TSMC Leads the Way by Establishing the Integrated Material Supply Ecosystem

In 2017, TSMC was invited to join the Semiconductor Materials Forum held by SEMI Taiwan in the capacity of the chair of Taiwan Semi-Material Committee. The event saw the attendance of many world-leading semiconductor supply chain vendors including ASE group, UMC, ALFE, Atotech Taiwan, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Entegris, ECIC, Nanmat, SPIL, WahLee, ASPF, Senju, Solartech, Versum, ITRI-MCL and Linx Consulting. In the forum, TSMC focused on advanced technology and provided the development roadmap of semiconductor materials, championing the first "Integrated Material Supply Ecosystem" in Taiwan for the new sustainable era.

TSMC Nano-Materials Center and SEMI Taiwan formed the Taiwan Semi-Material Technology Committee in 2015. With the participation of 13 domestic/foreign suppliers and academic institutions, the committees aspires to enable 90% of TSMC’s 38 key suppliers to meet the following three requirements of Integrated Material Supply Ecosystem by 2025.

Three Key Requirements of Integrated Material Supply Ecosystem

With TSMC's active involvement, to date 11 suppliers have pledged to increase their investment in Taiwan by 2020 to meet the requirements on material quality standards and analytics capability. Among them, three have established advanced material labs for precursors, specialty gases and filter materials.

Accelerating Local Industry Upgrade is the Key to Improving Raw Material Quality

Material quality and technology play a critical role in the success of semiconductor processes. TSMC understands that it is vital to work closely with material suppliers to tackle the challenges on material innovation, process control, quality management, and the creation of circular economy. To that end, TSMC has been encouraging suppliers to expand their local presence to take advantage of proximity and better responsiveness, and the effort has been extended to their upstream suppliers as well. Since 2016, TSMC has held five semiconductor material technology conferences. Another twenty are expected by 2025, and a higher number of critical suppliers and their upstream suppliers will be invited in the future. TSMC looks forward to accelerating the upgrade of the local industry and empowering them for self-reliance on technology advancement.