Sapphire substrate industrial chain mainly has two links: crystal bar growth and wafer cutting.
Crystal bar production is to put high purity alumina powder into a special sapphire long crystal furnace, producing crystal ingot after 2~4 weeks, then process the qualified crystal bar according to the required size. Wafer cutting involves slicing, grinding, polishing and other steps of the wafer bar to further process it into a flat substrate. According to the characteristics of the photoelectric elements, the corresponding processing should be carried out for the flat plate. For example, LED substrate is used for patterned processing on a single side.
Sapphire industry chain involves the coordination of upstream and downstream. The material part includes high-purity alumina powder, tungstum-molybdenum-iridium crucible and diamond cutting line. The equipment part includes long crystal furnace, cutting equipment, etc. Sapphire demand has brought about the rapid development of the market related materials and equipment, and its layout has broken the previous situation focusing on the long crystal market, and the whole industrial chain tends to balance. The upstream and downstream integration of sapphire industrial chain is accelerated, while the vertical integration of epitaxial chip links in sapphire substrate and LED industry chain is intensified. Therefore, when the demand for sapphire substrate is gradually released in the next stage, the company that can lay out in the whole industrial chain will seize the market opportunity, expand technical barriers and cost advantages, and have the core competitiveness of the enterprise.
