On December 23, 2024, the U.S. government announced the launch of a new round of “Section 301 investigations,” targeting China’s mature-process chip semiconductor industry—less than a month after 140 Chinese semiconductor companies were added to the “Entity List.”

Since the outbreak of the China-U.S. trade friction in 2018, the domestic semiconductor industry has been subjected to various unfair practices—such as increased tariffs, inclusion on entity lists, and Section 301 investigations—almost becoming the new normal. Despite these challenges, the domestic semiconductor industry has rapidly developed amid adversity, with self-reliance and domestic substitution emerging as mainstream trends. Nevertheless, the issue of being “choked” by foreign suppliers remains severe. As a core component of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, semiconductor robots are likewise heavily reliant on foreign brands.

Against the backdrop of trade policy uncertainty and intensifying sanctions, the semiconductor robotics industry is increasingly eager to achieve domestic production of semiconductor robots.

From entering the market to breaking the deadlock—pioneering domestic substitution in semiconductor robotics.

Shenzhen Zhongweixing Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “STEP Zhongweixing”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of STEP that ranks among the top tier in China’s SCARA robot industry, recognized early on the urgency of “domesticating semiconductor equipment.” Starting in 2017, the company began focusing on the niche segment of semiconductor robots. Leveraging its extensive product and technological expertise in industrial robotics and motion control, STEP Zhongweixing is uniquely positioned to enter the semiconductor robotics market.

Driven by a sense of national pride and a mission to promote domestic substitution, STEP Zhongweixing has resolutely thrown itself into the fray. In its interactions with semiconductor companies, it has continuously deepened its research and accumulated industry know-how.

In 2020, STEPizhong Weixing successfully developed the first SA-series wafer robot, which features single-wafer and multi-wafer handling capabilities. Equipped with a wafer presence/absence detection sensor, this robot achieves Class 1 cleanliness standards, marking a breakthrough from zero to one in product development.

For different semiconductor manufacturing process segments, STEPizhong Weixing has developed a series of atmospheric and vacuum robotic arms that can handle wafers ranging in size from 2 inches to 12 inches. These robotic arms have now been successfully implemented in various semiconductor equipment processes—including EFEM, stocker, furnace tube, wet-process, photoresist coating and development, and thin-film deposition—enabling applications such as pick-and-place operations, loading and unloading, and inspection tasks.

STEP Zhongweixing Semiconductor Wafer Handling Robot Series Products

In the critical photolithography process of semiconductor manufacturing—where time consumption is high and costs are substantial—more than a dozen steps, including photoresist coating and development, must be repeated multiple times. This places extremely high demands on the precision, speed, and stability of robots. Faced with this “impossible triangle” of needing to achieve “both-and-and,” STEP Zhongweixing has leveraged its powerful control system capabilities to strike an optimal balance among various performance metrics—such as speed, accuracy, and stability—thereby ensuring the stability and reliability of wafer transfer.

After six years of development, STEPeng Zhongweixing’s wafer robots have initially achieved domestic substitution in terms of product performance. Leveraging their established local market presence in industrial robotics, these robots enjoy significant advantages over foreign brands in terms of return on investment and service response speed.

Meanwhile, another highly differentiated and competitive feature of STEP Zhongweixing lies in its ability to provide non-standard, customized solutions tailored to the specific process stages of semiconductor manufacturing at different wafer manufacturers. By deploying customized products that are precisely aligned with local conditions and time-specific requirements, it can better meet the production needs of existing production lines, comprehensively enhancing chip yield and improving product quality rates. In contrast to foreign brands, which typically offer only standardized products for wafer robots, STEP Zhongweixing thus establishes a distinctive advantage in terms of service.

During a survey conducted by Gao Gong Robot, some wafer fabs reported that robot systems equipped with the STEP Zhongweixing-compatible robots have effectively reduced overall production equipment investment costs. While ensuring quality, these systems also more effectively guarantee the safety of domestically produced industrial manufacturing.

Amidst the pressing urgency of threats, supply disruptions, and sanctions, an increasing number of domestic semiconductor manufacturers are starting to seek domestically produced alternatives across the entire industry chain. STEP Zhongweixing remains steadfast on the “difficult but right path,” steadily making breakthroughs step by step from scratch. Its meticulous dedication to ensuring stable and continuous iteration of products and solutions has gradually earned greater recognition from semiconductor equipment companies.

Currently, the STEP Zhongweixing semiconductor robots have been deployed in multiple wafer fabs across analog chip, power chip, and sensor chip production lines.

Resilient growth against the trend, building a broad moat from point to area.

The innovative breakthroughs in semiconductor industry applications are a microcosm of STEPeng Zhongweixing’s strategy: persisting in independent technological R&D, proactively responding to market changes, and continuously exploring new application scenarios.

Looking back at the entire year of 2024, the 3C electronics industry showed signs of recovery, while the photovoltaic and lithium-ion battery industries continued to see their production capacity absorbed steadily, albeit with a decline in output value. According to data from the Gaogong Robot Industry Research Institute (GGII), domestic industrial robot shipments in 2024 are forecast to reach 300,000 units, representing a year-on-year decrease of 5.06% compared to 2023.

Despite a slowdown in overall shipments in the industrial robotics industry, STEP Zhongweixing SCARA robots have maintained steady growth, benefiting from the stable development and expansion of AI large models, AI chips, 3C electronics, and the automotive sector.
Through its research, Gao Gong Robotics learned that STEP was able to achieve growth against the market trend during the 2024 market adjustment period, primarily due to its accurate assessment of market changes and its proactive adoption of various response strategies, thereby enhancing the market competitiveness of its products.

Prioritize core control and achieve independent and controllable technology in five key areas.

The current industrial robotics market is transitioning from a phase of chaotic competition to one of high-quality development. Technological innovation will become the fundamental source of corporate profits and market dynamics. Through 22 years of continuous accumulation, STEP Zhongweixing has mastered core, independent technologies in five key areas: controllers, control algorithms, robot bodies, machine vision, software, and application processes. The company holds 168 technology patents and 48 invention patents, and continues to iterate and upgrade its technologies on an ongoing basis.

In particular, industrial control is a core technology that STEP Zhongwei has pioneered and developed. Its self-developed integrated drive-and-control technologies, vibration suppression techniques, rapid start-stop capabilities, trajectory planning algorithms, and high-order dynamic algorithms continue to maintain a leading edge, thereby establishing a broad competitive moat in the core control domain of robotics.

In 2015, STEPeng Zhongweixing pioneered the “drive-and-control integrated” robot controller product, bringing a groundbreaking transformation to the underlying architecture of controllers. This controller adopts a “multi-core heterogeneous” control approach in its processor, enabling the control core to feature different architectures, clock frequencies, and power consumption characteristics, thus better adapting to various types of tasks.

STEP Zhongweixing Robot Drive and Control Integrated Product Series

Currently, STEP Zhongweixing’s control technology roadmap is evolving toward an integrated platform that unifies controllers and supports the control of multiple machine models. At the same time, we are closely monitoring the development of large language models and embodied intelligence technologies.

Performance continues to improve, with the entire SCARA product line undergoing meticulous upgrades.

To better meet the manufacturing industry’s demand for precision, refinement, and intelligence in smart manufacturing, STEP Zhongweixing has significantly upgraded the performance of its SCARA robots in 2024.

The upgraded product line includes more than 40 models across five major series: AR (standard configuration), YR (high inertia, heavy-duty), FR (inverted mounting), WR (wall-mounted), and PTR (screw-locking). After the iteration, the repeated positioning accuracy has been improved to as high as 0.01 mm, and the standard cycle time has been reduced to as fast as 0.27 seconds. The payload capacity ranges from 1 kg to 50 kg, and the arm reach covers a range of 300–1200 mm. Moreover, significant improvements have been made in areas such as payload inertia torque, protection rating, and motion range.

STEP Zhongweixing Four-Axis SCARA Robot Series Products

Having undergone technical verification through the real-world application of over 40,000 units, the STEPeng Zhongweixing SCARA robots have been widely adopted in various production processes—including material handling and loading/unloading, assembly, packaging, inspection, and palletizing—across industries such as 3C electronics, automotive components, lithium batteries, medical and pharmaceuticals, food, daily chemicals, and textiles. The upgraded products will deliver outstanding performance, helping enterprises further enhance production quality and efficiency.

Actively expand overseas and focus on tackling high-end applications.

With the shift of intensive manufacturing industrial chains—such as those for 3C electronics and automotive assembly—whether by following downstream customers to deploy automated production lines overseas or by proactively entering and developing overseas markets, the global expansion of domestically produced robots has become an inevitable trend.

STEP Zhongweixing seizes the trend and proactively lays out its strategy for overseas product deployment. It has successfully obtained product certification qualifications in multiple countries across Europe, North America, and other regions, and its customer network now covers 103 regions and countries in Europe, the U.S., the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and beyond. The company is actively cultivating local agents overseas and continuously enhancing its pre-sales, after-sales, technical, and service support capabilities.

Whether in the global market or the domestic market, amid the wave of domestic substitution for industrial robots, STEP Zhongweixing will further expand into high-end application scenarios—such as pharmaceuticals, food, and semiconductors—where foreign brands currently dominate, providing more diversified, end-to-end automation solutions and achieving breakthroughs in various applications.

As one of the earliest companies to enter the robotics body market from the controller segment, since the launch of its first-generation SCARA robot in 2008, STEP Zhongweixing has developed a series of core product lines—including industrial robot bodies, motion control systems, and machine vision control systems—providing comprehensive automation and intelligent solutions for multiple industries. The company continuously meets customers’ demands for improved quality, increased efficiency, and enhanced ease-of-use experiences.

In the future, leveraging the strong market brand and technological expertise of its parent company, STEP, STEP Zhongweixing will continue to maintain its competitive edge in both the domestic and global SCARA robot markets. Starting from core underlying technologies, we will drive innovation to propel global manufacturing production lines rapidly toward higher precision, greater flexibility, and智能化 (intelligentization).

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