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Lin Jinkun, senior VP of TSMC Information Technology, Materials and Risk Management, pointed out that raw material suppliers are important partners of TSMC's sustainable operation. Through innovative business models, TSMC has created a localization of the photoresist supply chain and jointly built the first Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. EUV photoresist factory.
Due to the high price and maintenance costs of exposure machines to verify its quality, it is difficult for photoresist suppliers to set up factories in Taiwan. In order to solve the problem of high investment costs for photoresist suppliers and promote the development of local supply chains, the TSMC Materials Supply Chain Management Office, together with the Operational Resource Planning Office and the Wafer 12A Factory, will comprehensively take stock of the machine resources in the factory according to production capacity needs, which will be exposed. The machine is leased to the photoresist supplier, so that there is no need to purchase additional machines to verify the photoresist quality.
I think some similar arrangements could have happened with, for example, testing new materials for emerging memories. At the very least, a license should be "sold" to TSMC. However, since TSMC does not actually sell a memory product in the end, they could likely charge the equipment rental fee to the product developer as well.
