Domestic Photoresist Broke Through, And The Monopoly Of Japanese Companies Finally Loosened

Photoresist as the core consumables of chip manufacturing lithography, especially high-end materials have long been monopolized by Japanese and American giants, foreign companies are highly confidential about raw materials and formulas, and more than ninety percent of our country's photoresist relies on imports. However, recently, there have been frequent successes in the field of domestic photoresist - from the mass production of KrF thick glue to the verification of ArF immersion glue, from the localization of resin to the breakthrough of EUV raw materials, a silent but mighty technological breakthrough battle has entered the deep water area.

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For example, in the 248nm wavelength of KrF photoresist, Wuhan Taiziwei's T150A adhesive has passed SMIC's 28nm production line verification with 120nm resolution and 93.7% yield, creating a new situation in domestic semiconductor lithography manufacturing.
Hengkun New Material's KrF adhesive has covered the 7nm process, with an annual production capacity of 500 tons to meet the demand of 100,000 wafers, and the expansion of its Anhui production base marks the qualitative change of domestic substitution from the laboratory to large-scale mass production.
Xuzhou Bokang has conquered 14nm wet photoresist technology, and has the technical capabilities of dry ArF and wet ArF photoresist, its dry ArF can be applied to 90nm/65nm/55nm nodes, and wet ArF can be applied to 40nm/28nm nodes, and actively develops wet ArF photoresist materials for 14nm and below process nodes.
In the more difficult field of 193nm ArF photoresist, Nanda Optoelectronics has become a game-breaker. The defect rate of its dry ArF adhesive is controlled at 0.01 pcs/cm², and the submerged adhesive completes the formula, and the yield rate is increased from less than 40% to 60% at the beginning. Although there is still a gap with the international yield rate of 85%, this breakthrough has enabled the domestic ArF glue to achieve 30% localization penetration in the production lines of Yangtze River Storage and SMIC.

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Tongcheng New Materials has introduced a variety of high-resolution KrF, ArF photoresist and other products to be verified and certified on the client side one after another, and its ArF photoresist has been sold, and self-production of photoresist solvents has also been realized.
The autonomy of photoresist is by no means a single point of breakthrough. 50% of its cost is concentrated in resin, and the 100-ton mass production line of 800 million time and space will increase the purity of resin to 99.999%, and the metal impurities will be less than 1ppb, which will directly reduce the cost of domestic rubber by 20%.

In the upstream solvent link, Yida's electronic-grade PM solvent accounts for more than 40% of the global market, breaking the monopoly of Japan's Kanto Chemical, and cooperating with Nanda Optoelectronics to develop supporting reagents, so that the photoresist is upgraded from a single product to a system solution.
Of course, it needs to be seen that it is still more than 15 years behind the world, and at present, Jiuri New Materials has overcome the photoinduced acid production technology, the core raw material of EUV photoresist, breaking the 20-year monopoly of Japan, and laying the foundation for the improvement of photoresist performance, but the process debugging of matching ASML equipment is difficult due to the equipment embargo.
The yield fluctuation of ArFi immersion adhesive forces the fab to bear the cost of more than 10 million yuan for a single verification, and the customer certification cycle is as long as 18-24 months. At the same time, the current situation of 30% of high-end resins relying on Japanese imports suggests that the security of the supply chain is still hanging high.

In the global photoresist market, the monopoly position of Japanese and American companies is still solid, and Japan's JSR, Tokyo Oika, Shin-Etsu Chemical and Fujifilm occupy more than 70% of the global market share.
However, the development prospects of domestic photoresist are still broad. With the rapid development of emerging technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things, the demand for semiconductor chips continues to grow, which will drive the photoresist market to further expand.

Conclusion

On the basis of technological innovation and capacity expansion, domestic enterprises are expected to further increase their market share, occupy a more important position in the global photoresist market, and promote our country's semiconductor industry to move towards independent and controllable and high-quality development by virtue of cost advantages and localized service advantages.