[News] Peric Special Gases Drives China’s Tungsten Gas Push Amid Memory Boom and Rival Price Hikes

As US-China tech tensions escalate, Beijing’s controls on strategic minerals like tungsten are rattling the supply chain. Among these, tungsten hexafluoride (WF₆), made from high-purity tungsten powder and fluorine gas, spiked in early 2026, with Korean and Japanese suppliers hiking prices 70–90% for chipmakers, as previously reported by The Elec.

While China’s export curbs are widely seen as the root cause of the price surge, the memory boom stands to make the situation even tougher. As ijiwei notes, WF₆ plays an irreplaceable role in modern chip manufacturing, mainly in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes. It acts as the precursor gas for depositing high-purity tungsten films — a critical step for contact hole filling, interconnect layers, and DRAM capacitor structures.

Additionally, ijiwei explains that as 3D NAND stacks push toward 232-layer and 300-layer architectures, WF₆ consumption per wafer grows exponentially — and the same applies to sub-7nm logic chips, where high-purity WF₆ remains indispensable.

Against this backdrop, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Price Monitoring Center issued a bulletin in late February titled “Memory Chip Prices Continue to Rise and Pass Through to Downstream.” Notably, according to ijiwei, for the first time, the NDRC explicitly named WF₆ — alongside silicon wafers and metals — as a material whose price increases were providing cost support for the memory chip rally, a signal the industry widely read as an official acknowledgment of specialty chemicals as a structural force in the memory pricing chain.

From Domestic to Global: China’s WF₆ Surge

According to The Elec, over 80% of the world’s tungsten metal comes from China, but the WF₆ market is largely led by South Korean and Japanese suppliers, with China also contributing. The global chip industry consumes roughly 7,000–8,000 tonnes of WF₆ annually, with key producers including SK Specialty (2,000 tonnes/year), Foosung (900 tonnes), Japan’s Kanto Denka (1,400 tonnes), and China’s Peric (2,200 tonnes), the report notes.

China, meanwhile, is accelerating its push up the WF₆ value chain. As ijiwei notes, China’s domestic WF₆ self-sufficiency rate has surpassed 65%, with companies like Peric Special Gases and Haohua Gas achieving 6N-level purity and entering the supply chains of top-tier global wafer fabs.

The report further explains that high-end 6N+ products are essential for sub-7nm advanced logic chips and 3D NAND with over 200 layers, and are now key for capturing market share. Industrial-grade 3N–4N WF₆, on the other hand, is limited to photovoltaics or low-end chips, while 5N-grade products suit mainstream semiconductor chips from 14nm to 28nm logic or 3D NAND with fewer than 64 layers, the report notes.

According to ijiwei, Peric Special Gases pioneered a proprietary WF₆ synthesis process in 2007 using nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃), setting it apart from conventional methods. Today, the company runs 2,200 tonnes per year, offering products from 5N to 6N purity. It supplies top global clients like TSMC and Micron, while remaining the largest WF₆ provider for China’s domestic memory chip makers, the report adds.

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