US electronics company Materion has signed a deal to acquire the manufacturing assets related to the metal tantalum from Korean semiconductor manufacturer Konasol.
The purchase includes Materion’s fab in Dangjin City, South Korea, which produces finished tantalum sputtering targets.
Tantalum is a transition metal that is highly corrosion-resistant. It is essential in semiconductor manufacturing, mainly as a diffusion barrier in copper interconnects. It is typically deposited as tantalum or tantalum nitride using high-purity argon and nitrogen in physical vapour deposition and reactive sputtering processes.
Jugal Vijayvargiya, President and CEO of Materion, said the acquisition will strengthen the company’s footprint in Asia to better support and service semiconductor customers.
Materion hopes to increase capacity to supply high-growth, critical deposition materials used in semiconductor chips.
The transaction is expected to close within 90 days.
