SK Hynix ran into issues earlier this month at one of its DRAM production fabs, due to impurities in zirconium high-k materials used in the production. The materials were supplied by SK Trichem and due to the impurities, the equipment at SK Hynix fab ended up leading to increased pressure in some of the manufacturing equipment and forced the production to be shut down. All the equipment at the fab had to be cleaned and some even replaced due to the impurities in the material.

The zirconium high-k material is deposited at the atomic level, atop the capacitors of the DRAM, as a precursor. Any impurities in such a material would lead to failed DRAM chips, but apparently there was no damage to the DRAM wafer production in this case, according to SK Hynix. The company will be ordering replacement material from two other suppliers for the time being and SK Trichem should be supplying a fresh batch by the end of the month.