1 Overview
As a new high-efficiency solid-state light source, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have significant advantages such as high efficiency, energy saving, environmental protection, safety, long life, rich colors and easy maintenance. According to relevant data, LED lighting can save 90% of electricity consumption by replacing incandescent lamps [1], and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by saving electricity. At present, the global energy crisis and the greenhouse effect are becoming more and more serious. Under the background of energy saving, low carbon and environmental protection, Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States and other countries have announced the ban on (banned) incandescent lamps, and Australia will even enact carbon dioxide emissions tax. . China also announced in November 2011 that it gradually banned the import and sale of incandescent lamps in stages [2]. According to estimates, if China is replacing all the incandescent lamps with energy-saving lamps or semiconductor lighting, the annual energy saving of 48 billion kW will reduce the carbon dioxide emissions by 48 million tons. In this context, the LED industry is promising.
The LED upstream industry mainly includes substrate materials, epitaxial wafers and chips, which is the core link of the LED industry and has been a hot spot for industry investment. In the first half of 2011, the investment in the LED industry was planned to be 118.948 billion yuan, of which the upstream substrate and epitaxial chips accounted for 78.74%; the investment amount in Guangdong Province was 12.187 billion, accounting for 10% of the total investment [3]. The upstream investment boom of LED continues unabated, and the downturn in the global downstream application market has led to the industry entering a structural over-adjustment period in 2011. However, industry insiders estimate that the LED industry will gradually thaw in the past two years, and the cost of LED products will be further reduced. From the perspective of national policies and market development, the LED industry will return to rationality, and the industry will re-enter the development track. .
With the development of the LED industry in Guangdong, high-purity gas is an indispensable basic supporting raw material for the LED light-emitting device and material manufacturing process, and it plays a vital role in the development of the LED industry. In the production process of microelectronics and optoelectronic devices, from the production of the chip to the packaging of the final device, high purity gas is indispensable in almost every link. In addition, the purity and cleanliness of gases directly affect the quality, integration, specific specifications and yield of microelectronics, optoelectronic devices, and fundamentally limit the accuracy and accuracy of circuits and devices. Relevant people in the industry believe that if oil is the blood of industry, then high-purity gas is the blood of the LED industry.
2 Guangdong LED upstream industry market
In recent years, the output value of LED industry in Guangdong has grown at an annual rate of more than 40%, gradually forming a relatively complete industrial chain from substrate materials, epitaxial wafers, chips, packages to applications [4], but mainly concentrated in the middle and lower reaches. LED application companies are weak in the industrialization of substrate materials, epitaxial wafers and chips. 2.1 Guangdong Industrial Policy and LED Upstream Market
In the past two years, Guangdong Province has successively issued "Several Opinions on Accelerating the Development of LED Industry", "Twelfth Five-Year Plan for LED Industry Development in Guangdong Province", and "Opinions on Implementing the State Council's Deployment to Accelerate the Cultivation and Development of Strategic Emerging Industries" The related LED industry supporting policies will rank the LED industry as the three strategic emerging industries that Guangdong will focus on in the near future. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Foshan and other LED industry support policies, made a city-level LED industry development plan. In 2009, Jiangmen introduced a subsidy policy of tens of millions of yuan for the purchase of MOCVD equipment, encouraging powerful companies to make breakthroughs in the epitaxial wafers and chips in the upstream of LEDs and increase their market share. In addition, the demonstration projects such as “Ten Cities and Ten Thousand Milesâ€, “Thousand Miles of 100,000â€, “Guangdong and Hong Kong Tendersâ€, and “Industry-University-Research Cooperation†organized by the Guangdong Provincial Government have set higher standards for the manufacturing technology and market demand for LED upstream.
In recent years, Guangdong's LED midstream and downstream application market has developed rapidly, resulting in strong demand for LED upstream epitaxial wafers and chips. Due to the long-term high average profit in the upstream of the industry, the investment intensity of the upstream investment has not been reduced. In 2009~2010, 8 LED epitaxial chip companies, such as Orende and Foshan Xuru, have been invested in Guangdong. 12 billion yuan [5], while the upstream industry output value is not large in the entire industrial chain. In 2010, Guangdong's LED industry realized an output value of 85.3 billion yuan, while the total output value of upstream links such as chips, epitaxial wafers and equipment in the province accounted for only about 20% [6]. This is mainly due to the large number of LED application companies in Guangdong. The southern epitaxial wafer and chip companies are facing competition from counterparts in Taiwan and other regions. Some enterprises have slowed their investment progress or transferred to the northern region for investment. In 2011, Guangdong's LED downstream application market was weak, and packaging companies experienced a shutdown and shutdown phenomenon, resulting in a backlog of upstream epitaxial wafers and chips, and a price cut across the entire industry chain. However, the widespread concept of energy conservation and environmental protection, the favorable news of the policy, and the huge market capacity of the Pearl River Delta have made Guangdong LED enterprises full of confidence in the industry prospects.
2.2 LED chip company overview
