(Yicai) March 20 -- Dinglong Holdings said it has begun mass producing photoresists for advanced chips at China’s first full-process plant making the light-sensitive organic polymers, marking a major step forward in making China’s chip industry more self-sufficient.

The plant in Qianjiang, Hubei province started mass production recently, the Wuhan-based supplier of semiconductor chemicals announced yesterday. It has the annual capacity to produce 300 tons of KrF and ArF photoresists, which will be used in making high-end memory chips, such as 3D NAND and DRAM, as well as high-performance logic chips, the company said.

The plant integrates the entire photoresist production process from monomer synthesis and core material polymerization to refining and purification of polymers and the formulation of finished products. It also localizes production of key additives such as photoacid generators and quenching agents, positioning the plant to better meet urgent demand from domestic memory chip makers, the firm noted.

As of now, the domestic market share of China-made KrF and ArF photoresists is only 3 percent to 5 percent and less than 1 percent, respectively, with Japanese and US products dominating the market. KrF photoresists are mainly used for 130 nm to 250 nm chip production, while ArF photoresists are employed in producing 14 nm and below semiconductor wafers.

The plant has production lines for more than 30 types of high-end wafer photoresists at present and enough room to scale up output flexibility based on market demand. Several of them have already entered stable batch supply to clients, while over half of them are in the customer verification stage, Dinglong pointed out.

Dinglong’s shares [SHE: 300054] closed 0.8 percent down at CNY45.57 (USD6.61) each in Shenzhen today, after earlier gaining by as much as 5.5 percent, amid a broad market sell-off.

Editor: Futura Costaglione