Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT) and Veeco Instruments, Inc. (VECO) are two prominent players in the semiconductor industry. AMAT provides material engineering solutions for semiconductor chips to electronic manufacturers of flat panel displays, solar photovoltaic cells, and modules. The company also supplies equipment to produce coatings for flexible electronics, packaging, and other applications. In comparison, VECO provides process equipment solutions to support the production of high-tech microelectronic devices such as LEDs, power electronics, HDDs, MEMS, wireless devices, and semiconductors worldwide. It serves customers in the HB-LED, solar, data storage, semiconductor, scientific research, and industrial markets.
Despite the global chip shortage, the semiconductor industry delivered a 26.8% year-over-year sales growth in January 2022. As 70% of the neon, a major component used to operate industrial lasers in the semiconductor manufacturing process, comes from Ukraine, the chip shortage is expected to last longer.
