Material Observation: China's copper clad laminate industry is struggling to improve

At present, China is the world's largest manufacturer and consumer of copper clad laminates. Since the total amount of copper clad laminates in my country exceeded 200 million square meters in 2005 at the end of the "10th Five-Year Plan", it has always ranked in the world in terms of quantity. By 2010, the total amount accounted for 80% of the global total. Since 2009, the output value has also accounted for more than 50% of the global total output value. In addition, during the "11th Five-Year Plan", major companies have also made a series of technological advances, and achieved mass production on some copper clad laminates with high technical content: mass production of bromine-free copper clad laminates; mass production of high-Tg and high-heat-resistant copper clad laminates adapted to PCB processes; mass production of three-layer flexible copper clad laminates; mass production of medium and low-end metal-based copper clad laminates; comprehensive promotion of waste gas combustion heat recovery and utilization technology; and the start of technical development of high-performance copper clad laminates for IC packaging substrates.

Despite this, China's copper clad laminate industry still needs to face the difficult dilemma of industrial upgrading. Objectively speaking, China's copper clad laminates have been developed for decades, but they are still large but not strong. There has been little progress in the development of some key raw materials with high dependence on the import market (such as high-grade copper foil, ultra-thin electronic glass fiber cloth, special resins, films, fillers, etc.). There has been little progress in the application research and market development of some high-tech copper clad laminates, such as "copper clad laminates for packaging substrates" and "copper clad laminates adapted to high-density interconnect (HDI) technology" that restrict the entire electronic information industry; research on new substrate materials required for future "cloud computing" and other higher-end electronic information technologies, additive circuit board technology, and optoelectronic circuit board technology is basically blank. This has restricted the development of my country's electronic information industry to a certain extent. In the future, the improvement of China's copper clad laminate industry will mainly be reflected in the research and development, manufacturing and application of the above-mentioned high-tech copper clad laminates.

The main reasons for this situation are: , my country's basic industry is backward, and the more upstream the raw material industry is, the more problems it has; second, the enterprises invested by the United States, Japan and other countries in mainland China generally only produce medium and low-end products of their own enterprises; third, the current domestic parties have not fully realized the fact that "high-tech copper clad laminates restrict the further development of my country's electronic information industry", and it is difficult to change the current situation with the strength of the country and the industry, and the research and development, manufacturing and application of the above-mentioned types of high-tech copper clad laminates are precisely not something that can be done by a single enterprise; fourth, and the critical issue, if the copper clad laminate industry wants to develop new products ahead of time, it must be led by China's own chip technology, and China's electronic industry currently does not have its own technology in the core chip part, at least it does not have a voice or control technology in the world.

In the face of the above problems, we suggest:The country should attach great importance to and solve the bottleneck problems in the development of the copper clad laminate industry, and the competent authorities should set up special projects to coordinate research institutes related to the copper clad laminate profession and national-level technology research and development centers in copper clad laminate enterprises. Secondly, the import and export encouragement policy should be improved. In the current catalog of technologies and products encouraged for import and the catalog of foreign investment industry guidance, copper clad laminates can only be classified under the item of electronic special materials. Government departments often require industry associations to issue certificates on whether copper clad laminates belong to "electronic special materials". Therefore, further descriptions should be made on the major categories of products covered by "electronic special materials"; in terms of export policy, the policy of treating copper clad laminates and special materials as electronic products should be adhered to; in terms of import policy, it is recommended that temporary preferential import tax rates be implemented for raw materials used in high-tech copper clad laminates when domestic quantity or quality cannot guarantee the needs.

(The author is the secretariat of the Copper Clad Laminate Materials Branch of the China Electronic Materials Association)