EUV Pellicle Market - By Type (Single-Layer, Multi-Layer, CNT-Based), By Application (Logic, DRAM, NAND), By End User (TSMC, Samsung, Intel Foundry), By Region

The global EUV pellicle market size was USD 638.4 Million in 2025 and is expected to register a revenue CAGR of 14.4% during the forecast period. EUV pellicles are ultrathin membranes stretched over a rigid frame and mounted above an EUV photomask to intercept airborne particle contamination before it can land on the mask patterning surface. Without pellicle protection, a single 20-nanometre particle deposited on an EUV mask during repeated scanner exposure creates a printable defect that appears on every wafer exposed through that mask, requiring mask cleaning or replacement that interrupts production runs. EUV pellicles must transmit 13.5-nanometre EUV light at above 85 percent efficiency per pass, withstand sustained radiation flux from the plasma light source without degrading, and survive the thermal load of full-power EUV scanner operation without mechanical failure. The primary pellicle materials under development and commercialisation are silicon-based thin films, polysilicon membranes, and carbon nanotube network films. ASML, Mitsui Chemicals, and Shin-Etsu Chemical are the primary EUV pellicle developers, with ASML's own pellicle product being the first commercially deployed EUV pellicle for TSMC production use. The challenge of producing a free-standing membrane of 30 to 60 nanometre thickness across a 100 by 130-millimetre EUV mask frame without pinhole defects or stress-induced rupture represents one of the most demanding materials engineering requirements in semiconductor manufacturing.

The EUV pellicle market is driven by the transition to High-NA EUV lithography at Intel 14A and TSMC N2 nodes, where the tighter defect density requirements of leading-edge nodes make mask contamination protection more critical than at prior process generations, and by the increasing volume of EUV scanner installations globally that each require dedicated pellicle supply. TSMC began using ASML's EUV pellicle in production at its 5-nanometre node in 2021 after years of development, establishing the first commercial EUV pellicle revenue. The pellicle market is structurally small relative to EUV scanner revenue because each pellicle covers a single mask and masks are reused across thousands of wafer exposures, but the pellicle replacement frequency and the growing EUV mask count at advanced nodes create recurring consumable revenue. For instance, in March 2026, Mitsui Chemicals Inc., Japan, announced that its polysilicon EUV pellicle had completed TSMC qualification for N2 production use, becoming the second commercially qualified EUV pellicle supplier alongside ASML, with the qualification ending ASML's sole supply position and introducing competition that is expected to reduce pellicle pricing by 15 to 25 percent at volume. These are some of the key factors driving revenue growth of the market.

However, EUV pellicle development has been significantly slower than the EUV scanner deployment pace, with ASML shipping EUV scanners commercially since 2018 but production-qualified pellicles only becoming available at TSMC from 2021. The fundamental physics constraint on EUV pellicle performance is the trade-off between transmission efficiency and mechanical reliableness, where thinner films transmit more EUV light but rupture more readily under thermal cycling, and this trade-off has not yet been resolved at the transmission levels required for High-NA EUV without unacceptable throughput penalty. Carbon nanotube pellicles developed by Samsung and NTT Advanced Technology achieve above 90 percent EUV transmission at 3-nanometre film thickness but have not demonstrated the mechanical lifetime required for high-volume production. These factors substantially limit EUV pellicle market growth over the forecast period.