Photomask Blank Substrates Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- One assignee dominates. The leader holds 413 of the ranked records against a fifth-place figure of 49 and a tenth-place figure of just 6 — a steep drop-off rather than a gradual one.
- Filing peaked in 2018 and has not recovered. From 70 records at peak to a flat-to-declining midpoint of 41 in 2022, the field reads as consolidated and mature rather than expanding.
- Claims cluster tightly around photolithography. G03F covers all 805 records in scope, while adjacent classes like cleaning (B08B, 3.0%) and material analysis (G01N, 2.4%) carry a fraction of the filing density.
What this landscape covers
Photomask blank substrates sit at the intersection of glass and quartz materials science, thin-film deposition, and photolithography tooling. The 805 records in scope span flatness and thickness control, defect density reduction on the blank surface, absorber film deposition, EUV multilayer blank construction, and cleaning processes, filed under IPC classes G03F, C03C and C23C. This is a narrow, tooling-adjacent field: the assignees filing here supply substrates and blanks into the photomask supply chain rather than competing broadly across semiconductor devices.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend understate actual filing activity and should be read as provisional rather than final.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 805-record corpus: filings by year, and the IPC subclasses those filings carry.
Filing trend: a 2018 peak followed by decline
Filings rose to 44 in 2017 and peaked at 70 in 2018. By the 2022 midpoint the annual count had fallen back to 41, and the trend line does not show a second wave of growth through to the 2026 cut-off — consistent with a field where the core substrate architecture is settled and filing now concentrates on process refinement rather than new claim territory.
IPC composition: concentrated in photolithography, with deposition and glass chemistry as secondary clusters
Every record in scope carries a G03F classification, which is expected given the search scope. The next largest clusters are H01L (25.5% of the 805 records), H10P (11.1%), and C23C coating and surface deposition (10.6%). Glass and enamel composition claims under C03C sit at 5.0%, and process-adjacent classes such as cleaning (B08B, 3.0%) and material analysis (G01N, 2.4%) are comparatively thin — these are the areas with room for narrowly drawn claims rather than broad substrate architecture claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 805 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Photomask Blank Substrates with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about photomask blank substrates and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited foundational filings
US10481488B2 — Mask blank substrate processing device, mask blank substrate processing method, mask blank substrate fabrication method, mask blank fabrication method, and transfer mask fabrication method
Provided are a mask blank substrate processing device, a mask blank substrate processing method, a mask blank substrate fabrication method, a mask blank fabrication method, and a transfer mask fabrication method, for surface processing a mask blank substrate such that a high-level smoothness and a low-defect quality are satisfied. The device comprises substrate support means, a catalytic surface plate with a catalytic face positioned opposite the principal surface of the substrate, and relative movement means for causing relative motion between the catalytic face and the substrate during processing.Filed by HOYA Corporation, published 2019-11-19.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | JP2007233179A | Photomask blank and photomask | 192 |
| 2 | JP2007292824A | Photomask blank | 130 |
| 3 | US20070212618A1 | Photomask blank and photomask | 113 |
| 4 | US20070212619A1 | Photomask blank and photomask making method | 106 |
| 5 | US8709682B2 | Mask and method for forming the mask | 82 |
| 6 | US5538816A | Halftone phase shift photomask, halftone phase shift photomask blank, and methods of producing the same | 77 |
| 7 | EP1832926A2 | Photomask blank and photomask making method | 67 |
| 8 | US5605776A | Phase-shifting photomask blank, phase-shifting photomask, and method of manufacturing them | 67 |
| 9 | JP2015111246A | Halftone phase shift photomask blank, halftone phase shift photomask, and pattern exposure method | 61 |
| 10 | JP2003248298A | Photomask blank and photomask | 60 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within this corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on subsequent filing, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Read together, the trend line, the IPC split and the citation table point to a field where the substrate architecture is largely settled and the open ground is in process control and secondary chemistry.
Growth has flattened since the 2018 peak
Annual filings rose from 44 in 2017 to a peak of 70 in 2018, then settled back to 41 by 2022 with no sign of a second growth wave through the cut-off. New entrants filing broad substrate-architecture claims now compete against a decade of prior art rather than open ground.
One filer dominates the ranked list
The leading assignee holds 413 of the records in the 41-company ranking, against 49 at fifth place and just 6 at tenth. That gap suggests a single company has been setting claim scope in this field for years, and any freedom-to-operate review should start with its portfolio.
Deposition and cleaning are secondary, not peripheral
Coating and surface deposition claims (C23C) reach 10.6% of the 805 records, while cleaning (B08B) and material analysis (G01N) sit lower at 3.0% and 2.4% respectively. These are real but thinner clusters compared with the near-universal G03F and the 25.5% H01L overlap.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to photomask blank substrates, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked list runs to 41 companies, but the distribution is steep: a dominant leader, a mid-tier of glass, mask and deposition specialists, and a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
A single assignee anchors the field
Shin-Etsu Chemical's filing volume dwarfs the rest of the ranking, spanning substrate processing, defect control and EUV blank construction. Its co-filing pattern with Toppan Holdings (91 shared records) also marks the field's strongest assignee pairing.
A cluster of mask and glass specialists
Below the leader, companies such as HOYA, Toppan Photomask, Dai Nippon Printing and AGC hold meaningfully smaller but still active portfolios, generally built around specific process steps — polishing, coating or substrate-level defect inspection — rather than broad architecture claims.
Most of the ranking files sparsely
By tenth place the record count has dropped to 6, and momentum data shows several named assignees at 0 filings in the latest year, including some with a -100% year-on-year change. This is consistent with consolidation rather than an influx of new competitors.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| HOYA Corporation | 0 | — |
| Toppan Holdings Inc. | 0 | — |
| Toppan Photomask Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Tekscend Photomask Corp. | 0 | — |
| Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | — |
| AGC Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to a mature, concentrated field. The next step is usually narrower: checking freedom to operate against the leading assignee's claims, or scoping a specific process branch before filing.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading assignee
With one company holding 413 of the 41 ranked assignees' records, any new substrate-processing or defect-control filing should be checked against that portfolio specifically, not just the field broadly.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaScope a claim in an under-claimed branch
Cleaning chemistry, material analysis and layered-product claims all carry lower record shares than the core photolithography and deposition classes, which may leave room for a narrowly drawn first claim.
Draft a claim scope in EurekaCommon questions about photomask blank substrate patents
One assignee leads the 41-company ranking by a wide margin, holding 413 of the ranked records compared with 49 at fifth place and 6 at tenth. This gap indicates a single company has shaped much of the claim territory around substrate processing, defect control and blank fabrication over the period covered. Any competitive or freedom-to-operate analysis in this space should treat that portfolio as the reference point rather than averaging across the full ranked list.
Filing activity peaked at 70 records in 2018 after rising from 44 in 2017, then declined to a midpoint of 41 by 2022 with no clear recovery through the most recent years in the dataset. That pattern points to a field where the foundational substrate architecture is largely settled and current filing skews toward process refinement rather than new claim territory. Note that the final one to two years in any patent trend are understated because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months.
Every record in this 805-record dataset carries a G03F photolithography classification by definition of the search scope, with substantial overlap into H01L semiconductor devices (25.5%) and C23C coating and deposition processes (10.6%). Smaller but active clusters exist in glass and enamel composition (C03C, 5.0%), cleaning (B08B, 3.0%) and material analysis and testing (G01N, 2.4%). The multi-classification nature of these records means a single filing often touches both the substrate material and a deposition or cleaning process step.
The most-cited records in the dataset are foundational photomask blank filings from the mid-2000s, including one cited 192 times and another cited 130 times, both describing core photomask blank and photomask structures. High citation counts in an older filing reflect its influence on later filings within the searched corpus, not necessarily its current commercial relevance, since older documents simply have had more time to accumulate citations.
The IPC composition shows lighter filing density in cleaning chemistry (B08B, 3.0% of records), material analysis and testing (G01N, 2.4%), and layered-product structures (B32B, 1.5%) compared with the near-universal photolithography and deposition classes. These thinner clusters are worth scoping for narrowly drawn claims, particularly around substrate cleaning processes and defect inspection methods that support but do not duplicate the core substrate architecture claims already held by the leading assignees.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
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Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.