Notice Concerning the Establishment of LINTEC Tsukuba Innovative Creation Center

LINTEC Corporation hereby announces that the Board of Directors of the Company resolved at the meeting held today to establish LINTEC Tsukuba Innovative Creation Center within the Tsukuba Central site of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

At the Center, the Company will install production equipment for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography pellicles, membranes capturing particles and contaminants essential for producing fine circuitry in advanced semiconductors to advance R&D efforts and initiatives toward full-scale production.

Overview
Official name: Tsukuba Innovative Creation Center
Scheduled opening: June 1, 2026
Location: 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki, Japan (AIST Tsukuba Central)
Employees: Approx. 30 full-time employees (planned)
*The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
https://www.aist.go.jp/index_en.html
*The Semiconductor Frontier Research Center of AIST
https://unit.aist.go.jp/sfrc/index_en.html

Background
EUV lithography equipment is used to print fine circuit patterns in advanced semiconductors. As lithography equipment evolves, pellicles become necessary to prevent foreign matter from adhering to a photomask, a master template of circuit patterns, and must be heat-resistant, durable, and EUV transparent.

The LINTEC Group has been developing carbon nanotube (CNT) pellicles through collaboration between its R&D center in Texas, which specializes in CNT sheet development, and its R&D division in Japan. When establishing the essential technologies in 2023, the Company and AIST’s Semiconductor Frontier Research Center launched a joint research program to establish the technology to evaluate pellicle for EUV lithography and the semiconductor manufacturing process technology for mid-end processing, and developed CNT pellicle production equipment the following year. Since then, both parties have continued to focus on developing pellicle products, improving pellicle quality, and optimizing manufacturing conditions and other aspects of mass production processes. The Company decided to establish the Center within AIST Tsukuba Central to serve as its new R&D and production hub.

The Center facility will host the equipment the Company developed for CNT pellicle production. The Company will begin supplying full-size pellicle samples to customers, progressively introduce the equipment for inspections and necessary for supplying. While continuing comprehensive joint research with AIST Semiconductor Frontier Research Center on core nanolithography technologies for next generation semiconductor manufacturing, the Company will collect and use any feedback on its CNT pellicles through customer evaluation of its samples to accelerate its efforts toward further product development and full-scale production.