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Wafers are the basic raw materials for making ICs. It is of great significance in chip manufacturing technology.

Wafer refers to the silicon wafer used in the production of silicon semiconductor integrated circuit, which is called wafer because of its round shape; It can be processed into various circuit component structures on silicon wafers and become IC products with specific electrical functions.

The raw material of the wafer is silicon, and the surface of the earth's crust is useful for an inexhaustible supply of silica, which is refined from silica-rich sand. The silica-rich sand is refined in an electric arc furnace, chlorinated with hydrochloric acid, and distilled to produce high-purity polysilicon with a purity of up to eleven nines.

The wafer fab then melts the polysilicon, then mixes a small grain of silicon crystal seed into the melt, and then slowly pulls it out to form a cylindrical monocrystalline silicon rod, which is called a long crystal because the silicon rod is gradually generated by a small grain in the molten state of silicon raw material.

The wafer is purified by silicon, and then the pure silicon is made into a silicon rod, which becomes the material for the manufacture of quartz semiconductors for integrated circuits, and undergoes photographic plates, grinding, polishing, slicing and other procedures. The polysilicon is melted and pulled out of monocrystalline silicon rods, which are then cut into thin wafers.

Ordinary people often hear about a few inches of wafer fab, because if the diameter of the silicon wafer is larger, it means that the wafer fab has better technology, and there are also some technologies to reduce the size of the crystal and wire, both of which can make more silicon wafers on a wafer, improve quality and reduce costs.

Therefore, among the six-inch, eight-inch, and twelve-inch wafers, the twelve-inch wafers have higher production capacity.

Of course, in the process of wafer production, yield is a very important condition.

Regarding the news that TSMC plans to enter the mainland and build an eight-inch wafer factory, Fan Wuxian is indifferent.

In fact, after Fan's Investment Group built an eight-inch wafer fab, he expected that this day would come sooner or later.

In a certain sense, this is also the inevitable result of the technological blockade of the mainland by the US and Taiwan authorities; a long time ago, the investment projects of the United States or some Western countries on the mainland were set up on the basis of the mainland's cutting-edge scientific and technological forces.

For example, there was no wafer factory in the mainland before, so I resolutely did not allow investors to build wafer factories in the mainland, but later, the mainland built a four-inch wafer factory and mastered the key technology, so I allowed investors to go to the mainland to build a four-inch wafer factory to form competition. As a result of competition, foreign-invested wafer fabs with mature technology will crush the wafer fabs in the mainland, and in this way, they will continue to form technological advantages.

After the mainland has mastered the technology of the six-inch wafer factory, they will still invest in the construction of the six-inch wafer factory, which is the same as before, which is nothing more than worrying that the mainland's own wafer technology will develop and threaten their own survival, after all, the mainland's manufacturing cost is low, which everyone knows.

This has also led to a fait accompli, that is, as long as the mainland does not have the technology mastered, then foreign capital will not invest in the construction of this technology on the mainland.

Just like the current TSMC, the wafer factories they are building on the island of Taiwan are already mainly 12-inch wafers.

Sure enough, a month later, at the end of March, news came that TSMC, a leading manufacturer, took the lead in formally applying for the mainland investment case of the eight-inch wafer factory, which attracted the attention of all parties on the island of Taiwan.

TSMC said on March 29 that it had submitted an application to the Investment Review Commission of the Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday afternoon to set up a wafer factory in the mainland, and it is expected to set up a subsidiary 100% owned by TSMC in the mainland after obtaining the license. Established an 8-inch wafer fab with a monthly production capacity of 35,000 wafers in Songjiang Science and Technology Park, Shanghai. TSMC estimates that the total investment in the mainland will reach $898 million within four years.

Taiwan's Minister of Economic Affairs Lin Yifu immediately made a statement, explaining that the investment review committee has received TSMC's wafer landing application, and will send the information to the relevant ministries for written review.

TSMC will send the relevant materials to the Investment Review Committee in accordance with the regulations, and the Investment Review Committee will send these materials to the Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council, the Central Bank of Taiwan, the Ministry of Finance, the Taiwan Labor Commission, and the Taiwan Economic and Construction Commission for written review.

As for how much time will this review take? Will the vetting be completed expeditiously? Lin Yifu was reluctant to reply positively, only saying that everything would be handled in accordance with the key points of the operation, depending on the completeness of the information sent by TSMC and the consensus of various ministries.

However, while applying to invest in the mainland to set up a factory, TSMC also emphasized that Taiwan is still the core of the company's operation and R&D, and will continue to invest in 12-inch wafer factories in the future, and it is estimated that the total number of employees in Taiwan will increase by 5,000 compared with the current number of employees in four years, reaching 20,000. This time, TSMC went to the mainland to set up a factory, and part of the equipment will be moved to the mainland for construction with the idle equipment of Taiwan's eight-inch wafer factory, and all plans are based on the premise of complying with the mainland investment laws of the Taiwan authorities.

Considering that the mass production of TSMC's 12-inch wafers has reached the standards stipulated by the Taiwan authorities, TSMC officially submitted an application for investment and factory establishment in the mainland yesterday.

Zhang Zhongmou, chairman of TSMC, said that there are two main reasons for deciding to set up factories in the mainland, one of which is to focus on the gradual rise of the mainland and the potential of the semiconductor market.

The second is that the mainland semiconductor market has its own particularity, if it does not provide direct manufacturing services locally. It will be difficult to have a place in it.

Therefore, under the condition that the mass production time and quantity of TSMC's 12-inch wafers have reached the standards stipulated by the Taiwan authorities, TSMC formally submitted an application in accordance with the regulations.

Zhang Zhongmou also said that once the motion is approved, TSMC Shanghai Co., Ltd. will employ about 1,000 employees, with about 100 permanent employees sent from Taiwan initially, and the rest will be mainly recruited locally in the mainland.

After TSMC proposed a proposal to build a factory in the mainland, the board of directors of Taiwan's Maude Technology also applied to the Investment Review Committee of the Ministry of Economic Affairs of Taiwan a few days later to invest in an eight-inch wafer factory in the mainland, with an investment ceiling of more than NT$8 billion.

According to Taiwan media reports, according to the current regulations of the Taiwan authorities, semiconductor factories must set up a 12-inch wafer factory in Taiwan to invest in the mainland, and meet two basic conditions, one is to pass the customer's product and process certification, and the other is to continue mass production for six months.

The general manager of Maode Technology said that Maode has met these two qualifications, because the products of the 12-inch wafer factory have been certified on September 20 last year, and the current wafer has reached 9,000 pieces, with an output of more than 4,000 pieces, accounting for more than 20% of the overall operation, and it has been in operation for six months until March this year.

In terms of the amount of investment, according to the current regulations of the Taiwan Investment Management Commission, the upper limit of investment in the mainland of semiconductor factories shall not exceed 20 percent of the net assets, and the company's investment ceiling is more than NT$8 billion based on the current net assets of more than NT$40 billion.

It is reported. Before 2005, the Taiwan authorities only allowed three eight-inch wafer factories to invest and set up factories in the mainland, and in addition to TSMC and UMC, they are expected to get one seat each, and Maode Technology, a subsidiary of the Silicon Matrix Group, intends to compete with Powerchip for this third place.

Immediately afterwards, Wang Wenyang, the son of Wang Yongqing, chairman of Taiwan's wealthy Formosa Plastics Group, also said that he was considering Chinese mainland's plan to invest $650 million to build an eight-inch wafer factory.

After Wang Wenyang, Shaodong of Formosa Plastics Group, broke away from Formosa Plastics four years ago due to a scandal, he founded Hongren Group, invested in the mainland, and cooperated with mainland electronics companies, and planned to build three eight-inch and three 12-inch wafer factories in Zhangjiang Industrial Zone, Pudong, Shanghai, two years ago. The total investment amount will be as high as 6.4 billion US dollars, which will be the largest semiconductor investment project in mainland China in recent years.

However, because it is necessary to wait for the Taiwan authorities to lift the ban on investing in such high-tech projects in Chinese mainland, the project has not been launched, and now TSMC has broken the ice, and the electronics industry on the island of Taiwan has followed suit, obviously the time has come.

Taiwan's electronics companies have put pressure on the authorities to lift the ban, largely because Taiwan's rivals, Japan and the United States, have begun to build factories in China, and Taiwan risks losing competitiveness if it does not enter soon.

In recent years, they have agreed to set up computer assembly plants on the mainland, but they still oppose the construction of wafer factories on the mainland, and advocate that Taiwan should retain some high technology, so as to prevent the mainland's semiconductor industry from growing up and threatening Taiwan's economy.

Wang Wenyang said that once the Taiwan authorities approve him to build a wafer factory on the mainland, the funds needed to build the factory will be raised from the group's overseas enterprises, and he will form a strategic partnership with his sister's Volkswagen Group and his sister's VIA Electronics.

It is understood that Wang Wenyang began to actively contact the senior executives of several semiconductor factories in Taiwan as early as last year, and many celebrities in the semiconductor industry have been in the list of invitations, and recently several senior executives of Taiwan's top three semiconductor groups have been finalized to resign from their current positions and transfer to Shanghai for development.

For a while, the domestic news media, especially the IT media, were all discussing the topic of wafer factories, and the development prospects of the domestic chip industry that have been expanded are innumerable, and the official media have also made a relatively positive report on this, believing that it is a gratifying progress in cross-strait economic and trade relations.

Although Fan Wuxian can be indifferent to these news, Wang Rongchang can't sit still, after all, the main project he cooperates with Fan's Investment Group has something to do with this. And the profit is also huge, once there is a problem in this direction, then he will suffer the most.

He didn't want Fan Wuxian to have a lot of money and many development directions, even if he suffered losses in this regard, it would not hurt much, so Wang Rongchang came to Fan Wuxian here to discuss countermeasures and see how to deal with this situation.

At this time, Fan Wuxian had already learned some government ideas through the high-level, so he said to Wang Rongchang, "Some local governments in China still very much hope to attract Taiwanese manufacturers to build wafer factories and other high-tech projects in the mainland, and are willing to provide a variety of preferential policies, and some are willing to provide ten years of tax exemption." It is said that the official has promised Hongren Group that it will give the best preferential treatment in the financing channel. ”

"In other words, once the Taiwan authorities relax their controls, the combination of the heroes will become a reality for the mainland wafer fabs?" Wang Rongchang asked with a headache.

"Prince, you don't need to be too anxious, after all, you can't make enough money-" Fan Wuxian saw Wang Rongchang's frustration, so he smiled and comforted, "The profit of this project is small, there are other projects that can be done, in the past few years, you have made no less than a billion dollars in this area, right?" ”

Wang Rongchang touched his head and said, "It is precisely because it is easy to make money, so I am more anxious, once I lose the advantages of this project, what direction should I develop in the future?" ”

"There are a lot of projects that can be developed, such as shipping and shipping, mine construction, high-tech research and development, and arms production or something, Khan, arms production, it is estimated that you will not be able to participate in the shares, well, but maybe-" Fan Wuzhi gave a few examples, and said to Wang Rongchang, "Let's put it this way, my overseas industry, you can choose, as long as the funds allow, you can occupy less than 5% of the shares, and the domestic industry, as long as it is not a key industry prohibited by the government, can also participate in this example." ”

Wang Rongchang's eyes lit up after hearing this, but Fan Wuxie's suggestion made him a little moved.

Compared with the chip industry, which has an uncertain future, it is obviously more attractive to enter the high-profit industry that Fan Wuxian took the initiative to open to him.

"If you do this, won't you be stained with your light in vain?" Wang Rongchang said with a smile.

"There is money for everyone to earn, this is the consensus in the market, I am not a person who eats alone, but under some specific historical conditions, it is inappropriate for some industries to introduce too many strategic partners in the initial development, and after development, it is necessary to establish a united front." Fan Wuxian replied very pertinently.

In fact, Fan Wuxian has long had such considerations.

Their assets have now expanded to a fairly large extent, it is not false to say that the rich can rival the country, but the tree is also an ancient admonition, now in the enterprise into a period of steady development, it is necessary to appropriately select some strategic partners to join, in order to form a solid and unshakable industrial alliance.

The establishment of a large interest group has become an urgent task that Fan's Investment Group needs to solve now.

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