EB SECURITIES: Empowering Advanced Packaging with Glass Substrate, Focusing on Downstream Customer Verification and Mass Production Line Construction Progress.

EB SECURITIES released a research report stating that glass substrates, with their excellent properties, are gradually becoming the new generation of advanced packaging media. Currently, TGV glass substrates are at a historical node in the transition from laboratory basic research to mass production engineering, showing a leading progress abroad and an accelerating catching-up trend domestically. It is recommended to closely monitor the progress of downstream customer verification and production line construction. It is also suggested to pay attention to upstream raw material links, equipment links, other materials, and processing and manufacturing links. The main points of EB SECURITIES are as follows: Glass Substrate: A new generation of advanced packaging materials With the evolution of Moore's Law slowing down, advanced packaging has become the core path for increasing integration and system performance in the post-Moore era of chips. Traditional organic substrates face physical bottlenecks such as warping deformation, limited wiring density, and signal losses in large-scale integrations. Against this background, glass substrates, with excellent properties such as low dielectric constant, low dielectric loss, high flatness, high chemical stability, and a thermal expansion coefficient highly matched with silicon, are gradually becoming the new generation of advanced packaging media. Industrial Acceleration: Two parallel solutions for TGV intermediate layer and TGV glass core board Two advanced packaging solutions are generated based on glass substrates: replacing TSV with the intermediate layer and replacing IC packaging substrates. 1) TGV intermediate layer replaces traditional TSV intermediate layer: Intel showcased physical samples combining EMIB packaging with glass substrates at NEPCONJapan early in the year, using a dual EMIB bridge structure to double the carrying capacity; TSMC's CoPoS program adopts the TGV intermediate layer route to increase substrate utilization, delivered pilot line equipment in February, expected to complete line construction by June, and start production in 28; Samsung is actively testing the application of glass substrates in the next generation of HBM4 memory packaging to increase stacking density and heat dissipation performance. 2) TGV glass core board replaces traditional IC packaging substrates: Intel is globally leading in commercialization, shipping the world's first Xeon 6+Clearwater Forest server processor with a glass core board in January; Samsung's trial production line is up and running, starting to supply Apple with glass substrate samples for the AI server chip "Baltra" in April. In addition, in the field of CPO optoelectronics packaging, glass substrates have gradually become the preferred material for packaging-level optical waveguide integration technology due to their high transparency in a wide spectral range, low dielectric loss, high dimensional stability, and good process compatibility. Key Technologies: TGV technology as the core, metal filling and RDL determine the quality of electrical connection The core processes of TGV include wafer manufacturing, TGV through holes, metal filling, and RDL. The preparation of TGV glass through holes is a core process in glass substrate packaging. Compared to traditional physical drilling, laser direct ablation, photosensitive glass, and other methods, laser-induced deep etching (LIDE) has advantages of high aspect ratio, processing precision, and high processing efficiency, making it the optimal technology path for mass production of large size, high density TGV. In addition, TGV metal filling and RDL technologies mainly achieve metal filling inside through holes and fine wiring on the surface, which are critical in determining the electrical connection quality of glass substrates. Current Situation: Overseas leading the pace, domestic accelerating catching up Benefiting from the earlier technology reserve in TGV from overseas semiconductor giants and the advantage of quality glass substrate supply from companies like Corning, TGV progress is leading overseas. From the industry chain perspective, 1) Raw materials: Corning, Schott, and NSG Group among other overseas giants occupy the majority of shares, and domestic substitution is accelerating breakthroughs. 2) Equipment: including laser equipment, electroplating equipment, etc. According to company announcements, Wuhan DR Laser Technology Corp. has achieved comprehensive coverage of wafer and panel-level TGV packaging laser technology; Kunshan Dongwei Technology has delivered TGV electroplating equipment and successfully accepted it. 3) Other materials: including etching additives (Shanghai Skychem Technology), surface cleaning agents (Jiangyin Jianghua Micro-electronic Materials), etc. Risk Analysis: TGV technology progress slower than expected, AI capital expenditure slowing down, industry competition intensifying, and domestic substitution falling short of expectations.