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1、 PSPI Semiconductor Manufacturing's' Photolithography Magician '
PSPI (Photosensitive Polyimide) combines the high performance of polyimide with the precise imaging properties of photosensitive materials, making it the most cutting-edge polymer material in the material family.
Exposure to ultraviolet light and X-rays can cause structural changes, directly forming precise circuit patterns.
Compared to traditional photoresist, PSPI has disruptive advantages.
The process of chip manufacturing has been simplified, and PSPI does not require additional coating of light blocking agents. The graphic steps in the chip manufacturing process have been reduced by more than 50%.
The performance of the material is very comprehensive, able to withstand high temperatures of 400 ℃, with a dielectric constant as low as 2.5, which is close to air. The thermal expansion coefficient is only 1/10 of that of metals, perfectly matching the extreme requirements of chip packaging for insulation and stability.
2、 Why has PSPI become the focus of great power games?
Application scenario: From mobile phone screens to the heart of AI chips
In the flexible OLED screen industry, it can replace glass substrates and is the "flexible skeleton" of mobile phone folding screens (such as Samsung Galaxy Fold).
Chiplet is an advanced packaging industry that serves as the "precision skeleton" of the intermediate layer in 2.5D/3D packaging, connecting different chip modules (such as Apple M-series processors).
In the aerospace field, the anti radiation shielding layer of satellite circuit boards can also be used with PSPI, which has good reliability in extreme environments.
Market positioning war: the hundred billion yuan track, domestic substitution is imminent
At present, 90% of the global market is monopolized by five companies: Asahi Kasei, Toray, Fujifilm, Hitachi Kasei, and HD Microsystems in the United States. The supply crisis in 2023 directly led to severe capacity constraints for China's chip factories, and their industry position is very clear.
The demand for PSPI in our country is growing at a rate of over 30% annually, and the market size may exceed 6 billion yuan by 2025, with an import dependency of up to 95%.
If domestic enterprises break through this technology, they can solve the problem of the material's "bottleneck". Faced with such a huge chip market, it is difficult not to make money.
3、 The domestic PSPI disruptor has moved from the laboratory to mass production
The Technology Breakthrough Bureau of Domestic Enterprises
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Performance benchmarking international
The key parameters of domestically produced PSPI materials can already be benchmarked against excellent Japanese and American companies.
The resolution can reach 0.5 μ m, meeting the process requirements of 3nm chips. In terms of material heat resistance, the glass transition temperature is greater than 350 ℃, and the cycling stability has been improved by 300%.
The breakthrough from 0 to 1 has been achieved, and the speed of catching up in the future will definitely become faster and faster. High end materials are no longer a forbidden zone for Chinese enterprises.
There are many excellent chemical new material enterprises in the country, especially small and medium-sized private enterprises with very fast innovation speed.
It is difficult to compare with large chemical enterprises of central state-owned enterprises in terms of size alone, but I think many companies can achieve leadership in a single niche field.
4、 The future battlefield, AI computing power is bound to ignite incremental demand
The training of ChatGPT like large models requires a super high computing power cluster (such as OpenAI using about 25000 GPUs), and the performance of a single GPU is limited by the program.
Chiplet integrates multiple chips in a 2.5D/3D package, achieving doubled computing power and breaking through the area limitation of a single chip, achieving a leapfrog growth in computing power.
With the rapid increase in Chiplet technology penetration, PSPI as an intermediate layer material will increase the usage of a single chip by several times.
On May 19, 2025, Asahi Kasei Corporation of Japan issued an official announcement, announcing that due to the explosive demand for AI computing power, PSPI (photosensitive polyimide) production capacity is insufficient, and global supply will be tightened, with priority given to supplying local Japanese companies. In June, Asahi Kasei Corporation officially implemented supply restrictions on PSPI exported to China.
If China still fails to achieve independent mass production of mid to high end PSPI in the next 1-2 years, the domestic AI chip packaging capacity will be constrained by material shortages, which will affect the progress of large-scale model iteration.
According to industry forecasts, by 2029, the global PSPI market size will exceed 12 billion yuan, with China accounting for over 40%.
If China can transition from being "controlled by others" to being "autonomous and controllable", this material battle will inevitably reshape the power structure of the global semiconductor industry.
Conclusion: The golden race track has begun, can domestic materials overtake in corners?
One generation of materials, one generation of chips ", PSPI's localization breakthrough is not only a technological game, but also the core lifeline of industrial chain security.
With companies such as Dinglong and Bomi tearing open the cracks, China's semiconductor materials will surely move from "following" to "running in parallel".
Experts in the semiconductor materials industry have proposed that PSPI is a 'special steel' in the field of chip packaging, and the progress of domestic substitution directly determines whether China's AI chips can break free from the shackles. ”
When high-end PSPI is completely replaced by domestic production, it is the time for China's AI chips to break free from the "computing power bottleneck".