Samsung plans to introduce a large number of etching equipment from South Korean company SEMES, which was originally provided by Japanese semiconductor equipment maker Tokyo Willec (TEL). The Korean industry expects that Korean semiconductor equipment can increase the proportion of use in the front-end process.

Korean media reported that in the first half of next year, Samsung Electronics plans to increase the proportion of SEMES equipment in the second plant in Xi'an, China. The Xi'an plant is Samsung's only memory semiconductor production base with overseas factories. Starting in March last year, Samsung Electronics started to set up a factory in the area and is scheduled to start in the first half of next year. In the future, the factory will mainly produce 5th generation V-NAND flash memory and high-end products with more than 100 layers.

Samsung Electronics is in the final stage of product testing to apply SEMES etching equipment to the 5th generation NAND process. The fifth-generation NAND flash memory is the first mass-produced product of Samsung Electronics last year, and the product process is also the first to use SEMES etching equipment.

South Korean technology media "etnews" reported that although Samsung Electronics has also used SEMES etching equipment, the scale of the SEMES etching equipment invested this time is very large, and it may threaten Tokyo Power Science and Technology, causing public concern.

Etching process is one of the most important parts of semiconductor manufacturing. It can shape the circuit and clean the chip. It requires high-tech equipment. At present, Korean semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have international-level memory technologies, but the manufacturing equipment behind them depends almost on overseas companies. Therefore, many Korean experts appreciate the progress of domestic equipment technology.

Many people expect that Samsung Electronics will increase the use of domestic equipment in the next-generation memory manufacturing process. However, the industry generally believes that this case also shows that Korean equipment technology has caught up with the technological level of foreign companies.