High-end semiconductor manufacturing is facing a shortage of high-purity carbon dioxide (CO2), a key chemical indispensable in chip production. Previously, the industry had just experienced the impact of the supply contraction of tungsten hexafluoride (WF6). Now the second key material CO2 has also experienced a potential supply crisis, triggering market concerns about the tightening of advanced process production capacity in the coming months.
The report quoted South Korean media "The Elec" as saying that CO2 raw material production has declined in major refineries and petrochemical units due to lower operating rates of Korean petrochemical companies and continued uncertainty about crude oil supply prospects in the Middle East. Raw CO2 is usually generated as a by-product in refineries, petrochemical plants and hydrogen production industries. Therefore, fluctuations in upstream crude oil and chemical production directly affect the supply of high-purity CO2 downstream.
In advanced semiconductor manufacturing, high-purity CO2 is mainly used in critical cleaning processes. It can either dissolve residues and contaminants on the wafer surface in liquid form, or blow away tiny particles embedded deep inside the chip structure in gas form. This characteristic of both dissolving and stripping effects makes CO2 a key medium to ensure the cleanliness of the wafer surface and structure, and to improve yield and reliability.
A person in charge of a gas supplier bluntly told "The Elec" that the current raw material situation cannot meet the needs of all customers: "We cannot supply the amount that customers want because the raw materials themselves are not enough." He also said that there are almost no realistic and feasible ways to quickly increase CO2 production in the short term. Against this background, downstream semiconductor manufacturers began to consume inventory, and the security redundancy in each link of the supply chain was continuously compressed.
The report pointed out that leading Korean chip manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix usually maintain CO2 inventories for at least two weeks, but amid this tight supply, their high-purity CO2 inventories have fallen below the safety line of about one month in total. Currently, Samsung consumes about 1,800 to 2,000 tons of high-purity CO2 per month, while SK Hynix consumes 600 to 700 tons per month. Given the strong global demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and 3D NAND, these consumptions are difficult to easily compress.
Although the wafer production lines of the two companies are still operating stably, industry insiders warn that if the CO2 shortage lasts too long, it may have a substantial impact on the production capacity of high-end packaging chips. Against the backdrop of a sharp increase in global demand for artificial intelligence computing power, once the supply of advanced packaging and memory chips is forced to shrink, chip prices may rise further, which will be transmitted to the entire technology industry through terminals such as servers, PCs, and mobile devices.
The tight supply of CO2 this time is consistent with the previous situation of WF6 gas, which caused Japan's related gas production to be close to a shutdown due to China's reduction of tungsten raw material exports. The successive supply fluctuations of key materials have highlighted the reality that advanced semiconductor manufacturing is highly dependent on complex chemicals and energy upstream. It has also exposed the weak links in the global chip supply chain in terms of diversification of raw material sources and regional risk hedging. The industry predicts that if the crude oil situation in the Middle East cannot be clarified as soon as possible and South Korea's refining and chemical operating rates are difficult to recover, the shortage of high-purity CO2 may evolve from a local problem to a systemic risk affecting the world's advanced manufacturing and packaging production capacity.