Photoresist
Light-sensitive polymer that patterns every chip layer
Photoresists are light-sensitive polymer chemistries coated on wafers so that lithography can transfer circuit patterns; EUV-grade resists are among the most technically demanding materials in chipmaking. Supply is concentrated among Japanese firms — JSR, Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK), Shin-Etsu, Sumitomo Chemical and Fujifilm — which together hold the vast majority of the leading-edge market. EUV resist for high-NA and advanced nodes is a genuine chokepoint tightly coupled to ASML's EUV tools.
Top makers
JSR, Tokyo Ohka (TOK), Shin-Etsu, Sumitomo, Fujifilm
Concentration
Japan holds ~80-90% of leading-edge resist
Critical grade
EUV photoresist
Coupled to
ASML EUV lithography
How it fits the stack
Photoresist with what it depends on (above) and what it feeds (below). The figure renders as a crawlable diagram and upgrades to an interactive 3D graph as it scrolls into view.
Photoresist in the AI stack. Photoresist with its immediate upstream dependencies (top) and downstream dependents (bottom) in the AI value chain. Hover a node in 3D, or read the full relationships below.
Graph data (text) — 6 entities, 6 relationships
- Photoresist —manufactures→ JSR Corporation
- Photoresist —manufactures→ Shin-Etsu Chemical
- Photoresist —manufactures→ Tokyo Ohka Kogyo (TOK)
- Samsung Foundry —supplies→ Photoresist
- TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) —supplies→ Photoresist
- TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) —sources→ Photoresist
Depends on ↑ · 3