Photoresists
The light-sensitive polymer that records the circuit pattern. Formulated per node and per tool, and made almost entirely in Japan.
The consumables a wafer fab burns through continuously.
Photoresists, slurries, acids, solvents, gases and precursors. Unlike equipment, these are consumed on every wafer, so a supply interruption stops production within days rather than quarters.
The light-sensitive polymer that records the circuit pattern. Formulated per node and per tool, and made almost entirely in Japan.
The developers, anti-reflective coatings and edge-bead removers used with resist. Higher volume than the resist itself and considerably less exotic.
The quartz plates carrying the patterns a scanner projects onto the wafer. A leading-edge mask set costs more than most factories.
The abrasive suspensions and polyurethane pads that do the actual planarisation. Consumed continuously and formulated per material being polished.
Hydrofluoric, sulphuric, nitric and phosphoric acids plus the solvent set, purified to SEMI grades where contamination is measured in parts per trillion.
Nitrogen trifluoride, silane, tungsten hexafluoride and the halogen set: the reactive gases that etch and deposit, most of them dangerous.
Phosphine, arsine, diborane and boron trifluoride: the sources of the impurity atoms that make silicon into a semiconductor. Among the most toxic materials in industry.
Organometallic compounds that decompose on a hot wafer to leave behind a film, the chemistry that makes high-k gates and atomic-layer films possible.
High-purity metal discs consumed by physical vapour deposition tools: copper, titanium, tantalum, tungsten and aluminium at five nines purity and above.
The copper baths and organic additive packages that fill damascene trenches and vias without voids. The additives are the product; the copper sulphate is not.
Filters, membranes, resins and purifiers that sit at the point of use on every chemical and gas line, catching what the supply chain missed.