Advertisement

If you have an ACS member number, please enter it here so we can link this account to your membership. (optional)

ACS values your privacy. By submitting your information, you are gaining access to C&EN and subscribing to our weekly newsletter. We use the information you provide to make your reading experience better, and we will never sell your data to third party members.

ENJOY UNLIMITED ACCES TO C&EN

Electronic Materials

JSR plans big electronic materials facility in US

Japanese firm follows others from Asia in investing in the US

by Michael McCoy
July 12, 2019 | A version of this story appeared in Volume 97, Issue 28

A pie chart of semiconductor market share by region.
Number 2
The Americas are a distant second to the Asia-Pacific region in semiconductor production.
Source: World Semiconductor Trade Statistics.

The US semiconductor industry may be mature, but don’t tell that to Japan’s JSR and several other foreign chemical companies that are investing in new US facilities to produce key raw materials for the electronics industry.

JSR says it will spend about $100 million to build a facility in Hillsboro, Oregon, that produces advanced formulated cleaning products used to clean circuit-covered silicon wafers between production steps such as lithography and etching. Set to open in 2020, the facility will mark JSR’s entry into the “advanced cleans” market, says Mark Slezak, president of JSR Micro.

Today, JSR Micro mainly produces materials for photolithography, but Slezak says the firm’s US semiconductor industry customers asked it to bring its quality-management and technical skills to the advanced cleans market as well. Doing that locally will allow the company to have more control over logistics and raw material supply. Hillsboro is home to Intel’s largest chip production operations.

With the new US plant, JSR will follow the lead of other overseas firms. Planned investments include a $45 million electronic materials plant in Texas by South Korea’s ENF Technology, $80 million worth of upgrades to existing plants in Arizona and Rhode Island by Japan’s Fujifilm, and a $60 million project by Japan’s Mitsubishi Gas Chemical to build ultrapure hydrogen peroxide plants in Oregon and Texas.

ENF, for example, says it chose its Texas location to be close to customers such as Samsung Austin Semiconductor, GlobalFoundries, Micron Technology, Texas Instruments, and Intel.

The US investments are occurring even though most semiconductor production is in Asia. Together, facilities in Japan and the rest of the Asia-Pacific make almost 70% of the world’s computer chips.

That may be true, but the US carries outsize importance in the most advanced chips with circuit lines of just 10 nm or 7 nm, notes Mike Corbett, a principal with the electronic materials advisory firm Linx Consulting. Key players include Intel and Samsung Austin Semiconductor, he says.

For each new chip generation, Corbett says, electronic chemical suppliers must contend with “new requirements around materials with regard to purity, contaminants, and particles. A lot of time the older infrastructure isn’t adequate to meet the end user’s needs.”

Advertisement

Article:

This article has been sent to the following recipient:

0 /1 FREE ARTICLES LEFT THIS MONTH Remaining
Chemistry matters. Join us to get the news you need.