Glass Substrates: Samsung’s Race for 2026 Begins Now
Recent reports indicate that Samsung has established a new interdepartmental alliance spanning its electronics, electrical engineering, and display divisions to accelerate the commercial research and development of “glass substrate” technology, with the aim of achieving mass production by 2026. Samsung’s objective is to commercialize this technology faster than Intel, a project primarily advanced by its subsidiary, Samsung Electro-Mechanics.
According to ETNews, Samsung is hastening the development of its semiconductor glass substrate technology. The company has moved up the procurement and installation timeline to September and plans to begin trial operations in the fourth quarter of this year, a full quarter ahead of the original schedule. Samsung aims to start producing glass substrates for high-end System-in-Package (SiP) applications by 2026 and needs to be ready by 2025 to secure orders, demonstrating sufficient capability.
Samsung plans to have all necessary preparations for equipment installation completed on its trial production line by September. The company has already finalized its choice of suppliers, including Philoptics, Chemtronics, Joongwoo M-Tech, and Germany’s LPKF, which will provide the necessary components. Reports suggest that this setup is designed to streamline production while strictly adhering to Samsung’s safety and automation standards.
Compared to traditional organic substrates, glass substrates offer significant advantages, overcoming the limitations of conventional methods. These include superior flatness, enhanced lithographic focus, and exceptional dimensional stability in next-generation system-level packaging involving multiple small chip interconnections. Moreover, glass substrates exhibit improved thermal and mechanical stability, making them more suitable for high-temperature, durable applications demanded by data centers.
In September last year, Intel expressed its desire to become an industry leader in the production of advanced packaging glass substrates for the next generation. Its internal team has spent nearly a decade on research and development and plans to commence pilot production in Arizona, with the goal of commercial application by 2030.
Recently, Samsung Foundry has been striving to secure more orders for data center products and needs to offer more advanced packaging services. The efforts made with glass substrates could have a crucial impact on the future.
