Materials Analysis Technology Inc (MA-tek), Taiwan, is setting up new laboratories in Kumamoto, Japan, and the US state of Arizona to support its \u201cbig clients,\u201d and is eyeing more locations in the future amid the changing IC supply chain landscape.<\/p>\n
Materials Analysis Technology CEO and chairperson Hsieh Yong-fen said the company has benefited from the US-China trade war.<\/p>\n
Hsieh said the semiconductor industry has prospered around the world to an extent that would have been hard to imagine five years ago. It has become a national defense industry with governments pushing for their own onshore integrated circuit (IC) production.<\/p>\n
MA-tek provides analytical services to a wide range of industries, including the semiconductor industry, materials and equipment suppliers, the solar cell industry and optical communications. Clients in the IC industry account for 50 percent of customers, the company\u2019s website showed.<\/p>\n
As many countries are welcoming investment and construction of semiconductor fabs, the prospect for the development of related industries is promising, Hsieh said. MA-tek, which already has 16 laboratories in Taiwan, Japan and China, plans to establish more in the US and Europe, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMA-tek has been a beneficiary of the US-China trade war,\u201d Hsieh said.<\/p>\n
The opening of MA-tek\u2019s lab in Kumamoto last month \u201cwas not in [MA-tek\u2019s] original plan,\u201d Hsieh said, though the company did set up a lab in Nagoya, Japan, in 2019 at the invitation of Toyota Motor Corp to work with the latter\u2019s network companies.<\/p>\n
The chairwoman said that the Kumamoto lab is for MA-tek\u2019s biggest client, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the world\u2019s largest foundry company, which chose the location as its manufacturing base in Japan.<\/p>\n
The Kumamoto lab is expected to begin contributing to the company\u2019s revenue in the fourth quarter, Hsieh said, adding that there are plans to build at least two more labs in the city.<\/p>\n
As Japan also plans to build semiconductor factories in Hokkaido, the northernmost Japanese prefecture is another possible location for future MA-tek investment, she said.<\/p>\n
MA-tek has also already rented premises in Phoenix to be able to provide service to the TSMC fab in Arizona, she said.<\/p>\n
Hsieh said that many major TSMC customers in San Jose, California, have also invited MA-tek to build advanced failure analysis labs, and Europe is a \u201cdefinite destination,\u201d but not in the near future.<\/p>\n
In China, MA-tek currently has labs in Shanghai, Xiamen and Shenzhen. While China\u2019s development of advanced semiconductor production processes has currently been blocked, there are still abundant opportunities in automotive electronics, she said, so the company is looking to have labs in other Chinese cities.<\/p>\n
Regardless of in which country the company establishes a lab, \u201cMA-tek\u2019s aim is to follow clients and garner the greatest benefits by knowing the clients\u2019 industrial operations well and offering corresponding analysis services,\u201d Hsieh said.<\/p>\n
For example, the services provided to a foundry mainly focus on material analysis and surface analysis for the foundry\u2019s advanced semiconductor production processes, and research and development of materials.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, when working with IC design companies, failure analysis and reliability analysis are the services most often provided by MA-tek, she said. Reliability analysis is also most needed in places where there are large end-product markets, such as China, where MA-tek has two such labs in Shanghai, she added.<\/p>\n
In terms of the IC industry, Hsieh said as the production process advances, IC structures are becoming more complex, as are measuring techniques. In the early days, semiconductors were planar, but now both fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) and gate-all-around (GAA) \u2014 the two latest state-of-the-art transistor architectures developed to further the performance of ICs \u2014 are three-dimensional structures, with GAA being one hundred times more complex than FinFET, she said.<\/p>\n
The advancement has made analysis much more challenging, she said, adding that MA-tek has had to introduce artificial intelligence in its programs for measuring and made major investments in outside developers to speed up programming development.<\/p>\n
Regarding the company\u2019s prospects, Hsieh said there is still much room for development around the world, as there are potential clients in many industries, including biomedicine, metals and textiles.<\/p>\n
For example, in Japan, where cosmetics and beer are objects of MA-tek\u2019s analysis work, \u201cA can of beer does not cost much, but testing costs tens of thousands of yen,\u201d Hsieh said of the beer analysis, in which a Japanese client wanted to analyze the structure of beer foam to understand how it affects the taste.<\/p>\n
Impressed by Japanese companies\u2019 approach to research and development, the researcher-turned-CEO lamented that in Taiwan only the top companies are willing to spend on research and development, probably out of pressure to lead and outperform competitors.<\/p>\n
Hsieh said she hopes to expand the company\u2019s network as much as possible in overseas markets to avoid cost competition blindly waged by competitors, reaching every science park around the globe in the same ways as McDonald\u2019s Corp and Starbucks Corp.<\/p>\n
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