Chart of the month: April 2022

The global growth of semiconductor manufacturing has resulted in a significant spike in materials sales, as evidenced by new data released by SEMI last month. Semiconductor materials revenue rose from $55 billion to over $64 billion, representing a 15.9% year-over-year increase and making 2021 a record year.

Taiwan maintained its longstanding lead with revenues topping $14.7 billion, followed by China, which overtook South Korea in 2020. China and Europe saw the strongest overall growth between 2020 and 2021, with sales increasing by 21.9% in both regions. Declines suffered in Europe and North America – the only two regional markets to shrink in 2020 as a result of the pandemic – fully reversed last year. Nevertheless, the North American region experienced the weakest annual growth, with gains at 8.5%.

These revenues include sales of materials related to wafer fabrication and packaging processes, such as silicon, wet chemicals, process gases, substrates, photoresist materials and bonding wires. Sales of wafer fabrication materials alone totalled to $40.4 billion in 2021, while revenues from packaging materials reached $23.9 billion. Annual growth for the two subsectors was 15.5% and 16.5%, respectively.

SEMI indicated that silicon, wet chemicals, chemical-mechanical planarization and photomask segments showed the strongest global growth within the wafer fabrication materials category, while the packaging market was driven by organic substrates, lead frames and bonding wire.