A mask shop is a factory which manufactures photomasks for use in the semiconductor industry. There are two distinct types found in the trade. Captive mask shops are in-house operations owned by the biggest semiconductor corporations, while merchant mask shops make masks for most of the industry.

Merchant mask shops will produce photomasks for a variety of integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), foundries or optical device companies in addition to providing excess cavity work and re-pellicle for captive mask shops.

The company structure is similar to that of any medium-sized manufacture and has the following unique departments or mask makers:

• Sales Customer / customer services
• Front end data prep
• Facilities maintenance - plant & environment
• Engineering - equipment maintenance
• Engineering - process, inspection & metrology
• Quality assurance
• Shipping & dispatching

Photomask market

The worldwide photomask production market was $3.1 billion in 2013. Almost half of market attributed to captive mask shops (in-house mask shops of major chipmakers).^[1]

Infrastructure (technical and financial)

The costs of creating new mask shop for 180 nm processes were estimated in 2005 as $40 million, and for 130 nm - more than $100 million.^[2] In 2013 cost of new 28 nm mask shop was estimated at $110 – 140 million.^[3]

Future

As technology shrinks, the cost to mask shops increase and the product turn around time grow longer as well.