Japan's Photoresist Champion Picks Samsung Before TSMC

JSR, the world's largest photoresist producer, announced plans on May 5 to build its first Taiwan facility. The plant, in Yunlin County, opens no earlier than 2028. It will not make the chemistry TSMC needs most.

Japan Investment Corporation, 100 percent owned by the Japanese government, completed a $6.4 billion acquisition of JSR in April 2024. Tokyo now controls the chemistry supplier every advanced fab below 5nm depends on for core patterning. JIC has offered no public rationale for the Samsung-first MOR sequencing.

Three Japanese producers hold roughly 95 percent of EUV photoresist supply; JSR and Tokyo Ohka Kogyo together account for approximately 91 percent, with JSR the larger of the two. TOK has no metal oxide resist program; its planned ¥20 billion Korea plant serves memory supply and does not open until 2030.

The EUV photoresist market registered $296 million in 2024, growing at 25.4 percent annually. Contract prices are not publicly disclosed: JSR, TOK, and Shin-Etsu negotiate under long-term supply agreements with no public filing requirement.

Two Plants, Two Chemistry Tiers

JSR broke ground on a metal oxide resist plant in Cheongju, South Korea, on November 12, 2024. Its customers are Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. Mass production begins in 2026.

Tin-oxide MOR absorbs EUV photons roughly five times more efficiently than conventional chemically amplified resist and uses molecular building blocks five times smaller. Etch resistance runs 10 to 100 times higher.

Samsung's 3GAA process already runs more than 30 EUV exposures per device. Its 2nm successor requires higher EUV absorption and finer resolution than conventional resist provides, which is why Samsung and SK hynix are MOR's first production customers.

The Yunlin County plant will produce conventional photoresist, not MOR. JSR formed a joint venture with Wah Lee Industrial and LCY Chemical in early April to build it. CEO Tetsuro Hori said "speed is critical," citing the weeks-long shipping delay from Japan that slows co-development with Taiwan customers.

TSMC is the buyer with the longest wait, and no Japanese producer offers a competing MOR path. TOK's advanced chemistry roadmap runs through a nascent partnership with UK startup Irresistible Materials on multi-trigger resist, a distinct technology still years from production volumes.

Who Ordered the Queue

Both decisions came from inside the same eighteen months of JIC ownership. JSR has operated in South Korea since 2003, and Samsung and SK hynix were already evaluating MOR for 2nm production when Cheongju broke ground. The Japanese government owns JSR's parent company, holds the board seats, and approved the investment sequence.

In November 2025, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry placed 12 semiconductor materials on its export control list, including high-end EUV photoresists, restricting supply to 42 Chinese companies.

The same government had committed MOR supply to Seoul eleven months before. The sequence implies Tokyo is managing photoresist supply the way it manages its security agreements: allied access first, a commercial framing second.

Samsung begins MOR qualification in 2026. TSMC's equivalent process cannot start from Taiwan supply until Yunlin is operational and shipping stable volumes, which is 2028 at the earliest. Resist qualification at the leading edge runs months of iterative process cycles.

AMD's 2nm CPU order at Samsung, reported after Lisa Su's March 2026 Pyeongtaek visit, is the first named commercial test of Cheongju supply. If MOR-enabled patterning delivers in H2 2026, the result is the first public marker of whether the qualification gap compounds into a foundry share shift before Yunlin ships.