The US, China, Taiwan, the Netherlands and Japan have been hogging the limelight in the semiconductor industry for months now, but there is another extremely important player that is often overlooked by the media: South Korea. Samsung has enormous visibility as it battles with Intel to establish itself as the industry’s second largest integrated circuit manufacturer (TSMC is currently unassailable in first place), but South Korea is much more than Samsung.
Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of this Asian country, is currently traveling to the Netherlands with the aim of consolidating an alliance on integrated circuits, among other priority objectives. For South Korea, the semiconductor industry is fundamental. In fact, it is officially one of its strategic sectors along with other very important ones, such as, for example, the OLED panel production industry or the battery manufacturing industry.
Samsung is currently competing head-to-head with the Taiwanese company TSMC to improve the performance per wafer of its 3 nm photolithography in order to attract as many customers as possible. There is no doubt that this company is the jewel in South Korea’s crown, but this country also has other very relevant semiconductor companies. And, curiously, they are taking advantage of the current tense situation between China, the US and their allies.
In addition to chips, South Korea also manufactures photolithography equipment.
The US, the Netherlands and Japan do not allow their companies in the chip industry to sell their Chinese customers either cutting-edge semiconductors or state-of-the-art lithography machines. For the time being, however, South Korean companies can. And they are filling a part of the gap being left in the Chinese market by the companies from the three countries I mentioned in the first line of this paragraph. This is according to the South Korean media The Elec, which is a very reliable source when it comes to integrated circuits.
One of the South Korean companies that is developing its business in China thanks to the sanctions that prevent its American, Japanese and Dutch competitors from selling in the country led by Xi Jinping is Nextin. It is mainly engaged in the design and manufacture of specialized wafer inspection equipment, and is already delivering to its Chinese customers its Aegis-3 machine, a third-generation inspection equipment that is according to this manufacturer 30% faster than its predecessor, the Aegis-2.
These machines play a fundamental role in the semiconductor manufacturing process because they are responsible for identifying the slightest defect in any of the cores on a wafer. Each one costs $6 million, and Nextin plans to deliver several to its Chinese customers over the next few months. However, the company also produces the specialized static elimination equipment that coexists with the extreme ultraviolet (UVE) lithography machines and the machines that are required for the inspection of 3D-integrated wafers. There is no doubt that these are good times for Nextin.