Amid Trade Row With Japan, South Korea Gains DuPont Investment to Make Chip Materials

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

South Korea said on Thursday DuPont will invest $28 million in the country to produce advanced photoresists and other materials by 2021, a move that will help reduce its reliance on Japan for the products used in semiconductor manufacturing.

Amid a bilateral row over wartime laborers, Japan in July imposed curbs on exports of three materials including photoresists to South Korea, prompting a scramble among South Korean tech firms to diversify their supply chain.

Last month, Japan reversed the curbs on exports of photoresists, although tighter curbs on the two other materials - fluorinated polyimides used in smartphone displays and hydrogen fluoride used as an etching gas when making chips - remain.

“Although Japan has recently eased export controls of photoresists, which is partial progress, but it is not a fundamental solution,” South Korea’s Industry Minister Sung Yoon-mo said in a statement.

Photoresists are thin layers of material used to transfer circuit patterns onto semiconductor wafers. Japan produces around 90% of photoresists.

The ministry official said Dupont’s Korean subsidiary currently produces photoresists, but not ones needed to make chips with an advanced technique known as extreme ultraviolet or EUV lithography.

A representative for the U.S. industrial materials maker was not immediately available for comment.