The semiconductor industry is booming due to the surge in semiconductor use with the 4th industrial revolution. Demands for semiconductors, such as ‘bit coin’, ‘block chain’, and ‘IoT’ (Internet of Things), are abundant. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have been recording their best results ever since the semiconductor boom. What is important at this time is the supply capacity to cope with the demand.

This year, 48th week of the iR52 Jang Young-sil Award went to HANMI Semiconductor and SK Hynix, which developed 'Dual TC Bonder' for the first time in Korea. 'Dual TC bonders' are the equipment required to produce high-speed memory (HBM) products. 'TC bonders' are semiconductor devices that can be made by stacking multiple layers of silicon wafers (laminated layers). As the semiconductor capacity has been greatly increased, the cross-sectional area of the semiconductor is increased by the limit of capacity expansion.

Dual TC bonders can double the semiconductor production compared to traditional TC bonders by adopting the high-speed dual method. In the meantime, the TC Bonders market accounted for 100% of imported equipment. It was necessary to localize the equipment, so with the cooperation of HANMI Semiconductor and SK Hynix, the localization of the TC bonder equipment succeeded in developing mass production equipment after several trial and error. The two companies started test-production in September and mass production of HBM2 8GB is going on this month.

Moon Byung-gwan, director of HANMI Semiconductor said, "By solving the technical challenges such as the vibration that occurs when two bonding heads are operated at the same time, now we are able to double the productivity compared to other competitive bonding equipment." And “It is a core device that plays a pivotal role in the production of 3D TSV HBM products mounted GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), HPC (High Performance Computing), high-capacity server, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and network."

Currently, 5 dual TC bonders are being operated by SK Hynix. As the demand for semiconductor continues to grow on with the semiconductor boom, the demand for that equipment is also expected to grow further.