GoKawiilJSR, the Japanese chemical maker that controls roughly a fifth of the global photoresist market, plans to build its first production facility in Taiwan to supply and co-develop advanced photoresists with TSMC, Nikkei Asia reports. The company established a joint venture with a local partner in early April and aims to bring the plant online as early as 2028, investing tens of millions of dollars in the project.
The facility will close a gap that has put JSR at a disadvantage relative to its two largest Japanese rivals. Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK) and Shin-Etsu Chemical both already operate production facilities in Taiwan, where they work directly with TSMC on resist development.
Photoresist is the light-sensitive material used to transfer circuit patterns onto silicon wafers during lithography. At advanced process nodes, the resist must be precisely tuned to work with specific exposure tools and etch chemistries, and that tuning requires constant back-and-forth between the resist supplier and the foundry.
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JSR currently develops products for Taiwanese customers by shipping samples from its facilities in Japan, the U.S., and Belgium. Each round trip can take weeks, according to Nikkei, dragging out an iteration process that its competitors can complete far more quickly from local production sites. A Taiwan plant would let JSR embed its engineers closer to TSMC's development teams, a model TOK and Shin-Etsu have already adopted. Beyond photoresist, JSR told Nikkei Asia that it’s also considering producing other materials at the Taiwan site, such as abrasives used to smooth semiconductor substrates.
JSR's Taiwan expansion is part of a broader expansion with the company simultaneously building the world’s first production-scale facility for metal oxide resist (MOR) in South Korea, with mass production expected to begin this year. That plant will supply Samsung Electronics and SK hynix with tin-based MOR for EUV lithography.
MOR absorbs EUV photons more efficiently than the conventional chemically amplified resists used at older nodes, enabling higher resolution with fewer pattern defects. JSR acquired MOR pioneer Inpria in 2021 and has been developing tin-oxide-based formulations since. The company plans to market MOR to TSMC as well, according to Nikkei, putting itself in place for the next generation of EUV and high-NA EUV production lines that TSMC will need at 2nm and beyond.
Japanese companies collectively hold around 80% of the global photoresist market and dominate the high-end EUV segment almost entirely. Chinese firms have made inroads at the KrF and i-line level, but their penetration at ArF and above remains minimal.
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"Chinese players are a threat, but it'll still be some time before they can catch up with us and take market share," Toru Kimura, a senior officer at JSR who heads the company's electronic materials business, told Nikkei. JSR's strategy seems to be to stay ahead by locking in co-development relationships at the leading edge, which have the highest technical barriers to entry.
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