EUV Resist Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 21 families, then dropped sharply through 2026 — several major holders show 0 filings and -100% YoY in the latest year, though publication lag makes the newest year understated.
- 78 families concentrate on G03F, but a third also touch H01L and H10P, showing resist claims are increasingly written jointly with device integration and patterning steps.
- The United States receives more filings than the next four offices combined, with Taiwan and WIPO PCT routes indicating where foundry-linked applicants are securing parallel protection.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families combining EUV photoresist, metal oxide resist and chemically amplified EUV resist language with claim or description terms tied to the field’s hardest problems: stochastic defects, line edge roughness, the sensitivity-resolution-LER tradeoff, outgassing and etch resistance. It is scoped to IPC classes covering photolithographic processes and the polymer and organometallic chemistries used to formulate resists.
78 patent families were published across the coverage window, filed mostly through the United States, WIPO's PCT route, and Taiwan — a distribution that tracks where EUV scanner and foundry capacity actually sits. The dataset is skewed toward process and materials claims rather than tool hardware, though the highest-cited record predates most of the stochastic-defect terminology now standard in the field.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 78 families: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A filing peak already behind us
Filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2023, roughly quadrupling in six years, with 2022 sitting at the midpoint of 5. The count falls off sharply after the peak, including several assignees reporting zero filings and -100% year-on-year change in the most recent year — though the newest one to two years are understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Resist claims rarely stand alone
Every family in this set touches G03F, the photolithography subclass, but 34 of 78 also touch H01L (semiconductor devices) and 30 touch H10P, meaning claims are frequently drafted to cover the resist material together with the device or patterning step it enables. Coating and deposition classes (C23C, B05B, B05D) and organic/organometallic chemistry classes (C07D, C07F) appear only in small numbers, marking those as narrower, more specialised filing pockets rather than the field's centre of gravity.
Shares are the percentage of the 78 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Photoresist for Advanced Nodes (EUV Resist) with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about photoresist for advanced nodes (euv resist) and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filings cite
Method to reduce line edge roughness for EUV photoresist pattern
Describes depositing a conformal carbon-containing film on a patterned EUV photoresist surface using sequential precursor flows, then etching to reduce line edge roughness — a process-level fix layered onto the resist rather than a new resist chemistry.Filed by Applied Materials; illustrates how LER mitigation is increasingly being claimed as a downstream deposition/etch step rather than solely a resist formulation change.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7005227B2 | One component EUV photoresist | 470 |
| 2 | US7459260B2 | Method of reducing sensitivity of EUV photoresists to out-of-band radiation and EUV photoresists formed accor… | 61 |
| 3 | WO2022103764A1 | Process tool for dry removal of photoresist | 30 |
| 4 | US20230107357A1 | Process tool for dry removal of photoresist | 30 |
| 5 | EP3258317A1 | Method for performing extreme ultra violet (EUV) lithography | 24 |
| 6 | US20230152701A1 | Structure and method to achieve positive tone dry develop by a hermetic overlayer | 20 |
| 7 | US20240036483A1 | Process tool for dry removal of photoresist | 15 |
| 8 | US20190056914A1 | Performance improvement of EUV photoresist by ion implantation | 15 |
| 9 | US20240045337A1 | Metal Oxide Resists for EUV Patterning and Methods for Developing the Same | 11 |
| 10 | WO2021202146A1 | Structure and method to achieve positive tone dry develop by a hermetic overlayer | 10 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references — treat them as a measure of influence on the field's vocabulary, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about the field
Three patterns stand out once filing trend, IPC spread and receiving-office data are read together.
The filing wave has already crested
Activity quadrupled from 2 filings in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2023, then fell off, with several major assignees showing 0 filings and -100% year-on-year change in the latest year on record. Some of this drop is real slowdown; some is publication lag masking filings not yet visible.
Resist and device claims are converging
Nearly half of the families touch semiconductor device claims (H01L) or H10P alongside the core photolithography classification, meaning a freedom-to-operate check on resist chemistry alone is incomplete without checking adjacent device and patterning claims.
Filing follows fab geography
The United States receives more filings than WIPO PCT, Taiwan, China, EPO and South Korea combined, with Taiwan's 8 filings standing out given its concentration of leading-edge foundry capacity.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to photoresist for advanced nodes (euv resist), with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the field is thinning out
Recent-year momentum figures show a field where several established filers have gone quiet in the latest reporting year, which is either a genuine pause or an artefact of publication timing.
Several leading filers show zero latest-year output
Assignees including major lithography equipment and materials suppliers report 0 filings in the latest year with -100% year-on-year change, a pattern consistent across multiple large holders rather than isolated to one firm.
Collaboration is concentrated, not broad
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset pairs two Tokyo Electron entities on 4 shared families; a research-institute pairing between imec and KU Leuven shares 3, pointing to sustained joint resist-materials research rather than one-off collaboration.
The most influential record predates the current terminology
The single most-cited family in this dataset, describing a one-component EUV photoresist, sits well above the next-ranked records on citation count, meaning much of the field's foundational vocabulary traces back to an early single filing rather than a cluster of contemporaneous ones.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tokyo Electron Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Applied Materials, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Lam Research Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates | 0 | — |
| Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) | 0 | — |
| Tokyo Electron U.S. Holdings, Inc. | 0 | — |
| ROBINSON ALEX P G | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The filing and citation data point to specific follow-up checks before committing R&D or filing budget to this space.
Check freedom-to-operate across H01L, not just G03F
With 34 of 78 families also classified under H01L, a resist-chemistry FTO search that stops at G03F will miss device-integration claims that could still block a product.
Explore FTO workflows in EurekaWatch whether the 2023 peak was a one-off surge
Filing activity fell sharply after 2023 across multiple major assignees; confirming whether this is a genuine slowdown or a publication-lag artefact matters for timing a filing strategy.
Track filing trends in EurekaLook at the narrow IPC pockets before assuming they're empty
Coating, spraying and organic-chemistry classes carry only a handful of families each — worth a manual check rather than treating them as truly white space.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about EUV photoresist patents
Chemically amplified resists (CARs) rely on a photoacid generator that triggers a catalytic chemical reaction to change solubility after EUV exposure, and they have been the incumbent chemistry for deep UV and early EUV nodes. Metal oxide resists use inorganic metal-oxide clusters that absorb EUV photons more efficiently per unit dose, which patent filings in this dataset associate with claims around reduced stochastic defects and improved sensitivity-resolution tradeoffs. Both chemistries appear across the 78 families tracked here, with claims increasingly written to cover the resist alongside the device or patterning step it enables rather than the material alone.
The dataset shows filings rising from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2023, then falling off through the most recent years, with several major assignees reporting zero filings and -100% year-on-year change. Part of this decline is likely real — early-node EUV resist chemistry problems may be reaching diminishing returns for some filers. But publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent trend understate actual filing activity, and some of the apparent drop-off will fill in as more records publish.
The most-cited record in this dataset is a one-component EUV photoresist patent with 470 citations, far ahead of the next-ranked records, which cluster in the 20-60 citation range and include both older sensitivity-reduction methods and newer dry photoresist removal process tools. High citation counts inside a searched corpus tend to favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate references, so this reflects influence on the field's foundational vocabulary rather than current commercial importance. Anyone benchmarking recent activity should look at recent-year filing volume and momentum separately from the citation leaderboard.
Recent-year momentum data in this dataset shows several major lithography equipment and materials suppliers, along with a leading foundry, reporting zero filings and -100% year-on-year change in the latest tracked year. Co-assignee analysis also shows a research-institute pairing between imec and KU Leuven filing jointly on line-edge-roughness-adjacent work, alongside intra-company pairings between related Tokyo Electron entities. Because publication lag affects the newest year most, current filing counts likely understate which of these organisations remain actively filing versus genuinely pausing.
The IPC composition data shows resist claims concentrated in G03F, H01L and H10P, while coating and deposition classes (C23C, B05B, B05D) and organic/organometallic chemistry classes (C07D, C07F) each carry only a handful of families out of the 78 tracked. That imbalance suggests narrower claim opportunities around outgassing-resistant coatings, carbon-film post-treatment for line edge roughness, and organometallic resist precursor chemistry, where filing density is low relative to the field's core. Low filing density in these pockets should be verified manually rather than assumed to be genuinely open, since it may also reflect narrower commercial interest rather than true white space.
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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.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
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.