From Silicon Wafers to Specialty Chemicals: Understanding the Semiconductor Materials Industry

The semiconductor materials sector covers materials consumed during wafer fabrication and is the most efficient approach to read capital requirements across key areas like silicon and SOI wafers, photoresists and related lithography materials, process gases, and process chemicals. Currently, SEMI's existing materials taxonomy lists wafer-fabrication materials in a separate tier with silicon, SOI, photomasks, photoresist, photoresist ancillaries, gases, chemicals, targets, and CMP materials.

The global semiconductor materials revenue was $73.2 billion in 2025, up 6.8% from the previous year. The total for wafer-fabrication materials came in at $45.8 billion, an increase of 5.4%, and emphasized growth from lithography-related products and wet chemicals across numerous regions globally.

Semiconductor Materials Industry Structure

Source: SEMI's semiconductor materials taxonomy.

Material Category and Current Market Position

In a more directly related but still indirect scenario, SEMI's most recently published information on the market provides updated non-binding measurements of the major wafer-fabrication material categories. In this table, silicon wafers continue as the preeminent single wafer-fab-material segment, waters identify gases, photomasks and wet chemicals add to large additional pools of material.

Source: SEMI Materials Market Data Subscription, published in its materials outlook.

Silicon Wafer

Silicon wafers are still the primary substrate upon which all semiconductor devices are manufactured. This segment consists of polished silicon wafers, epitaxial wafers, and engineered wafers like SOI. The worldwide silicon wafer shipments totaled 3,573 million square inches in Q2 2026, with a 7.4% year-over-year increase, driven mostly by AI, the demand for which extended beyond advanced logic and memory to power devices and photonics.

Photoresist and Lithography Materials

Photoresists and related materials allow lithography to produce ever smaller circuit patterns. This consists of the EUV, ArF & KrF photoresists, developers, removers and ancillary materials and photomasks. SEMI defined lithography-related materials as a key driver of the 2025 materials-market growth, since tighter lithography requirements increased material consumption.

Specialty Gases and Process Chemicals

Another broad category of materials used for wafer fabrication is gases. They have had applications over several different semiconductor processes. The diverse speciality gases that support etching, deposition, doping, cleaning, and lithography, while high-purity process chemicals are used for wafer cleaning, etching, and photoresist processing.

Current Company Evidence – Electronic-Grade Chemicals

The current company activity is reflected by an increase in localization of chemical supply. In September 2026, Solvay reported plans to more than double its ultra-pure hydrogen peroxide capacity in Taiwan, increasing annual production capacity by double by the end of 2026. The company said the expansion was tied to the growing demand for chips and the advanced semiconductor technologies in the country.

Supplier-to-Material Mapping