China challenges USA and EU with Huawei chip manufacturer

But are these tools ready for production?

Chinese chip manufacturers are gradually transferring part of their production to tools manufactured in China, in an attempt to support the local ecosystem of wafers manufacturing equipment and reduce the dependence of tools produced abroad. China already has several renowned chip manufacturing tools, which specializes in one or two types of equipment, which have established sales records in 2024.

However, there is a little -known company linked to Huawei, Si Carrier Technologies, which has revealed to have almost all types of wafers processing tools in his catalog published in Semicon China and republished by Zhininren.

Sicarrier Technologies is a startup widely discussed in this year’s Semicon China, but little known outside the Popular Republic of China. The company is closely linked to Huawei and was founded four years ago in Shenzhen to develop world-class manufacturing tools that would compete with front-end production equipment made by ASML market leaders, Applied Materials, Kla and Lam Research, according to Nikkei.

Sicarrier’s main investor is Shenzhen Major Investment Group, a government -backed fund supporting Huawei -linked, including Pengxinwee Integrated Circuit Manufacturing and Swaysure Technology.

Sicarrier currently operates R&D centers in Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an, Wuhan, Chengdu, Hangzhou and abroad. Its end -to -end development chain covers complete materials, components and systems. To support rapid development, the company aggressively recruits senior engineers of state -of -the -art global companies such as ASML and Applied Materials.

The Sicarrier catalog presented at Semicon China includes a wide range of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, metrology tools and inspection systems. The catalog does not include any lithographic tools (possibly to keep its lithography advances in secret), but Nikkei reports that the company already has lithographic tools capable of processing 300 mm processes in 28 Nm and previous process technologies.

Even without lithographic machines, the company lists dozens of tools capable of performing the vast majority of front-end semiconductor production flow steps. The company also has metrology, inspection and testing tools.

Regarding the process, the catalog includes tools used for atomic layer deposition (ALD) for dielectrics and metal doors, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), breeding of blanket and deposition by metallic contact, epitaxis, corrosion and prosecution. The catalog does not explicitly characterize the tools and their capabilities in terms of real manufacturing processes, but often refers to “advanced process nodes” as well as “future future nodes”.

In the area of ​​metrology and inspection, the catalog includes tools for optical inspection of standard and non -standard wafers, atomic force microscopy for morphology inspection in nanoscala resolution and advanced measuring systems for thin film thickness, element composition and crystallinity.

Finally, Sicarrier also has several test machines, including electrical wafers tests, good condition tests and functional tests. However, these tools are currently focused mainly on power semiconductors.

For now, it is unclear whether all tools listed by Sicarrier can be ordered and purchased. It is also unclear whether these machines are compatible with existing production flows that depend on ASML, Applied, KLA, LAM, Tel and others machines.

However, Nikkei states that Sicarrier has signed a close partnership with Huawei, which has set up a large internal team focused on the manufacture and semiconductor equipment, and that both are working to improve process implementation and identify technical challenges in all production lines. This may mean that Sicarrier and Huawei intend to develop tools for a “owner” production flow involving exclusively Chinese tools. If this is the case, it may take years until the first factory with this flow goes into operation. However, given the rhythm of Sicarrier so far, it can impress the sector.

Originally published by Tom’s Hardware on 4/26/2025

Por Anton Shilov