Electronic grade tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) has broad application prospects. my country’s industry is in a stage of steady growth.
Tetramethylammonium hydroxide, referred to as TMAH, is an organic compound with the chemical formula C4H13NO. It appears as a colorless crystalline powder and is soluble in water and ethanol. It is used in chemical industry, electronics, industrial cleaning, rubber, plastics and other fields. widely. According to different uses, tetramethylammonium hydroxide can be divided into two categories: industrial grade tetramethylammonium hydroxide and electronic grade tetramethylammonium hydroxide.
Electronic grade tetramethylammonium hydroxide, referred to as electronic grade TMAH, refers to tetramethylammonium hydroxide used in the electronic field. It is a transparent mixture of tetramethylammonium hydroxide and water. Electronic grade TMAH is mainly used as photolithography developer for printed circuit boards, silicon wafer etchant, and ultra-pure cleaning agent in microelectronic chip manufacturing.
Electronic-grade TMAH has high requirements for purity and quality. Currently, its industrial production method is mainly ion membrane electrolysis, which uses tetramethylammonium bicarbonate, tetramethylammonium chloride, etc. as raw materials, and generates tetramethylhydrogen through electrolysis. The ammonium oxidation method has the advantages of no chlorine gas generation, high purity of the output product, no pollution, and easy operation.
Electronic grade TMAH has broad application prospects in the semiconductor field. It can be used as a developer for the development of metal circuit boards, transparent conductive films and other parts of liquid crystal displays to remove unexposed parts; it can be used as a cleaning agent for In cleaning scenarios of organic silicon wafers and microelectronic chips, it provides clean interface conditions for the packaging process; it can be used as an etchant in silicon etching scenarios to accelerate the reaction rate between the etching solution and the silicon wafer surface.
Under the current background of the deepening shift of the global semiconductor industry to China, the domestic integrated circuit and liquid crystal display markets are developing rapidly, which in turn has driven the increasing market demand for electronic-grade TMAH. In 2022, the domestic integrated circuit market will exceed 1.1 trillion yuan, and the LCD market will exceed 60 billion yuan. Against this background, the domestic electronic-grade TMAH market demand has exceeded 120,000 tons in 2022, and the demand is maintaining an average annual growth rate of over 18%. The market development prospects are broad.
According to the“China Electronic Grade Tetramethylammonium Hydroxide (TMAH) Industry Market Monitoring and Future 2023-2027” released by the Industrial Research Center Development Prospects Research Report shows that at present, the number of domestic companies with electronic-grade TMAH mass production capabilities is still relatively small. Only Cangzhou Xinlian Electronic Materials Technology, Hangzhou Glinda Electronic Materials, and Nanjing Yuanheng Chemical Industry Technology, Yunnan Runjing Engineering Technology Group and a few other companies.
Industry analysts personnel said that the production capacity of Glenda TMAH developer can reach 90,000 tons/year; The downstream customers of Yunnan Runjing’s TMAH developer products include leading international panel companies such as Samsung and LG; Xinlian Electronics’ electronic-grade TMAH products have been applied to leading domestic semiconductor display companies such as BOE, CSOT, CEC Panda, and SMIC. At present, my country’s electronic-grade TMAH industry is in a stage of steady growth. In the future, as local companies continue to upgrade their technology and the research and development process of innovative products continues to accelerate, the industry is expected to usher in a golden period of rapid development.