Increasing Demand for Consumer Electronics to Boost Growth of the Wafer Inspection Equipment Market

 

Wafer manufacturing is an electrical process that consists of several repetitive, step-by-step processes to form complete photonic or electrical circuits on thin, transparent semiconductor wafer materials. Examples include the manufacture of LEDs, radio frequency generators, photo-resistors, microprocessors, and other electronics.

Wafer inspection equipment is used to detect defects during wafer manufacturing processes. These equipment detect both the pattern defects and the physical defects by obtaining the coordinates of the defect’s position. Inspection equipment improve the quality of manufactured semiconductor device. Therefore, these inspection devices are indispensable for maintaining the production yield of semiconductors.

Market Dynamics:

Increasing demand for high performing and low cost semiconductors is expected to augment the growth of the wafer inspection equipment market. For instance, in May 2020, TCS launched TCS WaferWise, a cloud-based wafer anomaly detection solution that harnesses the company’s contextual knowledge of the semiconductor industry and power of deep learning technology, to help chip makers digitally reimagine their product quality assurance process.

Moreover, increasing demand for inspection equipment, the increasing demand for consumer electronics and the increasing need for high-quality electronic components is expected to propel growth of the wafer inspection equipment market. For instance, in September 2020, KLA launched an enhanced portfolio of inspection systems, which include the Kronos 1190 wafer-level packaging inspection system, the ICOS F160XP die sorting and inspection system, and the ICOS T3/T7 Series of packaged IC component inspection and metrology systems.

Furthermore, the Internet of Things (IoT) and digitization are major trends in the market, which will require semiconductor technologies as the basis of their framework. Vehicle automation, kitchen automation, smart connected TVs, smart grids, smart city, are among the many IoT concepts expected to gain traction in the next few years.

Competitive Analysis:

Major players operating in the wafer inspection equipment market are Toray Engineering, Rudolph Technologies, Tokyo Seimitsu, Planar Corporation, Nanometrics, Nikon, Lam Research, Lasec Corporation, JEOL, Hitachi High-Technologies, KLA-Tencor, FEI (Thermo Fisher Scientific), Hermes Microvision (ASML), Zeiss Global, and Applied Materials.

In January 2021, CyberOptics Corporation announced that the company will showcase the WX3000 metrology and inspection system with Multi-Reflection Suppression (MRS) sensor technology, and high-precision sensors for semiconductor tool set-up and diagnostics at the Virtual SEMI Technology Unites Global Summit in February 2020.

In December 2018, ISRA VISION launched an inspection system that allows wafer edges to be monitored during the entire manufacturing process.

In July 2018, KLA-Tencor announced two new defect-inspection products, addressing key challenges in tool and process monitoring during silicon wafer and chip manufacturing at the leading-edge logic and memory nodes.