Mask shop
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
Merchant mask shops will produce photomasks for a variety of integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), foundries 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:
- Sales Customer / customer services
- Front end data prep
- Facilities maintenance - plant & environment
- Engineering - equipment maintenance
- Engineering - process, inspection & metrology
- Quality assurance
- Shipping & dispatching
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).[1]
Infrastructure (technical and financial)
Future
As technology shrinks, the cost to mask shops increase and the product turn around time grow longer as well.