TIDE TURNS FOR ELECTRONIC CHEMICALS

Abstract

THE USUALLY HIGH-FLYING SEMIconductor industry is in a severe downturn, and companies that supply it with chemicals and other key raw materials are taking a similar dive. The mood at the recent Semicon trade show in San Francisco reflected this turn of events, brought about largely by the sudden crash in the Internet and telecommunications equipment sectors. Chemical company executives at Semicon seemed resigned to several quarters of poor results and said they plan to use the respite to develop new products and push into particularly fast-growing fields such as chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) polishing slurries and low-k dielectrics. After staying strong through the end of 2000 and even into the first quarter of this year, sales of chemicals and gases to the semiconductor industry are now off sharply Dan P. Tracy, senior market analyst for industry research and statistics at Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), Semicon's sponsor, told ...