The market demand for photoresist stripping fluid is vast and local companies are actively laying out high-end product R&D tracks.

Photoresist stripper is one of the important materials required for semiconductor manufacturing. In the manufacturing process of large-scale integrated circuits, photolithography technology is the core process of fine circuit pattern processing. It generally requires base film preparation, photoresist coating, soft baking, exposure, development, film hardening, etching, ion implantation, and removal. Photoresist and other steps. Photoresist stripper is the main material required for the photoresist removal step. It mainly plays the role of expanding, softening and dissolving the photoresist through the stripper after forming the circuit pattern, so as to completely remove the remaining photoresist.

Photoresist stripper is one of the key preparations in wet electronic chemicals and has been widely used in semiconductors, integrated circuits, photovoltaics, display panels and other fields. With the substantial increase in photoresist penetration rate, the photoresist stripper market has developed rapidly. The global photoresist market size will be approximately US$2.5 billion in 2022, a year-on-year growth of 7.8%. In this context, according to the “2023-2028 Photoresist Stripper Industry Market In-depth Research and Investment Prospect Forecast Analysis Report” released by the Industrial Research Center Shows that the global photoresist stripper market size in 2022 will be approximately US$700 million.

The photoresist stripper has high technical requirements. It not only needs to be able to quickly and completely remove the remaining photoresist in the microcircuit, but also needs to have extremely low metal corrosion to avoid damaging copper, aluminum, silver, tin, and tin-silver on the microcircuit. The metal layer or dielectric layer causes corrosion, resulting in reduced performance of the final semiconductor device. At the same time, as the semiconductor and display panel industries continue to develop in the direction of high power and miniaturization, the critical dimensions of chip circuits are getting smaller and smaller, and the requirements for photoresist strippers are gradually increasing. Therefore, high-performance photoresist strippers with excellent gel removal performance, cleaning efficiency and lower metal etching rate characteristics will be the main direction of future development of the industry.

At this stage, the photoresist strippers that have been released mainly include two types: positive photoresist strippers and negative photoresist strippers developed for different photoresist stripping needs. In the future, relevant companies still need to increase the research and development of photoresist stripping fluid products, promote the continuous increase of its categories and the continuous emergence of high-performance products.

The photoresist stripper industry has high technical barriers. Companies in this field mainly include international companies such as DuPont of the United States, Dongjin Semiconductor of South Korea, Merck of Germany, Tokyo Yingka Industry of Japan, NCX of Japan, as well as Aoshou Materials, Xilong Local companies such as Science, ST Chengxing, Glinda Electronics, Rongda Photosensitive, Yake Technology, and Xinzhoubang.

Industry AnalysisPersonnel said,In recent years, as the global semiconductor industry has continued to shift to China, my country’s photoresist stripper market has developed rapidly, the process of localization substitution is accelerating, and the industry development trend is improving. At the same time, domestic companies are actively laying out the research and development track for high-performance photoresist strippers, and have made great progress. For example, in 2023, Zhejiang Aoshou Material Technology developed a high-performance photoresist stripper product “chip photonics above 14nm node”. “Resist stripping fluid” has been put into mass production. In the future, as the research and development process of local companies continues to accelerate, the domestic substitution process in my country’s photoresist stripper market is expected to continue to accelerate.