Global Etching System Market Research Report 2023-Competitive Analysis, Status and Outlook by Type, Downstream Industry, and Geography, Forecast to 2029

Global Etching System Market Research Report 2023-Competitive Analysis, Status and Outlook by Type, Downstream Industry, and Geography, Forecast to 2029

The process steps of etching and removing material from the wafer to form pattern features are divided into two categories, wet and dry. Wet etching uses liquid chemicals to remove materials. Dry etching mainly includes: ALE, RIE.

Smartphones and other mobile consumer electronic devices continue to get thinner and more compact while simultaneously increasing their ability to process, consume and store large amounts of data without negatively impacting overall device battery life and end-user experience. These trends drive the need for denser transistor structures and 3D architectures for logic and memory ICs. Traditional manufacturing processes like Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD), and Reactive Ion Etch (RIE) cannot easily produce the extremely thin films and smaller features used in advanced logic and memory technology nodes. Newer technologies like Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) and Atomic Layer Etch (ALE) create thin films and complex 3D architectures one monolayer or atom at a time using tailored, self-limiting, cyclical chemical reactions at low temperature. The activation method is either thermal or plasma. In both ALD and ALE, a precursor adsorbs on the thin film surface forming a chemically bound monolayer. A reactant is introduced, chemically reacting with the previously modified monolayer surface, resulting in either growth or removal of a thin film layer. Byproducts from the reaction are purged and the process repeats for as many cycles as needed.

Market Overview:

The latest research study on the global Etching System market finds that the global Etching System market reached a value of USD 18493.5 million in 2022. It’s expected that the market will achieve USD 41652.0 million by 2028, exhibiting a CAGR of 14.49% during the forecast period.

Main Impact

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the government issued a relevant shutdown ban, which caused a large number of factories to shut down. The etching industry's production activities will be seriously affected during the epidemic. At the same time, during the outbreak, sales channels were severely hindered, network expansion was delayed, marketing was delayed, brand adjustments were forced, market sales declined, and sales in the etching industry will be affected. More seriously, this has led to an increase in the number of unemployed. It is expected that in the next period of time, the production and sales volume of the etching industry will decline significantly in the first quarter.

Downstream industry in crisis

The downstream of the etching industry is mainly the semiconductor industry. From the perspective of chip design, manufacturing and packaging, the impact of the epidemic is very uneven. As mentioned earlier, due to the strict production environment, the chip manufacturing industry has naturally achieved epidemic prevention and control. The chip design industry mainly relies on engineers to work, and the online office can effectively offset the impact of the epidemic while ensuring the safety of intellectual property. Although the design industry has been affected to a certain extent, the overall progress has only been delayed. Compared with manufacturing and design, the packaging and testing industry has been greatly affected by the epidemic. The packaging and testing industry has certain labor-intensive attributes, and employees cannot gather for production under the epidemic, so the impact is greater. However, under effective domestic epidemic prevention and control, this problem has been alleviated.

Downstream demand

From a global perspective, the semiconductor industry has gone through a period of rapid growth and has now entered a mature period of stock competition. In the past 10 years, the growth rate of the semiconductor industry has remained between 4% and 6%. International giants have achieved rapid growth and reduced industry competition through mergers and acquisitions, thereby maintaining high growth rates and high gross profit margins. As a downstream demander of etching equipment, the stability of the downstream demander means stable demand. In addition, the semiconductor industry is still undergoing rapid development, and the emergence of new technologies will also bring new opportunities.

Technical limitations

The dry plasma etching process involves interactions—between radicals and the exposed surface—which lead to the removal/volatilization of the activated/modified layer via energetic ion bombardment. To optimize the etch process, the pressure, gas flow/flow ratios, radio frequency power, and substrate temperature can be modified by adjusting the appropriate tuning knobs. When one of these tuning knobs is adjusted, change is triggered in more than one of the plasma parameters (i.e., the radical flux, ion flux, ion energy, and ion energy distribution). In a continuous plasma-etch process, surface modification (activation) and energetic material removal (desorption) occur concurrently. Concurrence is problematic, however, because changing plasma parameters to improve one aspect of the printed mask transfer may degrade another. Balancing the plasma parameters and radical/ion flux ratio with the ion energy is therefore essential to achieve an optimized result.

Region Overview:

North America dominated the Etching System market in 2022, with a market share of 41.57%.

Company Overview:

Lam Research is one of the major players operating in the Etching System market, holding a share of 41.57% in 2023.

Lam Research

Lam Research is an American technology company that produces, designs, and sells semiconductor products.

TOKYO ELECTRON LIMITED

Tokyo Electron Limited is a Japanese semiconductor manufacturer. The company is headquartered in Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo. TEL is a listed company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Its main products are semiconductor film-forming equipment, semiconductor etching equipment, and equipment used to manufacture flat panel display liquid crystals.

Segmentation Overview:

Among different product types, Reactive-ion Etching (RIE) segment is anticipated to contribute the largest market share in 2028.

Atomic Layer Etching (ALE)

ALE is a technique that removes thin layers of material using sequential self-limiting reactions and is considered one of the most promising techniques for achieving the low process variability necessary in the atomic-scale era. The basic ALE concept starts with a modification step to form a reactive layer, followed by a removal step to take off only this modified layer. Using ions allows for the directional etching required to form deep, narrow structures.

Reactive-ion Etching (RIE)

Reactive ion etching (RIE) is a plasma process where radiofrequency (RF) discharge-excited species (radicals, ions) etch substrate or thin films in a low-pressure chamber. RIE is a synergistic process between chemically active species and energetic ion bombardment. RIE is faster than either pure physical ion bombardment or spontaneous chemical etching. Because ion bombardment is directional, RIE has anisotropic character, with reduced lateral etch rate and vertical (or nearly vertical) sidewalls. RIE is essential when narrow lines or channels are needed, or when high aspect ratio structures need to be fabricated. RIE of silicon is independent of crystal planes, and therefore any shape can be fabricated, unlike anisotropic wet etching. Deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) is an extension of RIE that enables high-rate etching of deep structures.

Wet Etch

Wet etching is a material removal process that uses liquid chemicals or etchants to remove materials from a wafer. The specific patters are defined by photoresist masks on the wafer. Materials that are not protected by this mask are etched away by liquid chemicals. These masks are deposited on the wafer in an earlier fabrication step called lithography.

Application Overview:

By Plasma Source, the Ions segment occupied the biggest share from 2018 to 2022.

Key Companies in the global Etching System market covered in Chapter 3:

Lam Research
SHIBAURA MECHATRONICS CORPORATION
Applied Materials
SEMTEK
Hitachi High-Technologies
SUGA Co., Ltd
Tokyo Electron Limited

In Chapter 4 and Chapter 14.2, on the basis of types, the Etching System market from 2018 to 2029 is primarily split into:

Atomic Layer Etching (ALE)
Reactive-ion Etching (RIE)
Wet Etch

In Chapter 5 and Chapter 14.3, on the basis of Downstream Industry, the Etching System market from 2018 to 2029 covers:

Ions
Atoms
Radical

Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, market share and growth rate, historic and forecast (2018-2029) of the following regions are covered in Chapter 8 to Chapter 14:

North America (United States, Canada)
Europe (Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Russia, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland, Sweden)
Asia Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia)
Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina)
Middle East & Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, South Africa)