Tungsten Shortage Threatens AI Chip Production Through 2026
What You Need to Know
- China restricted tungsten exports in February 2025, disrupting supply of tungsten hexafluoride for chipmakers.
- Japanese producers cannot guarantee WF6 supply through second half of 2026 to South Korean customers.
- Advanced 7nm chips require 140 etch steps versus 20 at 65nm, dramatically increasing specialty gas demand.
- Japan supplies 24% of global WF6 production; U.S. ceased tungsten mining in 2015, limiting alternatives.
China’s export restrictions on tungsten, imposed in February 2025 as a retaliatory measure against U.S. tariffs, have created a supply crisis for tungsten hexafluoride that chip manufacturers are only beginning to absorb. Japanese producers Kanto Denka and Central Glass have already notified South Korean customers that they cannot guarantee sustainable WF6 supply through the second half of 2026.
The mechanics of why this matters more than a typical materials shortage come down to geometry. According to an in-depth report on ESG in semiconductor materials by Nanda Optoelectronics, electronic specialty gases account for roughly 13% of all wafer fabrication inputs, second only to silicon wafers. At 65nm process nodes, a wafer requires around 20 etch steps. At 7nm, the node used in many current AI accelerators, that figure climbs to approximately 140. More etch steps means more gas, and WF6 is an essential compound specifically for depositing tungsten interconnects in logic chips, DRAM, HBM, and 3D NAND. Japanese manufacturers supply roughly 24% of global WF6 production, and the U.S. ceased tungsten mining operations in 2015, leaving Western alternatives thin.
The bottleneck is not fab capacity or packaging. It is the gas used to carve the chip itself, which makes it harder to route around.
The demand side is not easing the pressure. TrendForce has forecasted global foundry revenue at $218.8 billion in 2026, a 24.8% year-over-year increase, while capital expenditures from the eight largest cloud providers are projected to rise roughly 61%. Global AI server shipments are expected to grow approximately 28%. High bandwidth memory, which underpins AI training hardware, adds further gas demand through deep etch processes for through-silicon vias. The companies most exposed are the South Korean memory manufacturers and Taiwanese foundries whose supply chains run directly through the Japanese producers now signaling they cannot deliver.
Chinese producers are moving quickly into the gap. CSIC Special Gases currently operates 2,000 tons per year of WF6 capacity and plans to reach 3,000 tons by 2027, which would make it the largest single producer globally according to the CICC report. That trajectory fits a broader pattern: the queue of Chinese entities in advanced semiconductor production expanding domestic capacity is longer than most Western procurement teams have accounted for, and the tungsten controls have handed Beijing a structural lever precisely where AI hardware supply chains are most constrained.
0 Comments