Seo Tae-il, CEO of STI, "First year of leap forward as a semiconductor small business"

“STI is proud to be a company suitable for fostering domestic semiconductor materials, parts, and equipment (SMEs). It is rare for a domestic equipment company to have researchers majoring in chemical and material engineering, and we are also seeing new growth potential in semiconductor materials and parts. This year, we will transform into a comprehensive semiconductor SME company starting with the semiconductor material (ingot) growth equipment sector.”

STI CEO Seo Tae-il emphasized that this year will be the first year of growth into a comprehensive semiconductor SME company. In particular, he predicted that the advanced  system semiconductor  sector will be a strong growth engine.

STI is a material equipment manufacturer located in Daegu. It started out in 1989 as a company specializing in optical fiber preform heat treatment electric furnaces, which are optical fiber materials for communication, but faced a crisis due to the US-China 5G trade war and international sanctions. With the COVID-19 situation overlapping, STI’s sales fell from KRW 70 billion in 2018 to several billion won recently. CEO Seo expanded the business to the semiconductor material equipment sector, where the company excels, by applying the existing material electric furnace equipment sector.

Last year, STI developed a 6-inch silicon carbide (SiC) wafer material (ingot) manufacturing equipment and began full-scale business. It is also part of preparations to develop chemical vapor transmission (PVT) equipment that grows ingot core material powder into ingot material and to strengthen it into 8-inch SiC ingot PVT equipment.

STI also possesses 8-inch equipment manufacturing technology. Although there are no domestic mass production cases centered on 6-inch markets, domestic and foreign semiconductor companies are expected to strengthen their investments in 8-inch products, so they plan to enter this market in the future.

STI is busy developing semiconductor equipment technology and manufacturing equipment, but is expanding into the material parts sector. STI has 50 R&D staff in the semiconductor material sector. It also operates a semiconductor material development research facility established with an investment of 15 billion won. It has invested 10 billion won every year to develop high-purity (5N) ingot powder based on ingot growth equipment. Companies that can produce high-purity ingot powder are only a few overseas material companies such as Japan's Denso, Pacific, Sumitomo Chemical, and Showa Denko.

"Our goal is to increase the degree of domestic production in the SiC ingot powder market dominated by Japan," said CEO Seo. "We have succeeded in developing 5N-grade ingot powder (99.9998%), but rather than rushing into mass production, we will create a business plan when we can increase product perfection and utilize production technology."

In addition to SIC powder, STI is expanding the products it develops for semiconductor process component materials. The plan is to expand the domestic production performance in the semiconductor material and component fields such as the completion of the synthetic quartz verification test that has been under development and the semiconductor focus ring.

https://www.etnews.com/20220308000048