Monopoly in Metrology/Inspection
Metrology/inspection equipment is supposed to spot semiconductor manufacturing errors. Metrology and inspection are important for the management of the semiconductor manufacturing process. There are 400-600 steps in the overall manufacturing process of semiconductor wafers, which are undertaken in the course of one to two months. If any defects occur early on in the process, all the work undertaken in the subsequent time-consuming steps will be wasted.
Metrology and inspection processes are therefore established at critical points of semiconductor manufacturing process to ensure that a certain yield can be confirmed and maintained.
The Information Network’s report “
Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control in VLSI Manufacturing report,” analyzes 25 different sectors and subsectors of the metrology/inspection market. ASML competes in just one – E-beam Patterned Wafer Inspection. As a result, ASML held just a 5% share of the global metrology/inspection market dominated by KLA (
KLAC).