A mask shop is a factory which manufactures photomasks for use in the semiconductor industry. There are two distinct types found in the trade. Captive mask shops are in-house operations owned by the biggest semiconductor corporations, while merchant mask shops make masks for most of the industry.
Contents
Merchant mask shops will produce photomasks for a variety of integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) or optical device companies in addition to providing excess cavity work and re-pellicle for captive mask shops.
The company structure is similar to that of any medium sized manufacture and has the following unique departments or mask makers:
Photomask market
The worldwide photomask production market was $3.1 billion in 2013. Almost half of market attributed to captive mask shops (in-house mask shops of major chipmakers).
Infrastructure (technical and financial)
The costs of creating new mask shop for 180 nm processes were estimated in 2005 as $40 million, and for 130 nm - more than $100 million. In 2013 cost of new 28 nm mask shop was estimated at $110 – 140 millions.
As of 2006, the costs to set up a basic low volume Merchant mask shop to manufacture 65 nm specification product (tools only, no cleanroom facility or data prep) is a follows:
Total $88m
This equipment set can produce approximately five 65 nm reticles per day.
Construction costs of a suitable factory, plant and cleanroom will depend on location but can be around $20–30M. CATS (software) licensing up to $1M dependent on formats and threads.
Because of the high costs of setting up such facilities with new equipment, many second-tier fabs and manufacturing concerns are taking to purchasing used equipment to meet their needs. For example the sales price for KLA-Tencor SLF87 from such a used equipment reseller is around 1/10 of the new sales price.
The future
As technology shrinks, the cost to mask shops increase and the product turn around time grow longer as well. The trend in this new decade is for manufacturing to migrate eastwards to reduce cost and lead times. Once technology restrictions in the Wassenaar Arrangement are reduced, high end reticles and integrated circuits will be produced in mainland China rather than Taiwan.