Accelerating the domestic production of large silicon wafers, Xi'an Yiswei Materials completes Series B financing
Recently, Xi'an Yiswei Materials Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yiswei Materials") completed its Series B financing round, raising over 3 billion RMB. CITIC Securities Investment and Golden Stone Investment jointly led the round, with China Zhongji Investment, China Net Investment, Shaanxi Private Equity Fund, Yida Capital, Zhongwei Capital, and China Life Equity Investment, among other institutions, participating. Existing investors Xindongneng and Sanxing Capital also made additional investments. Yiswei Materials will use this funding to expand its production capacity.
The integrated circuit industry is a strategic and foundational industry supporting economic and social development. Silicon wafers are indispensable materials in chip manufacturing, with 12-inch (300mm) large silicon wafers being the core materials with the highest demand, highest cost proportion, and lowest domestic production rate in current chip materials. As of 2020, 95% of this material still relied on imports.
Yiswei Materials is currently one of the few domestic semiconductor material companies capable of mass-producing 12-inch large silicon wafers. Targeting the demands of advanced micro-nano processes in integrated circuits for silicon wafers, Yiswei Materials selects advanced equipment and processes, combining the highest level of cleanroom design and production control to manufacture 12-inch silicon wafers that are dislocation-free, free of native defects, ultra-flat, and with excellent nano-morphology. The designed production capacity of Yiswei Materials' first factory in Xi'an is 500,000 wafers per month. Products include polished wafers and epitaxial wafers, mainly used for logic chips, flash memory chips (3D NAND & Nor Flash), dynamic random access memory chips (DRAM), image sensors (CIS), and display driver ICs.
Currently, the demand for chips in the Internet of Things, automotive intelligence, and 5G is rapidly increasing, and the global shortage of chips and materials remains severe, bringing new opportunities for the development of upstream industries such as integrated circuit silicon wafers in China.
Yang Xinyuan, CEO of Xi'an Yiswei Materials Technology Co., Ltd., stated: "Yiswei's 12-inch silicon wafer products have reached the world's advanced level in terms of single crystal quality, warp quality, particle control, and pollution control. Dozens of polished wafers and epitaxial wafers have been introduced to more than ten wafer fabrication plants domestically and internationally. This financing will be used to further expand production capacity to meet the needs of more customers."
Fang Hao, general manager of CITIC Securities Investment Co., Ltd., stated: "Semiconductor-grade silicon wafers are the cornerstone of the development of the integrated circuit industry. China's self-sufficiency rate of 12-inch silicon wafers is relatively low. Yiswei Materials is a high-quality domestic semiconductor-grade silicon wafer company. Our company is willing to work with the Yiswei team to promote the industrialization development and technological advancement of 12-inch semiconductor-grade silicon wafers."
