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APAC Chemicals
The market for advanced semiconductor photoresists is dominated by a few Japanese chemicals companies. We think growing use of EUV lithography in DRAM production increases the likelihood of changes in photoresist market share.
Will the growth rate of Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) resists significantly exceed that of ArF resists in 2023-2027?
UBS view
We think it is likely. In 2023-2027, we expect the EUV resist market to grow at an annual rate of 24%, and expect the ArF resist market to grow 7% a year during the same period. We expect EUV technology to be applied widely in logic and Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in the future, and the number of ArF application layers used will likely be reduced by half or more in the case of 10nm processing of DRAM compared with 14nm processing.
Evidence
In DRAM, as in logic, EUV lithography is used to improve performance through miniaturisation. DRAM chips have fewer wiring layers than logic semiconductors. Therefore, unlike logic semiconductors, there is a high probability that the number of layers using ArF lithography will be greatly reduced by EUV lithography technology in the case of DRAM. According to the DRAM technology roadmap, test lines for 12nm processes are expected to be operational in 2024 and 10nm lines are to be operating in 2026, each with mass production processes expected to begin after around 18 months.
What’s priced in?
Growing demand for advanced resists such as EUV resists will further increase the competitive advantage of the existing leaders in the photoresist market. On the other hand, the fact that the number of ArF layers will decline because of technological evolution of DRAM production has not been factored in, in our view.
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