(Yicai) June 12 -- Dinglong’s stock surged to a record high after the Chinese electronic chemicals maker said leading wafer fabrication clients had placed additional orders for its high-end photoresist products, a segment still dominated by foreign suppliers.

Dinglong [SHE: 300054] closed up 4.7 percent at CNY78.99 (USD11.67) a share in Shenzhen today, after earlier soaring by as much as 17.3 percent to an all-time high of CNY88.55.

Two top wafer manufacturers recently placed additional orders for nearly 1,000 gallons of photoresists from Dinglong’s plant in Qianjiang in China’s Hubei province, as the products performed stably and delivered favorable results in production use, the Wuhan-based firm said yesterday. It did not disclose the identities of the clients.

Since the Qianjiang factory, with an annual production capacity of 300 tons, started operation in March, Dinglong has delivered several hundred gallons of immersion argon-fluoride and krypton-fluoride photoresists to the two wafer makers for use in their mass production lines, it said.

Dinglong has now secured volume orders for eight high-end photoresist products -- four ArF and four KrF photoresists -- from multiple leading domestic wafer fabs. Five were secured in the second quarter alone, while several other products are expected to begin generating orders before year-end, the company said.

Dinglong has developed a portfolio of more than 40 high-end wafer photoresists, nearly 30 of which have started verification and testing by clients. The 10 or so that have made the fastest progress have already entered gallon-scale sample testing, while Dinglong has also begun developing and producing a range of lithography-related auxiliary materials.

The firm said its ArF and KrF photoresists are developed and manufactured under a customer-specific model that has high technical barriers. They are mainly used in the production of advanced memory chips, such as three-dimensional not-and and dynamic random access memory chips, and high-performance logic device chips.

Originally a maker of printer consumables, Dinglong expanded into electronic chemicals in 2012 and launched its photoresist business in 2022. Its newly commissioned Qianjiang facility is China’s first full-process mass-production plant for high-end chip photoresists.

The global market for high-end photoresists is dominated by Japanese and US companies. KrF photoresists made by Chinese firms only account for about 3 percent to 5 percent of the domestic market, and ArF photoresists for less than 1 percent. KrF photoresists are mainly used for 130 to 250 nanometer chips, while ArF photoresists for wafers of 14 nm and below.

Editor: Futura Costaglione