U.S. trade curbs spur China business for Japan chip industry

Beijing's self-sufficiency push is tailwind for companies despite uncertainties

japan chips

Screen Semiconductor Solutions says its are enjoying strong demand for older generation chip technologies. (Photo courtesy of Screen Semiconductor Solutions)

RYOHTAROH SATOH, Nikkei staff writer

TOKYO -- Japan's semiconductor equipment makers are enjoying strong demand from China, in part due to trade controls imposed by Washington and to Beijing stepping up efforts to boost the local chip industry.

"In China, there's demand for securing legacy-generation chip tools in mass, as advanced chips cannot be exported to the country," Masato Goto, president of Screen Semiconductor Solutions told Nikkei Asia. The company, a unit of Japan's Screen Holdings, is a major supplier of machines used, among other things, for cleaning chip wafers to remove minuscule particles. These particles can be as small as 0.1 micrometer, or one ten-thousandth of a millimeter.

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