Introduction
The global CMP slurries market is moderately consolidated. A small group of multinational suppliers holds the majority of qualified positions at leading-edge foundries and memory manufacturers, while a broader set of regional companies competes in mature process steps, in domestic markets with strong localisation policies and in specialised applications such as substrate polishing. Concentration is highest at the most advanced nodes, where only a few suppliers have the particle engineering, formulation, analytical and application capabilities needed to meet chipmakers' requirements, and lowest in mature oxide, tungsten and substrate applications, where several suppliers can meet established specifications.
Competition takes place step by step and customer by customer. Because each slurry is qualified for a specific process step at a specific fab, suppliers compete for every new node, process module and fab, and incumbency is valuable but not permanent: a supplier that loses a qualification at a node transition may be excluded from that step for years. The main competitive factors are defect performance, removal-rate stability and selectivity; lot-to-lot consistency; speed of co-development with customers; local production and technical support near the customer's fabs; the ability to offer matched pads, cleans and other consumables; intellectual property; and price, which is most important in mature steps. Since 2022, the competitive environment has been shaped by consolidation, including Entegris' acquisition of CMC Materials and the separation of DuPont's electronics business into Qnity Electronics, by a wave of regional capacity investments, by the rise of domestic suppliers in China and South Korea and by active enforcement of patents.
Key Player Positioning
The leaders in the market are Entegris, Fujifilm, Resonac, Qnity Electronics and Fujimi Incorporated. Entegris became the broadest CMP supplier in the industry when it completed its acquisition of CMC Materials in July 2022, combining CMC's long-established slurry and pad businesses with its own filtration, pad conditioner and post-CMP clean products; it has a global manufacturing footprint, a large patent portfolio that it has enforced successfully in the United States, Taiwan and China, and investments in technology centres in Taiwan, South Korea and the United States. Fujifilm is the leading supplier of copper CMP slurries by its own account and has built a global production network spanning Arizona, Hsinchu, Tainan, Cheonan, Kumamoto and Belgium, with continuing expansions linked to AI-related demand. Resonac has long been a leading supplier of ceria slurries for shallow trench isolation and dielectric applications, supported by in-house abrasive technology and production in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Qnity Electronics combines slurries, post-CMP cleans and the industry's best-known pad brands and has operated as an independent company since November 2025. Fujimi holds a dominant position in silicon wafer polishing slurries and strong positions in device CMP slurries, with production in Japan, Taiwan, the United States and Malaysia.
The challengers are Merck KGaA, AGC Inc., Anji Microelectronics and Soulbrain. Merck KGaA, through the slurry portfolio acquired with Versum Materials in 2019, has established positions in dielectric, tungsten, barrier and silicon polishing slurries and a broad semiconductor materials business that includes a large new site in Kaohsiung inaugurated in December 2025, but slurries form a smaller part of its electronics portfolio than thin films and delivery systems. AGC is an integrated producer of ceria abrasives and slurries for shallow trench isolation and dielectric applications, with strengths in glass and ceramics polishing that are relevant to emerging glass substrate applications. Anji Microelectronics is the leading Chinese slurry supplier, with a broad product range, strong growth driven by domestic substitution and investment in its own abrasive production, but its presence outside China remains limited. Soulbrain is a major supplier to South Korean memory makers, including in HBM-related applications, and is extending into glass substrate materials through its collaboration with Samsung Electro-Mechanics.
The niche players are KCTech and Dongjin Semichem. KCTech is distinctive as both a CMP equipment maker and a slurry supplier, focusing on ceria, tungsten and polysilicon slurries for South Korean customers, while Dongjin Semichem has supplied oxide and tungsten slurries to Samsung and SK hynix since 1999 and has won qualification for HBM-related slurry supply. Both have strong positions with domestic customers but limited global reach. Other participants include Saint-Gobain and Ferro (Vibrantz) in abrasives and specialty slurries, Chinese and Taiwanese regional suppliers, and specialist producers of slurries for silicon carbide and other hard substrates.
The competitive structure of the CMP slurries market can be assessed through the five forces framework, which considers the threat of new entrants, the bargaining power of suppliers, the bargaining power of buyers, the threat of substitutes and the intensity of rivalry among existing competitors. The assessment that follows rates each force as High, Medium or Low on the basis of conditions observed in 2025 and 2026 and their expected development over the forecast period. The overall picture is of a market with high barriers to entry and limited substitution risk, in which profitability is shaped mainly by the purchasing power of a concentrated customer base and by intense technical competition among a small group of capable suppliers. These conditions have allowed leading suppliers to sustain healthy margins on advanced products while facing persistent price pressure on mature ones, and they explain why market positions, once established, tend to change slowly and mainly at technology transitions.
Threat of new entrants: Low. Entering the CMP slurry market at a level that matters commercially requires a combination of capabilities that takes many years to assemble. A new supplier must be able to synthesise or source abrasive particles with tightly controlled size, shape and purity, formulate chemical packages that deliver specific removal rates and selectivities without causing corrosion or defects, and manufacture lots with consistency measured in very small tolerances. It must operate analytical laboratories capable of measuring large particle counts, trace metals and surface chemistry, and polishing laboratories equipped with the same CMP tools and metrology used by chipmakers. Above all, it must pass customer qualification, which for a critical step at an advanced fab can take a year or more and requires access to patterned wafers and process data that chipmakers share only with trusted partners. Intellectual property adds a further barrier.
Leading suppliers hold extensive patent portfolios covering particle compositions, additive combinations and methods of use, and they enforce them: Entegris reported in 2026 that Taiwan's Intellectual Property and Commercial Court had upheld one of its acidic colloidal silica slurry patents on 14 July 2026 and that China's National Intellectual Property Administration had upheld a related patent on 10 August 2026, following earlier U.S. proceedings in which the International Trade Commission issued exclusion orders against infringing products. Capital requirements are moderate compared with chip manufacturing but substantial for a specialty chemical business, especially when multi-region production is required. The main exception to the low entry threat is China, where government support for domestic semiconductor materials, preferential qualification at local fabs and a large domestic market have enabled companies such as Anji Microelectronics to scale up and have encouraged further local entrants in mature applications. Elsewhere, new entry tends to occur through acquisition or through specialists that focus on a narrow niche, such as silicon carbide polishing, rather than through broad-based competitors.
Established chemical companies from adjacent fields, such as electronic-grade wet chemicals or display materials, are the most plausible new entrants, because they already possess purity control, cleanroom packaging and customer relationships, but even they typically need several years of joint development before winning positions in critical steps. The long life of qualified positions means that, once a slurry is designed into a process, an entrant can usually compete for it only when the customer introduces a new node, a new fab or a new process module.
Bargaining power of suppliers: Medium. The suppliers of raw materials to slurry manufacturers have meaningful but not dominant influence. On one hand, several critical inputs are produced by a limited number of companies. High-purity colloidal silica for the most demanding applications is supplied by a small group of specialists; cerium compounds are refined predominantly in China, where government policy can affect export availability and price; and certain additives, such as specialised corrosion inhibitors and surfactants, may have only one or two qualified sources. Because any change in a raw material can alter slurry performance, slurry makers cannot easily switch suppliers, and they must notify customers and sometimes requalify products when inputs change. Price movements also matter: market data published in July 2026 showed Chinese cerium oxide export prices rising by 28% in the first half of the year, which increases cost pressure on ceria slurry producers. On the other hand, the largest slurry manufacturers have reduced their dependence on upstream suppliers by producing their own abrasive particles, holding strategic inventories, qualifying multiple sources and, in some cases, developing internal capabilities for refining or purifying critical materials.
Many inputs, such as common oxidisers, acids and buffers, are available from multiple electronic-grade chemical suppliers. Raw materials also represent a modest share of a slurry's selling price compared with the value of the formulation and quality assurance. The combination of concentrated critical inputs and partial vertical integration among leading slurry makers results in a medium rating, with supplier power somewhat higher for ceria slurries and for smaller slurry producers that lack internal particle capability. Over the forecast period, supplier power may rise for ceria inputs if rare earth trade measures tighten again after the scheduled expiry of China's suspension of its October 2025 controls, while new rare earth separation capacity outside China, including projects in the United States, Australia and Europe, could gradually reduce it later in the decade.
Bargaining power of buyers: High. The customer base for CMP slurries is highly concentrated. A small number of foundries and memory manufacturers account for a large share of global consumption, and at the leading edge the concentration is even greater, with a few companies operating most of the world's advanced logic and HBM capacity. These buyers have the scale, technical expertise and information to negotiate strongly. They typically maintain at least two qualified suppliers for important steps where technically possible, run regular price negotiations and cost-reduction programmes, and impose detailed quality and supply-security requirements, including regional production, safety stocks, consignment arrangements and strict change-control procedures. They also control access to the process information that suppliers need to develop new products, which gives them additional leverage in setting commercial terms. In mature process steps, where several suppliers can meet performance requirements, buyers can shift volumes between suppliers relatively easily and use this ability to drive prices down. Chinese fabs, supported by domestic preference policies, have used the availability of local suppliers to negotiate with multinational suppliers.
Buyer power is moderated to some extent by switching costs in critical steps, because qualifying a new slurry consumes engineering time and carries yield risk, and by the fact that slurry represents a small share of a fab's total operating cost compared with equipment depreciation, labour and other materials. However, the ability of large buyers to dictate terms on price, supply arrangements and development priorities is strong enough to justify a high rating. This power is expected to remain high throughout the forecast period, although tight supply of specific advanced slurries during rapid capacity ramps may temporarily shift leverage toward suppliers. Packaging houses and substrate manufacturers, which are smaller and more fragmented buyers, have less individual leverage, but they are also more price-sensitive, so the overall buyer power across the market remains high.
Threat of substitutes: Low. There is no practical substitute for CMP in the great majority of planarisation steps in semiconductor manufacturing, and therefore no substitute for slurries in those steps. Alternative planarisation methods, such as spin-on and reflow techniques, etch-back processes or selective deposition, have specific uses but cannot achieve the global planarity, material selectivity and low defectivity required across modern process flows. Some developments could reduce slurry use in particular steps. Subtractive patterning of ruthenium or other metals, if adopted at certain interconnect levels, would replace damascene polishing with plasma etching for those levels, although dielectric planarisation would still be needed. Selective area deposition techniques could reduce overburden and therefore the amount of material to be removed. Fixed-abrasive pads, in which abrasive particles are embedded in the pad rather than suspended in the slurry, have been used for certain applications and reduce the abrasive content of the polishing fluid, although they still require a chemical solution. Electrochemical mechanical planarisation and plasma-assisted polishing have been studied for copper and hard substrates.
None of these alternatives is expected to displace slurry-based CMP on a broad scale during the forecast period, and several of them would shift demand toward different slurry types rather than eliminate it. Within the market, substitution among slurry types, such as the replacement of silica by ceria in dielectric steps or the introduction of abrasive-free chemistries in copper steps, is common, but this represents competition between products within the market rather than a threat to the market itself. The low threat of substitution is one of the main reasons why the market's long-term growth is closely linked to wafer capacity and process complexity, and why suppliers can invest in new products with reasonable confidence that planarisation will remain essential for future device generations.
Competitive rivalry: High. Although the number of suppliers capable of serving leading-edge fabs is limited, rivalry among them is intense. Competition takes place step by step and customer by customer, because each process step in each fab is qualified separately, and suppliers compete for every new node, new process module and new fab. Leading suppliers each have recognised strengths, such as Fujifilm in copper slurries, Resonac in ceria slurries for dielectric steps, Fujimi in silicon wafer polishing, and Entegris and Qnity Electronics in broad portfolios combining slurries with pads and cleans, but each is also seeking to expand into areas where competitors are strong. Product development cycles are short relative to the long life of qualified positions, and suppliers invest heavily in research and development, technology centres and applications engineering to win the next qualification. The expansion of capacity by all leading suppliers between 2023 and 2026, including new plants in Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe, adds a capacity dimension to rivalry, since suppliers compete to be first with local production at new fabs.
Intellectual property disputes, such as the litigation between Entegris and DuPont's former electronics business that was settled in December 2024 and the patent challenges decided in Taiwan and China in 2026, show that rivalry extends into legal channels. In China, domestic suppliers compete aggressively on price and service in mature applications and are moving toward more advanced nodes, while South Korean suppliers compete for positions at Samsung and SK hynix, including in HBM-related steps. Price competition is strongest in mature steps such as tungsten and oxide polishing, while competition in advanced steps focuses more on performance and speed of development. The combination of concentrated buyers, multiple capable suppliers and frequent requalification events results in high rivalry throughout the market. Rivalry is likely to intensify further as Chinese and South Korean suppliers extend their capabilities to advanced nodes and as multinational suppliers respond to localisation policies by building capacity in the same regions, increasing the number of qualified sources available to each major customer.
Threat of New Entrants: Low; Long customer qualification, particle synthesis know-how, enforced patents and multi-region production requirements.
Bargaining Power of Suppliers: Medium; Concentrated sources of high-purity silica and cerium, partly offset by in-house particle production at leading slurry makers.
Bargaining Power of Buyers: High; Concentrated foundry and memory customers with dual sourcing, cost-down programmes and control of process data.
Threat of Substitutes: Low; No practical alternative to slurry-based CMP for most planarisation steps; alternatives remain niche.
Competitive Rivalry: High; Step-by-step requalification, capacity race near new fabs, IP disputes and price competition in mature steps.
