The purifier market in 2017 seems to have declined to a sales scale of 5.8 billion yen 10% less than last year. There were some large semiconductor manufacturers who adopted a process requiring no high-purity specialty gas, and it seems to have caused the down-sizing of the market scale. Nevertheless, with the active investment to the semiconductor plants requiring high-purity gases in the East Asian area, there was a constant delivery of such equipment as nitrogen purifiers of the adsorption type at an ambient temperature for a maximum output of 10 thousand m3/h.

In Japan there are active capital investments for the renewal such as the equipment of nitrogen or palladium membrane hydrogen. In addition, capital investments are getting active in the production of automotive IC on a medium or less scale, and it seems that each manufacturer renews its own facilities or has more enquiries for a nitrogen purifier (500 m3/h max.) used for purging inside chambers in the period including the beginning of 2018.

The purifier market consists of Taiyo Nippon Sanso, Japan Pionics, Up Tech Japan (Japanese agent of SAES Pure Gas) and Nihon Entegris.

Regarding the noticeable movement of this year, the center of attention is placed on the sales competition related to Toshiba Memory’s Kitagami Plant which is aimed to start operation in the first half of 2019. It is the first large-scaled plant construction for the company after 26 years. They say about one thousand units at least in total of semiconductor manufacturing equipment will be necessary including those for CVD and dry etching.

It seems each equipment manufacturer has received an enquiry for several units of nitrogen purifier of several
thousand m3/h (including spare units).

In the overseas market, a keen competition took place targeting Fab2 in Pyeontaek Plant of Samsung Electronics. As for the supply of gases, Praxair got awarded, and nitrogen to be supplied will reach 70 thousand at maximum as a whole. The number of purifiers to be used are estimated to be 50 units or so in total including those of adsorption at ambient temperature and of the getter system. Taiyo Nippon Sanso, Korean SAES Pure Gas and Korea Pionics subsidiary of Japan Pionics are working actively to obtain orders.

CO2 application in exposure devices draws maker’s attention

Recently a technological introduction using carbon dioxide has been on the way in the field of exposure device used for the pre-process of semiconductor manufacturing.
To enhance the irradiation accuracy of the excimer laser used inside the system, a high-purity CO2 gas ranging 8 up to 12N. According to the device manufacturer, the research started about 10 years ago. The exposure device plays the role of printing a minute circuit pattern on silicon wafer.

Carbon dioxide is utilized in the technology for high resolution using pure water itself by means of filling ultra-pure water between the lens and silicon wafer in the exposure device.

In the semiconductor manufacturing which is getting more micronized like narrowing of line width, spreading of light is prevented by adding CO2 into pure water. They say it is contributing to upgrading of irradiation accuracy of excimer laser to wafers.
At present the domestic and overseas manufacturers of 3D semiconductor are going ahead in the production of the technology. Some DRAM manufacturers have already started to adopt the method. In such cases, CO2 seems to be supplied via purifiers.
Anticipating further growth of demand mainly in East Asia, each manufacturer will undertake to enrich the lineup of products.