Europe and USA driving copper integration
Despite a substantial and growing portion of the world’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity located in Asia, U.S. and European IC manufacturers are driving the market for front-end equipment tools for copper processing of IC interconnects, according to the report 300mm/Copper/Low-K Convergence: Timing, Trends, Issues, Market Analysis, recently published by The Information Network.
“Over the past three years, copper interconnect processing tool purchases by U.S. and European IC manufacturers have been a considerably greater percentage of overall front-end tool purchases compared to their Asian counterparts,” notes Dr. Robert Castellano, President of The Information Network. “Equipment purchases to U.S. IC companies represented 18% of the total worldwide front-end market in 2004, yet copper tools were 26% of total copper processing equipment purchases. In Europe, 9% of total front-end equipment was sold to European IC companies but 17% of all copper tools. These purchases contrast to Korea, where its worldwide share of front-end equipment was 13% but copper tools represented only 4% of worldwide copper processing equipment purchases.”
The report notes that even Taiwanese IC companies, with a 22% share of total equipment only purchased 17% of total copper tools in 2004. The “other Asian” sector, including China, Malaysia, and Singapore, saw a spike in copper tool purchases in 2004, primarily due to a big push by Chartered Semiconductor to establish itself as a leading copper processing foundry. In 2004, copper purchases in that region were 19% of total worldwide copper sales compared to 10% of the total equipment market. However, in the 2001 to 2003 period, total equipment purchases averaged 10% of the worldwide market while copper tools averaged only 4%.
Worldwide, copper tools represented 7% of the total front-end equipment revenues in 2004, growing to 8% in 2005 and further to 15% in 2008.
