Say “Mitsubishi” at a trade show and most people think cars or air conditioners. “We don’t do a good enough job at promoting ourselves,” said Fallyn Flaherty-Earp, global market director, digital, at Mitsubishi Chemical Group (MCG) . “That’s why we’re here.” MCG makes a case that it is one of the industry’s best-kept secrets. It has manufacturing and R&D in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, which Flaherty-Earp said positions it well as chipmaking regionalizes. Its portfolio runs from wafer manufacturing materials to front-end chemicals, back-end packaging materials, cleaning services and water purification ( FIGURE 1 ). Figure 1. MCG’s portfolio spans wafer manufacturing, front- and back-end process materials, cleaning, plastics and fabrication services. (Source: Mitsubishi Chemical Group) What’s inside the box Much of what MCG supplies is invisible. “If you were to take one of the big CMP machines or lithography machines and start pulling off the big panels, you will see inside a lot of plastic parts,” Flaherty-Earp said. “A lot of our materials go into all the things that you can’t see within the box.” The company works with OEMs to supply either stock shapes or finished parts, and its carbon fiber composites go into wafer-handling end effectors and forks. MCG’s approach is metal replacement rather than metals: anything made of metal that could be made of plastic or carbon fiber is a target. With plating cells changing as packaging evolves, for example, MCG is working with equipment makers on materials and designs for those large components. Its electronics business supplies silicones and silanes for wafer processing, and group company Gelest provides precursors for EUV dry resist materials. MCG’s Cleanpart team cleans equipment components in its own facilities. In selected businesses, Flaherty-Earp said, MCG’s vertically integrated capabilities extend from raw materials through finished components, supporting supply continuity and production scale. Films, fillers and diamonds In advanced packaging, MCG supplies epoxies and encapsulants, and it is developing functional films as packaging shifts from pastes and gels toward films for form factor reasons. It also has new carbon fiber composite materials for advanced packaging coming out, a newly introduced line of formulated silicones and a diamond wafer for thermal management in development. The company also mentioned a negative-CTE filler in development to help control warpage. On purity, Flaherty-Earp said the conversation is always about balance. Customers may flag a slight flow mark in a molded plastic part, and MCG does the analysis to show whether it actually matters. “You can make anything, but it’s going to cost you,” Flaherty-Earp said. “So it’s about that balance between how much do you really need, is it over-engineered, and that cost balance.” MCG’s materials include ultra-high-purity synthetic silica with documented SiO₂ purity greater than 99.99999% and individual measured metal impurities generally below 10–20 ppb. Sustainability priorities MCG’s guiding principle is KAITEKI, a Japanese concept for the well-being of people and the planet. Asked about PFAS, Flaherty-Earp said MCG can supply materials with no intentionally added PFAS, with trade-offs, but sees little push from the semiconductor industry. “We see more of the push on carbon emissions,” Flaherty-Earp said, with customers asking for life cycle assessment (LCA) data on materials. Oil and gas customers are pushing harder on PFAS, and automotive on bio-based materials. MCG is also using AI-driven materials informatics and quantum computing to speed materials discovery, including work on EUV dry resist. It’s part of an IBM-affiliated quantum computing effort in Tokyo. Editor’s note: In the interest of efficiency and timeliness, this article was drafted with the help of AI (Claude, from Anthropic), working from a recording of an interview arranged by Bodewell Group and the company’s press materials.