TECHCET—the electronic materials advisory firm providing market and supply-chain information – has announced that the consumable ceramic equipment parts market will contract by -5% in 2023 to US$2.5 billion. Ceramic fabricated parts, including alumina (Al2O3), aluminum nitride (AlN), silicon carbide (SiC), and chemical vapor deposition SiC (CVD- SiC), are consumed as components in semiconductor process equipment, meaning that market trends are directly tied to fab wafer production and semiconductor equipment sales. The ceramic fabricated parts market will grow on the order of 2% to 5% in 2024, and will top over US$3 billion by 2027, as indicated in the graph below from TECHCET’s newly released Critical Materials Market Report on Ceramics.
Previous backlogs from 2020-2022 in the Ceramic Parts Market have gradually cleared given the industry slowdown, which is allowing some fabricators time to work on efficiency improvement projects. Long lead-times for large SiC components previously stretched to over 1 year, though have shortened slightly.
Semiconductor equipment makers using CVD SiC will continue for the foreseeable future, driving growth of CVD SiC used for advanced semiconductor capital equipment applications. New investments in growing CVD SiC capacity are finally beginning to appear after previous supply shortages. The 2023 lead-time in CVD SiC has improved, so this is a good sign for this segment of the industry, which TECHCET expects to see strong growth in. Given the expense and expertise needed, it is difficult for new players to enter the CVD SiC market. However, large silicon and quartz suppliers are expected to enter this market segment over the next several years.
Both the SiC and AlN markets will continue to exhibit stronger growth than alumina and other ceramic materials, due to contributions to increasing productivity, reduced defects, and process requirements for next-generation thermal processes.
200 mm component market demand is still on-going and well supported by small ceramics grind shops/fabricators. With that said, there are indications that ceramic fabricators in China are suffering more than their overseas competitors in 2023. This is due to the economic situation in China, the US/China geopolitical situation, and US customers buying less components from Chinese sources. In some cases, there could be a much greater revenue drop in 2023 for some of those suppliers.