Semiconductor Process Chemicals

Market

Wet Chemicals Are a $6.3 Billion Market Sold on Purity

Commodity molecules refined to parts-per-trillion, plus specialty precursors made in small batches.

Process chemicals split into two businesses. Wet chemicals are commodity molecules, sulfuric acid, hydrogen peroxide, ammonia, HF, IPA, refined to parts-per-trillion metal content and shipped in dedicated containers. Precursors are specialty molecules, many made in kilogram batches, that carry hafnium, zirconium, cobalt, ruthenium or molybdenum into deposition tools. Purity, not chemistry, is what limits the supplier list: advanced-node grades need impurity detection below 0.1 parts per trillion.

The HF lesson

Korea Replaced Japanese Hydrogen Fluoride in About a Year

On July 4, 2019, Japan moved high-purity hydrogen fluoride, photoresist and fluorinated polyimide exports to South Korea onto case-by-case licensing. Samsung and SK hynix relied heavily on Japanese HF from makers such as Stella Chemifa and Morita. Korea answered by qualifying its own: Soulbrain supplied high-purity HF to Samsung from January 2020, and SK Materials, RAM Technology and ENF Technology followed. Korea's HF imports fell 66% in two years. Japan lifted the curbs in March 2023 and Korea withdrew its WTO complaint.

The episode set the template for chemical risk in chipmaking. A commodity chemical can be a chokepoint when a few plants hold the purity qualifications, and requalifying a new source takes months of yield checks, but it can be done in about a year when the customer is large enough to pay for it.

Where they are used

Every Step and Every Layer Uses Chemicals

Chemicals enter at every step and the flow repeats for every layer, so a leading-edge wafer passes through cleaning chemistry hundreds of times. The steps themselves are on Wafer Cleaning, Thin-Film Deposition and Etching.

Chemical by chemical

Nine Chemical Groups Do Most of the Work

Suppliers

German, Japanese and Korean Groups Supply Most Fab Chemicals

• Made in US
• Some US volume
• US planned
• Made abroad

Wet chemicals come from German, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese chemical groups that run ultra-pure lines next to the fab clusters they serve. Precursors are concentrated in Merck, Entegris and Air Liquide, with Korean and Japanese specialists for memory fabs. The Casa Grande plants are marked planned because their production status has not been confirmed since their announcements.

US supply

Arizona's Fabs Pulled a Chemical Cluster After Them

Arizona's fab cluster pulled a chemical cluster after it. In Casa Grande, Chang Chun is building a $300M plant for electronic-grade hydrogen peroxide, TMAH developer and plating chemicals, Solvay an electronic-grade hydrogen peroxide plant, and KPCT, the Kanto-Chemtrade joint venture, an ultra-pure sulfuric acid plant, all announced in 2022 to supply Arizona's fabs, including TSMC Arizona. Entegris opened a Colorado Springs plant in 2025 for filters, purification products and wafer carriers.

PFAS

The EU's PFAS Restriction Reaches Into Resist, Seals and Etch Gases

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) run through chipmaking: in photoacid generators and surfactants in resist, in fluoropolymer pipes, valves and seals, and in several etch gases. In January 2023 Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden proposed an EU-wide restriction on the whole class. ECHA's risk committee adopted its final opinion on March 2, 2026, and its socio-economic committee aims for its final opinion by the end of 2026, after which the European Commission drafts the law. Electronics and semiconductors drew the most industry comments, 12.7%. 3M, a major fluorochemical maker, said in 2022 it would exit PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025.

Resist makers are developing PFAS-free photoacid generators, but no fully equivalent substitutes exist for some uses, so the industry is asking for time-limited derogations.

China

China Makes Its Own Bulk Chemicals but Not Its Specialty Grades

China makes most of its own commodity wet chemicals, and its makers of hydrofluoric acid, sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide are moving into the higher purity grades. The gaps are at the specialty end: advanced resists, high-k and metal precursors and post-CMP cleans still come mostly from Japanese, German, US and Korean suppliers. Upstream, China is the largest fluorspar miner, which gives it a hand in the fluorine chain behind HF and the fluorinated gases.

Dataset

The Process Chemicals Dataset

SemiconductorX tracks 223 chemicals used in chipmaking. The edited table above covers the nine groups that do most of the work; the full dataset is below.

Related coverage

Related Coverage

• Wafer Cleaning
• Process Gases
• Photoresist
• CMP Slurries
• Chemical Delivery
• Thin-Film Deposition
• Critical Elements