The Semiconductor Supply Chain
The semiconductor supply chain spans from raw material extraction through wafer production, fabrication, and assembly into packaged devices. For clarity, we group the supply chain into four core buckets: Materials, Wafer Production, Fabrication, and Packaging & Assembly. Other important layers (Design, Business Models) are treated as separate top-level nodes.
Core Supply Chain Buckets
- Materials (Critical Minerals, Chemicals, Gases)
- Wafer Production (Ingot & Wafer Manufacturing)
- Fabrication (Equipment, Subsystems, Cleanrooms, Fabs)
- Packaging & Assembly (OSAT, EMS/OEM)
1. Materials
All semiconductor devices begin with critical inputs sourced from global supply chains. These include mined minerals, refined high-purity materials, specialty gases, and chemicals consumed at every fabrication step.
- Critical Minerals: silicon, gallium, indium, cobalt, rare earths
- Critical Materials: high-purity quartz, photoresist polymers
- Raw Materials (Mining)
- Pure Materials (Refining)
- Process Gases: neon, argon, fluorine, nitrogen trifluoride
- Process Chemicals: acids, solvents, slurries, cleans
2. Wafer Production
Ingot and wafer manufacturing converts refined silicon or compound substrates into polished wafers ready for lithography. This step determines defect density and crystal quality.
- Silicon ingots (Czochralski, FZ methods)
- Compound wafers (SiC, GaN, InP, GaAs)
- Wafer slicing, polishing, epitaxy
3. Fabrication
Front-end wafer fabrication relies on highly specialized equipment, cleanroom infrastructure, and fab operators (foundries, IDMs). This segment includes the largest capital expenditures and highest technical barriers.
- Wafer Fab Equipment (WFE): lithography, deposition, etch, metrology
- Fab Subsystems: vacuum pumps, power distribution, gas delivery
- Cleanrooms: HVAC, filtration, contamination control
- Fabs: foundries, logic, memory, analog
4. Packaging & Assembly
Back-end assembly connects dies into usable packages with power, thermal, and signal integrity considerations. This includes outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) as well as electronics manufacturing services (EMS/OEM).
- OSAT: ASE Group, Amkor, JCET
- EMS/OEM: Foxconn, Flex, Jabil
- Advanced Packaging: flip-chip, fan-out, 2.5D/3D integration
Supply Chain Mapping
| Bucket | Sub-Segments | Representative Companies | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Materials | Minerals, Refining, Gases, Chemicals | Air Liquide, Linde, SUMCO | Inputs required across all fab processes |
| Wafer Production | Ingot growth, Wafer slicing, Polishing, Epitaxy | SUMCO, GlobalWafers, Wolfspeed (SiC) | Determines substrate quality and defect density |
| Fabrication | WFE, Subsystems, Cleanrooms, Fabs | ASML, Applied Materials, TSMC, Samsung | Most capital-intensive and concentrated segment |
| Packaging & Assembly | OSAT, EMS/OEM, Advanced Packaging | ASE, Amkor, Foxconn | Critical for performance, yield, and scaling |
Reshoring & Resilience Outlook
- Materials: U.S. and EU initiatives for neon, fluorine, and rare earth sourcing.
- Wafer Production: domestic SiC/GaN capacity ramping (Wolfspeed, Coherent, GTAT).
- Fabrication: CHIPS Act driving U.S. fab buildout (Intel, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Taylor TX).
- Packaging & Assembly: advanced packaging viewed as key bottleneck; U.S. OSAT investment lagging Asia.
