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Chips

The coating every chip needs

Apple, Nvidia and AMD chips are all built by TSMC. Every one is printed through a coating that mostly comes from Japan.

Numbers as of 24 Sept 2026

The full story

  1. Three slabs stacked. Top, the chips you know: Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm and Tesla. They sit on the factories that build them: TSMC, Samsung and Micron. Those sit on one green slab: photoresist, a coating led by three Japanese makers, TOK, JSR and Shin-Etsu, with a Japanese flag. About 9 in 10 of
  2. First, what is it? Photoresist is not even in your chip: none of it stays in the finished product. A wafer is coated with a thin film that reacts to light, the circuit pattern is shone onto it, and the film is washed off. That repeats layer after layer, for every chip. Every chip needs it; none cont
  3. The number one maker: Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, listed in Tokyo as 4186, makes about 26 percent of the world's photoresist. It is also first in the newest kind, used for the most advanced chips, with 29 percent. Samsung is a customer, and it makes resist in Taiwan, near TSMC. One company, about a quarter of
  4. The one underneath: Shin-Etsu Chemical is the world's number one maker of silicon wafers, the discs chips are built on. It also makes about a fifth of all photoresist and is building a new 83 billion yen plant in Japan for resist and related materials, with the first phase due in 2026. The disc and
  5. The one Japan bought: Japan Investment Corp, a state-backed fund, bought JSR for about 900 billion yen, roughly 6 billion dollars, and it left the stock market in June 2024. JSR is number two in photoresist with 19 percent of sales, and its first Taiwan plant, built to supply TSMC, is due in 2028.
  6. The test: in 2018 about 93 percent of South Korea's photoresist imports came from Japan. In 2019 Japan tightened exports and Korea began building its own makers. By 2024 Japan's share was about 65 percent, and more than 90 percent of the most advanced kind is still imported. A head start, and still
  7. The catch: a chipmaker needs about a year to re-test any change in the material, longer for the most advanced chips. It was tested this spring. In April 2026 five Japanese makers warned Samsung and SK hynix that a raw material was running short; Japan gets more than 40 percent of the feedstock for i
  8. Which layer is hardest to replace? Choices: the chip designers, TSMC, Japan's resist, or other. The designer, the factory, or the chemical? Follow Green Owl if you want more.

Three layers again, and this time the bottom isn't a machine.

Top: Apple, Nvidia, AMD and Qualcomm design chips and TSMC builds them. Tesla's AI6 goes to Samsung in Texas, with mass production aimed at the second half of 2027. Micron makes memory for Nvidia's AI chips.

Middle: to print a circuit, a fab spreads a light-sensitive coating called photoresist on the wafer, shines the pattern onto it and washes away what the light touched. The coating doesn't stay in the chip, but no chip gets made without it.

Bottom: Japanese firms led by Tokyo Ohka Kogyo, JSR and Shin-Etsu supply about 90% of the world's photoresist (US Commerce Dept, Nikkei). JSR announced a Taiwan plant in May 2026 to supply TSMC directly. Micron has named JSR and Shin-Etsu top suppliers of front-end chip materials.

It's been tested once. In 2019 Japan tightened photoresist exports to South Korea, which then bought about 93% of its photoresist from Japan.

Each line names one product, not everything a company buys. These firms sell to most chipmakers; Intel is left off only because we couldn't confirm its supplier. Listed: Shin-Etsu (4063 Tokyo), TOK (4186 Tokyo). JSR went private in 2024.

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Companies in this picture

AppleAMDJSRMicronNvidiaQualcommSamsungShin-EtsuTokyo Ohka KogyoTeslaTSMC

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