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hydrogen fluoride
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Chinese company receives order for hydrogen fluoride from Korean company, Japan reports
Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and other South Korean semiconductor companies are conducting quality testing on domestic materials and working busily to acquire stockpiles of materials outside Japan in response to Tokyo’s recent controls on its semiconductor material exports. According to accounts from industry sources on July 17, South Korean semiconductor companies have acquired roughly one to two months’ worth of the three materials, which include highly pure hydrogen fluoride, and are awaiting the results of their import applications to Japanese companies. In a press conference that day, Korea International Trade Association (KITA) CEO Kim Young-ju said, “Right now, the companies have applied to the Japanese government for import [permission] and are awaiting a response.” At the same time, the companies are conducting focused testing to see whether domestically produced hydrogen fluoride can be used for the semiconductor manufacturing process – part of their efforts to secure replacements for the Japanese products. “We had been using some domestically produced hydrogen fluoride before, but most of it was Japanese,” said one industry source. “In light of Japan’s recent measures, it’s the logical step for us to test the applicability of materials from outside Japan, including domestic ones,” the source said. Most of the testing involves products supplied by South Korean businesses after processing of imported raw materials from Taiwan and other countries. The process is expected to take around two to three months. Following Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong’s visit to Japan on July 7–12 to establish response measures, Kim Dong-seop, SK Hynix’s president for external cooperation, departed on July 16 to meet with Japanese partner businesses supplying raw materials. His aim is to seek out possible alternative approaches such as importing indirectly by acquiring products from Japanese businesses’ overseas factories. In a July 17 report, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted the Association of Electronic and Chemical New Material Industries, a Chinese industry group, as stating on its official social network site the day before that the Banghua Group – a company located in Shandong Province – had received an order for the hydrogen fluoride solution hydrofluoric acid from South Korea. The group was reported by the newspaper as expressing that “collaboration between South Korean businesses and the Banghua Group has been accelerated” as a result of the Japanese government’s stiffer export controls on semiconductor materials. By Song Gyung-hwa and Shin Da-eun, staff reporters, and Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
