In 2020, the overall market scale of China’s new display materials is 128.8 billion yuan, but behind the data, there is a “gap” that China must cross in the process of transforming from a display power to a display power. Wet chemicals, electronic gases, targets and liquid crystal materials in the upstream of China’s new display industry have a certain scale. Glass and polarizer are expected to improve rapidly, while OLED materials, masks and photoresists need to be further strengthened.
OLED materials are subject to a shortage of core patents
According to the data of China Electronic Materials Industry Association, the global OLED material market is expected to be US $3.36 billion in 2021. The market is mainly monopolized by overseas enterprises such as the United States, Japan, South Korea and Germany. The main manufacturers include Japan chuguangxingchan, German Merck, American UDC, Dow Chemical and Sumitomo chemical, with high market concentration. China’s OLED materials are still in the initial stage of development, mainly including DingCai technology, aolaide, March technology, agre and other enterprises.
According to the reporter, the development of OLED materials has the characteristics of long R & D cycle and large investment. Many foreign material factories are leaders in the chemical industry. OLED business modules account for only a small part of them, and there are a lot of funds and available resources. Most of China’s material factories are small-scale enterprises. If there is no fruitful output in the early-stage capital investment, it will make it difficult for enterprises to move forward, and it is difficult to ensure the sustainability of material replacement. Taking the light-emitting layer material that directly determines the display effect and service life of OLED panel as an example, it has experienced fluorescent materials with low energy efficiency and phosphorescent materials represented by the second generation of high-cost heavy metal complexes. Up to now, the third generation material is thermally activated delayed fluorescent material (TADF), which has just started and is currently in the research and development stage.
In an interview with China Electronics News, the person in charge of Sichuan agri said that due to the patent monopoly formed by the core patents of foreign material factories in the early stage, it is difficult for Chinese manufacturers to find a breakthrough point for effective patent layout, and the R & D speed and success rate are relatively backward.
Sichuan agri has the ability to produce OLED materials, has been deeply engaged in phosphorescent materials, and has a series of core patents for OLED phosphorescent materials. In addition, it also has certain competitive advantages in hole transmission materials, blue light materials and metal TADF. In addition to continuous research and development of OLED materials for evaporation, the company also arranged solution OLED materials in advance.
In addition, China’s panel factories are still in the stage of technology climbing, and there is a certain degree of dependence on foreign materials in the selection of OLED materials. Therefore, it is difficult to provide such strong technical support and market support to local material factories as South Korea.
Lu Jin, Executive Deputy Secretary General of China Electronic Materials Industry Association, told China Electronics News that as some foreign core patents of organic light-emitting material terminal products expire one after another, reducing the patent threshold will attract more Chinese enterprises to enter, and downstream panel manufacturers also begin to layout their business upstream, the competition in the OLED material market may intensify.
High precision masks are all imported
Similar to the negative film of traditional camera, high-precision mask is the key material for the production of AMOLED and high-resolution TFT-LCD display. With the development of mobile terminals such as mobile phones and tablets towards higher definition, more saturated color and lighter and thinner, the semiconductor layer, lithography resolution, minimum via, CD uniformity, nesting accuracy, defect size and cleanliness of flat panel display photomask are facing higher technical requirements. At the same time, the development of TV large screen and the gradual growth of generation line determine that the size of mask tends to be large. At present, the market demand for high-precision and large-size masks has increased significantly.
Omdia data predicts that the market scale of photomask plate for display panel in China will grow to 11.3 billion yuan in 2025. According to Lu Jin, the top eight top panel display manufacturers in the world are seven manufacturers, including SKE, HOYA, LG-IT, PKL, DNP, Samsung and TOPPAN, respectively, and Chinese mainland Shenzhen Qingyi Photomask Limited(688138) ranks sixth.
Lu Jin stressed that the market share of Chinese products in medium and high-end mask plates is low, which is significantly lower than that of foreign manufacturers, G8 FMM (precision metal mask) and raw material substrate for more than 5 generations and AMOLED are still short boards in China.
In an interview with China Electronics News, the person in charge of Shenzhen Qingyi Photomask Limited(688138) said that the localization rate of semiconductor chip and mask plate industry for flat panel display is still relatively low.
According to the reporter, Shenzhen Qingyi Photomask Limited(688138) Hefei factory focuses on the mask plate for medium and high-precision AMOLED / LTPS to meet the needs of medium and high-end panel manufacturing. With the gradual mass production of Hefei factory, the market share is expected to increase to 20% – 30% of the whole China in the future. At present, Hefei factory has carried out the layout of gluing line, and has mass produced and supplied some high-precision mask products to create a competitive advantage.
However, mask plate is a capital and technology intensive industry, and the main equipment and raw materials need to be imported from abroad. Although Shenzhen Qingyi Photomask Limited(688138) is one of the few enterprises in the mask industry with the production capacity of rear section equipment such as repair, measurement and coating, there is still a large gap between China and foreign countries in high-end lithography and inspection equipment.
According to the introduction of Shenzhen Qingyi Photomask Limited(688138) , in terms of technology, China’s mask industry started relatively late. After more than ten years of catching up and precipitation, it has basically stood on the same starting line with the international forefront, and it needs more efforts to surpass. At present, the biggest difficulty is that the supply of raw materials, especially high-end materials, all rely on imports, and the current situation of China’s industry is difficult to break through in the short term.
Photoresist is still the world of Japanese and Korean enterprises
The photoresist in the panel industry is divided into positive photoresist and negative photoresist. The positive photoresist acts as an anti etching layer to protect the substrate surface. The negative photoresist is also called color photoresist. It is mainly used to make color filters to form color display images.
According to the data of China Electronic Materials Industry Association, the overall market demand of photoresist for TFT-LCD in China in 2020 is 22700 tons. CINNO Research predicts that the overall demand for photoresist in Chinese mainland will reach 48 thousand tons in 2021, up by 16%. At present, more than 90% of the photoresist in Chinese mainland market is still needed for LCD panel production. With the expansion of OLED capacity, it is estimated that the proportion of OLED photoresist will increase to about 20% by 2025.
Photoresist is still the world of Japanese and Korean enterprises. It is understood that the main manufacturers of photoresist include Sumitomo chemical, JSR, LG Chemical, etc. However, in recent years, with the development of China’s related industries, Chinese enterprises such as xinyihua and DingCai technology are accelerating their development through technology transfer or self-development.
Among them, Fuyang Xin Yi Hua shows that negative photoresist has shipped more than 3000 tons, becoming the largest volume of Chinese mainland display photoresist head enterprise. In an interview with China Electronics News, Fuyang xinyihua said that the barrier of photoresist mainly lies in the long verification cycle, high cost, tight production capacity of panel factories and high test cost. Verification often takes a year or two, high technical barriers, monopolized by foreign giants, and China lacks high-end R & D talents.
It is understood that the low-temperature photoresist products newly developed by xinyihua can be applied to OLED, AR / VR display and other fields, can meet the use of all PPIs at present, can adapt to the application scenarios of folding, scroll, AR / VR and other morphological changes, and achieve an innovative breakthrough in the application field of photoresist materials, which is the first in China.
Lu Jin said that the photoresist as a whole is still highly dependent on imports, and there is an urgent need to solve the problems of raw materials, production technology and engineering, and product quality control technology. Low temperature photoresist can replace the circular polarizer for OLED, help the development of OLED technology, and is expected to become a new growth point of photoresist.
How difficult is it to be “good material and easy to use”
In recent years, China’s new display industry has made revolutionary changes with continuous breakthroughs in key materials, accelerating industrial agglomeration and increasing industrial scale. However, key display materials mainly rely on imports, and the leading role of materials in technology and industrial support is obviously insufficient.
High end product technology, core patents, fine processing capacity and key raw materials have stuck the neck of the upstream of the display industry. TCL Huaxing said that the core problem of upstream raw materials in the display industry is mainly the insufficient accumulation of high-end product technology; Shortage of core patents, such as OLED luminescent materials; Lack of fine processing capacity, such as OLED sublimation and purification technology; Shortage of key raw materials, such as photoresist paste / resin, ultra-thin invar alloy of high-precision metal mask, etc.
To solve these problems, China needs to accelerate the development of key display materials, open up the blocking points as soon as possible and solve the “neck sticking” problem. It includes efficient research and development and sufficient reserves of patented technology, running in process and shortening trial production cycle in process matching, scale matching and quality stability in mass production, etc.
Peng Shou, academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering, said that China’s key display materials should highlight the development of “three uses”.
First, strengthen the original technology research, realize “good material use”, layout and build a national new R & D institution of optoelectronic materials with high standards and high requirements, strengthen the deployment of a number of strategic material research projects around large-size liquid crystal display, OLED and silicon-based micro display, and actively layout a number of reserve material research projects around quantum dot display and metauniverse, Through the application of basic research to force basic research, through basic research to lead the application of basic research, create a source of original technology of display materials, and realize the independent supply of a series of key display materials.
Second, strengthen the innovation of ecological mechanism to realize “good materials dare to use”. The transformation from “materials” to “products” is a systematic project. For major material and equipment innovation, we should explore new cooperation modes, build an innovation consortium of upstream and downstream enterprises, and accelerate the realization of the first batch of materials through preferential introduction and reasonable benefit sharing mechanism The introduction, application and localization substitution of the first set of equipment will promote the deep integration of the whole industrial chain of innovation chain and industrial chain, and open the channel from strong science and technology to strong enterprise, strong industry and strong economy.
Third, strengthen open market competition, realize “good materials and easy use”, and accelerate the promotion of double circulation is an important symbol of high-quality industrial development. The development of China’s display materials should be based on China to see the world and China based on the world, accelerate the implementation of intellectual property strategy, carry out global patent layout around “neck” display materials and products, and encourage China to open patents, inventions Standard green channel, create a fair, just and open international innovation competition environment, and truly transform China’s “hard core scientific and technological power” into core competitiveness and ecological leading power.
(China Electronic News)
