4 Companies Offering Alternatives To Japan's Ajinomoto Abf Material

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4 Companies Offering Alternatives to Japan's Ajinomoto ABF Material

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According to a report from China Report, MIT Technology Review's newsletter, Chip companies from the US and China are developing new materials to reduce reliance on a Japanese monopoly. It won’t be easy.

Inside most laptop and data center chips today, there’s a tiny component called ABF. It's a thin insulating layer around the wires that conduct electricity. And over 90% of the materials around the world used to make this insulator are produced by a single Japanese company named Ajinomoto, more commonly known for commercializing the seasoning powder MSG in 1909.

Ajinomoto figured out in the 1990s that a chemical by-product of MSG production can be used to make insulator films, which proved to be essential for high-performance chips. And in the 30 years since, the company has totally dominated ABF supply. The product—Ajinomoto Build-up Film—is even named after it.

Thintronics, a California-based company that’s developing a new insulating material it hopes could challenge Ajinomoto’s monopoly. It already has a lab product with impressive attributes but still needs to test it in manufacturing reality.

Beyond Thintronics,Within China, at least three companies are also developing similar insulator products. Xi’an Tianhe Defense Technology (中文名：西安天和防务技术股份有限公司), which makes products for both military and civilian use, introduced its take on the material, which it calls QBF, in 2023; Zhejiang Wazam New Material (中文名：浙江华正新材料股份有限公司) and Guangdong Hinno-tech (中文名：广东盈骅新材料科技有限公司) have also announced similar products in recent years. But all of them are still going through industrial testing with chipmakers, and few have recent updates on how well these materials have performed in mass-production settings.

However, even if semiconductor companies are able to find alternative materials that perform better than ABF, there’s still an uphill battle to convince the industry to adopt it en masse.

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