Understanding Domestic and International Sensor Technology and Gaps

Sensors, as a cutting-edge technology in modern science, are considered one of the three pillars of modern information technology and are recognized as a high-tech industry with great potential for development both domestically and internationally. Experts in automation in China point out that sensor technology is directly related to the development of the automation industry in our country, stating, “If sensor technology is strong, then the automation industry is strong.” This illustrates the importance of sensor technology to the automation industry and even to the entire industrial construction of the country.

However, while the sensor industry is experiencing a springtime, the Chinese public still seems to be witnessing a feast dominated by foreign semiconductor giants. Industry insiders believe that although China’s sensor market is developing rapidly, there is still a significant gap between local sensor technology and the global level.

This gap manifests itself in two ways: on one hand, there is a lag in the ability of sensors to perceive information; on the other hand, there is a technological lag in the intelligence and networking of sensors themselves. Due to a lack of sufficient large-scale applications, domestic sensors are not only low in technology but also high in price, making it difficult to be competitive in the market.

Sensor Development in Various Countries

Currently, the global sensor market is mainly dominated by several leading companies from the United States, Japan, and Germany. The combined market share of the United States, Japan, Germany, and China accounts for 72% of the global sensor market, with China holding about 11%. In comparison to the more than 20,000 types of products produced globally, China can only produce about one-third of them, and the overall technical content is relatively low, which is a state that urgently needs to change.

Understanding Domestic and International Sensor Technology and Gaps

The United States

The United States claimed as early as the 1980s that the world had entered the sensor era. In the early 1980s, the U.S. established a National Technology Group (BGT) to help the government organize and lead sensor technology development work among major companies and national enterprises. Six of the 22 technologies critical to the long-term security and economic prosperity of the U.S. are directly related to sensor information processing technology. Among the eight key technologies crucial for maintaining the quality advantage of U.S. weapon systems, eight are passive sensors. In 2000, the U.S. Air Force identified 15 technologies that would help enhance the capabilities of the 21st-century Air Force, with sensor technology ranked second.

The U.S. development model emphasizes military applications before civilian ones, and improvement before widespread adoption. Its significant characteristics include:

(1) A strong emphasis on research into functional materials for sensors;

(2) A strong focus on sensor technology development: For example, Honeywell’s solid-state sensor development center invests $50 million annually in equipment, currently possessing the most advanced equipment and production lines, including computer-aided design, single crystal growth, processing, graphic generation, step-and-repeat lithography, automatic coating, plasma etching, sputtering, diffusion, epitaxy, vapor deposition, ion implantation, chemical vapor deposition, scanning electron microscopy, packaging, and shielding dynamic testing, and claims that most of its equipment must be updated approximately every three years to maintain its technological leadership.

(3) A focus on process research: The principles of sensors are not difficult and are not kept secret; rather, the most confidential aspect is the processes. Many evaluations suggest that “sensors” are not just ordinary industrial products but rather exquisite works of craftsmanship. In terms of research and development, there are about 1,300 manufacturers producing and developing sensors in the U.S., along with over 100 research institutes and universities.

Germany

Germany prioritizes military sensor technology development, leveraging the inherent advantages of being an established industrial power. German manufacturers integrate their brand reputation and strengths in technology research and quality management, significantly enhancing their products’ market competitiveness.

On one hand, there is a greater focus on saving raw material costs; on the other hand, there is a heavy investment in human capital to maintain technological leadership and thus sustain a high market share!

Japan

Japan ranks sensor technology as one of its top ten technologies. Japanese business leaders assert that “whoever controls sensor technology will control the new era.” Japan places significant emphasis on developing and utilizing sensor technology, listing it as one of the six core technologies for national development.

The Ministry of Science and Technology of Japan designated 70 key research projects in the 1990s, 18 of which were closely related to sensor technology.

Japan emphasizes practicality and commercialization, following a path from introduction, digestion, imitation to independent improvement and design innovation. The former is more expensive, while the latter is less costly and quicker. In terms of research and development, Japan has about 800 manufacturers producing and developing sensors.

China

China began to engage in sensor manufacturing as early as the 1960s. In 1972, the first batch of piezoresistive sensor manufacturing units in China was established; in 1974, the first practical piezoresistive pressure sensor was successfully developed; in 1978, the first solid-state piezoresistive accelerometer was born; and in 1982, the earliest silicon micromachining system (MEMS) processing technology and SOI (silicon on insulator) technology research began. After entering the 1990s, absolute pressure sensors, micro pressure sensors, ventilator pressure sensors, polysilicon pressure sensors, and low-cost TO-8 packaged pressure sensors were successively developed and produced.

Over the past 30 years of reform and opening up, China’s sensor technology and industry have made significant progress, mainly reflected in: the establishment of national key laboratories for sensor technology, micron/nano national key laboratories, and national sensor technology engineering centers; research projects in MEMS and MOEMS (micro-opto-electro-mechanical systems) are included in the national high-tech development priorities; in the “Ninth Five-Year Plan” national key technology research projects, sensor technology research achieved results of 86 specifications of 51 new products, initially establishing a sensitive component and sensor industry.

Currently, China’s sensor industry is at a critical stage of transitioning from traditional to new sensors, reflecting the overall trend of new sensors towards miniaturization, multifunctionality, digitalization, intelligence, systematization, and networking.

Sensor technology has undergone years of development, which can be roughly divided into three generations:

The first generation is structural sensors, which use changes in structural parameters to sense and convert signals.

The second generation is solid-state sensors developed in the 1970s, which are composed of solid components such as semiconductors, dielectrics, and magnetic materials, utilizing certain properties of materials. For example, thermocouple sensors, Hall sensors, and photodetectors are made using thermoelectric effects, Hall effects, and photoconductive effects, respectively.

The third generation of sensors is the newly developed smart sensors, which are a product of the combination of microcomputer technology and detection technology, giving sensors a certain level of artificial intelligence.

Current Status of the Domestic Sensor Industry

The domestic sensors show a lag in information perception on one hand, and on the other, a technological lag in intelligence and networking. Due to a lack of sufficient large-scale applications, domestic sensors are not only low in technology but also high in price, making it difficult to be competitive in the market.

China began to pay attention to sensor technology research around 1980. After years of effort, the development level in sensor research is relatively good. However, the technological progress in productization is still not ideal; many sensor technologies have comparatively good research levels in domestic laboratories, but unfortunately, they have not been fully utilized and have not been transformed into mature products entering the market.

Research in sensor technology requires a significant amount of time investment; it typically takes 6-8 years for a sensor to mature, a cycle that most Chinese companies cannot bear. Chinese companies find it even harder to tolerate failure, as the risk of failure in sensor research is high.

In Japan, many research and development initiatives supported by companies do not lead to product formation, but companies can bear this; if only 2-3 out of 10 projects can become products, that is sufficient. In contrast, many of our companies are prepared to take existing products from others. This mindset is problematic, including our constant desire to introduce ready-made foreign products and talents with their own projects. There is no intention to nurture talent but rather to catch a fish.

Compared to larger instruments and equipment, the investment required for sensors during the productization process is generally not very high, making it suitable for small enterprises to invest. In this regard, China should have an advantage. However, from another perspective, this is also a shortcoming.

One characteristic of the sensor industry is that while sensors themselves have high technical content, the prices of individual sensors are generally not high. This leads to the result that, despite the high added value of sensor technology, it is difficult to generate considerable output value solely relying on sensors.

Generally speaking, sensors are somewhat like the “medicinal guide” in traditional Chinese medicine; their functions are important, but to achieve scale, they need to rely on the overall medicinal formulation. Many foreign sensor companies quickly develop related measuring instruments once they make breakthroughs in certain sensors.

Additionally, under China’s patent protection mechanism, the key technologies painstakingly developed in sensors often present a “trade secret” nature, making them difficult to claim after being copied, and companies cannot afford to litigate. Although there are also MEMS sensor companies in China, they mostly rely on contract manufacturing, and if not managed well, they may be appropriated by the processing companies themselves. Currently, there are significant issues with the corporate innovation system.

Differences in Sensor Development Between China and Foreign Countries

Domestic sensor manufacturers occupy the mid-to-low-end market. From the development trend, there are three situations for domestic sensor manufacturers:

1. Products from private or joint venture enterprises occupy the mid-to-low-end market, where traditional technologies and equipment can meet the manufacturing requirements of most products, and the market development status is good. Except for a few manufacturers that take foreign-produced chips and package relevant products domestically to occupy a large market share, other high-end products are monopolized by foreign manufacturers.

2. With the rise of emerging industries like the Internet of Things, the sensor industry has become an important field for countries to compete in high-tech development. In recent years, China’s sensor industry has grown rapidly, and the application models are becoming increasingly mature. However, due to the low tier of the industry and poor technological innovation capabilities, the domestic sensor industry presents a market structure of low-end surplus and high-end monopolized by foreign countries. The lag in sensor technology development has hindered the smooth advancement of domestic strategic emerging industries.

Currently, China has formed a relatively complete sensor industry chain from materials, devices, systems to networks. Significant progress has been made in network interfaces, the integration of sensors with network communication, and the architecture of the Internet of Things. However, the low tier of the industry, small enterprise scale, and poor technological innovation capabilities mean that many enterprises merely introduce foreign components for processing, leading to severe homogenization. Outdated production equipment and unstable processes have resulted in dispersed product indicators and poor stability. Imitation products also fall short in terms of agility. In relatively advanced research and development areas, the foundational development of industrialization has been neglected, and commercialization development is seriously lagging.

Currently, there are about 6,000 types of sensor products in China, while there are over 20,000 abroad, far from meeting the domestic market demand. The import ratio of mid-to-high-end sensors reaches 80%, and the import ratio of sensor chips even reaches 90%, resulting in a huge gap in domestic production. There is a serious shortage of high-tech products such as digitalization, intelligence, and miniaturization. High-end products required for national major equipment mainly rely on imports. For sensors and intelligent instruments required for national security and major projects, foreign countries often impose restrictions on China. Foreign-funded enterprises occupy the vast majority of the domestic high-end market share and will continue to dominate the high-end market for a long time to come, a trend that is unlikely to fundamentally change in the short term.

3. State-owned enterprises are in a state of steady growth, generally unable to keep up with the latest technological developments abroad, and overall, the gap is widening except for a few manufacturers. This is due to the rapid development of sensor technology, the quick updates of processes and manufacturing equipment, and the inability of many domestic manufacturers to produce new equipment. Additionally, the price of a single piece of equipment ranges from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, making it difficult for most manufacturers to purchase new equipment based on their own accumulation, preventing them from keeping pace with the rapid development of foreign enterprises in many new technologies and processes.

The Main Reasons for the Development Gap in China’s Sensors

1. Core manufacturing technologies lag significantly behind foreign countries, resulting in subpar domestic products.

New technologies, products, processes, and materials for sensors are continuously emerging abroad, with trends towards digitalization, intelligence, and miniaturization. Most products have become a reality and are continuously improved and upgraded. Although the research and development fields that China has engaged in are basically comparable to those abroad, there is still a significant lag in certain core manufacturing process technologies, resulting in considerable differences in depth and breadth, mainly manifested as:

1. Incomplete product variety and specifications, lack of new products.

Currently, the number of sensor product varieties in China is about 3,000, while abroad it exceeds 20,000, with a product variety satisfaction rate of only about 60%-70%, which far fails to meet the domestic sensor market demand. From the perspective of industry product structure, over 60% of old products are present, while new products are insufficient, and high-tech products are even scarcer. Overall, there is a lack of matching varieties, incomplete series, a predominance of low-end products, and a scarcity of high-end products, resulting in a lack of market competitiveness.

2. Poor technological innovation, with few products possessing independent intellectual property rights.

Domestic enterprises still produce low-tech products or products that have been discontinued abroad using manual methods due to various influencing factors. Many new companies act merely as distributors and agents for foreign products, while many universities and research institutes can track high technologies and have research capabilities for high-value-added products, but their results are mostly samples, far from industrialization, with few self-developed scientific research achievements possessing independent intellectual property rights.

3. Outdated processes and equipment, resulting in poor product quality.

After years of development, although a batch of processes and products have been developed, the stability and reliability issues of mass production processes have not been fundamentally resolved, limiting their application fields and industry development. Some high-performance products rely not on processes but on selection and grading.From a technical perspective, due to the relative backwardness of domestic sensor production processes and equipment, the micromachining and packaging technologies are not advanced enough, with too much manual operation and non-standard detection methods, resulting in major performance indicators being 1-2 orders of magnitude worse than those abroad, and service life being 2-3 levels lower. Therefore, in major projects in fields such as chemicals, power plants, metallurgy, petroleum, environmental protection, and machinery, many high-performance sensors still rely on imports.

4. A shortage of talent resources, leading to insufficient industry development.

One characteristic of sensors and their industry is that they are technology-intensive, which naturally requires a talent-intensive workforce. From the current situation in China, there is a relative lack of high-level research teams and young and middle-aged scientific and technological experts, technical managers, and academic leaders who can meet the demands of today’s sensor technology development, resulting in slow technological updates in the industry and insufficient momentum for industrial development.

5. Insufficient overall planning and inadequate investment.

Currently, the issues of repetitive dispersion and inadequate overall planning, low intensity of research investment, outdated research equipment, and disconnection between research and production have affected the transformation of research achievements, resulting in the overall strength of China’s sensor products being relatively low. Additionally, due to insufficient government attention, the recognition of the importance of sensor technology in the process of information technology development has lagged behind that of computer and communication technologies. The scale and intensity of resource investment for development needs have been too small, slowing the development speed of sensor technology and hindering the rapid advancement of information technology.

Source: Robot Design Handbook

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