The war in the Middle East region involving Iran, the United States and Israel is seen to have caused oil prices to rise sharply for the global market. This price increase is seen to affect not only the transportation and heavy industry sectors, but also other sectors, such as semiconductor chip manufacturing.
This is because for the semiconductor chip sector, the use of helium gas is seen to be quite important for the cooling of the components, especially in the lithography process to create a semiconductor chip, especially those using the 5nm process and above.
Helium is produced when natural gas liquids are processed into other materials, and the gas is seen to be very important for the global semiconductor chip manufacturing industry.
Malaysia is home to a number of semiconductor chip design, development, packaging and testing companies, and according to the Malaysian Semiconductor Industry Association (MSIA), they are following the developments of the incident and have started preparing to make the necessary changes to ensure that materials such as rare earth gases are sufficient for the future.
According to MSIA president Wong Siew Hai, local semiconductor companies are looking at what is happening in the Middle East, although technically Malaysian companies are not too affected by the increase in the price of helium gas coming from the Middle East.
A large part of this is that most Malaysian companies are involved in the packaging and testing of semiconductor chips, and for this process, nitrogen gas is used more than helium.
Apart from that, local semiconductor companies have also diversified their sources of rare earths, and are not dependent on just one producer. This allows them to maintain the company's viability for the future.
Malaysia is one of the important markets for global semiconductor chip production. Seven percent of global semiconductor trade enters Malaysia, while local semiconductor companies are also responsible for 13 percent of global semiconductor chip packaging and testing.
