[Editor's Note] On the 20th, Merck announced 'Technology Innovation Based on Materials Intelligence Platform' at a press conference. Anand Nambiar, Senior Vice President and CCO of Merck's Electronics Business, who was in charge of the announcement, said that hundreds or thousands of ideas can be found through AI simulations, and product improvement time can be significantly shortened through virtual experiments. He said that through this, they are supporting all stages of semiconductors by collaborating with customers. Accordingly, our magazine interviewed Anand Nambiar, Senior Vice President of Merck, to hear about examples of investment and customer collaboration in Korea.


■ I want to know the situation regarding investment in Korea

Merck announced the Level Up program two years ago, and among them, it planned to invest 600 million euros in Korea.

A significant amount of that amount has been spent so far, and we plan to make appropriate investments and spend in areas where further investment is needed in the future.

In Korea, the company maintains 12 business locations and employs approximately 17,000 employees.

Merck's production expansion is growing through organic acquisitions.

■ I am curious about how you are collaborating with domestic semiconductor companies such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix.

Merck is a very unique company in the semiconductor materials industry.

This is because it is a company that provides products and processes necessary for each area by covering all stages required in the semiconductor process, including △lithography △deposition △CMP △etching △packaging.

Therefore, we provide a platform for all areas required by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, etc., related to semiconductor manufacturing production, and have the broadest portfolio.

Accordingly, our customers expect us to provide better combinations of solutions.

We support our customers in shortening the time from product production to launch and in rapidly increasing R&D and productivity.

So the areas where we've been collaborating with these customers are EUV, lithography, new types of metals, specialty gases for etching, and low GWP.

In addition, we are working to develop and provide a portfolio of lithography-related products that do not contain perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) for semiconductors.

Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are both leading companies in technology, including memory and, in the case of Samsung Electronics, foundry, so they are collaborating in various ways to solve the complex problems faced by leading companies.

■ There is a lot of discussion in Korea about the exception to the 52-hour workweek as a support measure for the semiconductor industry. Do you think that the 52-hour workweek exception will help strengthen semiconductor competitiveness?

That's a difficult question for me to answer.

It is clear that the industry needs to innovate much faster and more quickly, but this cannot be solved simply by increasing the working hours.

I think we can achieve this by making smart changes to the way we pursue innovation.

Merck is introducing something called Materials Intelligence.

In the past, the process of confirming what to fix through experiments and then confirming the results through further experiments was repeated, but these days, AI and AI simulation tools are used.

Through this, tens of thousands of cases are simulated from any design stage of development, and then appropriate ones are selected and moved on to the experimental stage.

Because we live in such an era, I think that while additional investment of time is important, we also need to become smarter in how we collaborate and pursue innovation within the ecosystem.

I also think that this should be a collaborative effort within the supply chain.