. In this case, the cost of the finished product can be reduced and the market of the large size sapphire substrate in the future will be won.