The photoresist market continues to develop, and there is huge room for domestic substitution of China’s photoresist resin (film-forming resin)

Photoresist resin (film-forming resin) is an important raw material for the production of photoresist. It is an inert polymer used as a binder. It affects the line width that the photoresist can achieve at a specific wavelength, further affecting the quality of the photoresist product. Hardness, flexibility, adhesion and other properties.

Photoresist is one of the products with high technical barriers among semiconductor materials. The research and development and mass production of photoresist require long-term technology accumulation. At the same time, a large number of patents are held by leading overseas companies, and the technical barriers are high; photolithography equipment mainly Coming from ASML, the industry has high equipment barriers; at the same time, photoresist products need to be verified by downstream customers, and industry customer barriers are high; resins, photoinitiators and other products as photoresist raw materials mainly rely on imports, and the industry has raw material barriers . Currently, China’s high-end photoresist products rely on imports, and 90% of photoresist collagen materials are imported. Among them, some of the photoresist resins and low-end film-forming resins are domestically produced.

The “2023-2028 China Photoresist Resin (Film-forming Resin) Industry Market In-depth Research and Development Prospects Forecast Report compiled and released by the Industrial Research Center》shows that film-forming resins mainly include phenolic resins, polyester resins, alkyd resins, amino resins, acrylic resins, epoxy resins, polyurethane resins, etc. The demand for photoresist resins for photoresist products of different systems There are differences too. The film-forming resin in the polyvinyl alcohol cinnamate negative photoresist is polyvinyl alcohol cinnamate; the film-forming resin in the epoxy rubber-bisazide negative photoresist is epoxy rubber; the phenolic resin-diazonaphthoquinone heavy The film-forming resin in the glue is phenolic resin; the film-forming resin of KrF (248nm) photoresist is polyparahydroxystyrene polymer; the film-forming resin of ArF (193nm) photoresist is mainly polymethacrylate derivatives etc.; the film-forming materials of EUV (13.5nm) photoresist mainly include polyester derivatives and molecular glass; the film-forming materials of electron beam photoresist are mainly divided into polymethacrylate and its derivatives, dendrimers, Molecular glass, silicone and carbon materials, etc.

In the semiconductor field, most G-line (436nm) photoresists and I-line (365nm) photoresists use novolac resin as the film-forming resin. However, since novolac resin has a strong absorption rate for light below 250nm and can only be excited A photochemical reaction, so the more advanced KrF (248nm) photoresist, ArF (193nm) photoresist, EUV (13.5nm) photoresist, and electron beam photoresist use chemical amplification lithography.

Currently, there are two main types of photoresist resin companies in the world. One is photoresist manufacturers. Foreign companies such as Shin-Etsu Chemical, DuPont and other photoresist companies have photoresist capabilities and can also produce photoresist resins. Domestic photoresist companies The resist company Tongcheng New Materials also has the mass production capabilities of TFT positive phenolic resin and LCD photoresist phenolic resin. At the same time, its multiple G/I novolac phenolic resins and some KrF photoresist resins have been developed; one category is resin production Foreign companies such as Toyo Gosei, Sumitomo Bakelite, and Mitsubishi Chemical, and domestic synthetic resin company Shengquan Group have the production capacity of novolac resin. It is expected that with the continued development of the domestic semiconductor industry, the market demand for photoresist resin, an important raw material for photoresist, will continue to grow, and its domestic substitution has broad market prospects.