Headquartered in Germany, Merck is a global supplier to the semiconductor market, offering high-purity chemicals and wafer fabrication materials. In the US and Canada, the company is referred to as EMD. Merck's portfolio diversified significantly after the acquisitions of Intermolecular and Versum Materials. Merck's Applied Solutions division supplies technologies for water quality testing alongside its widely used lab-based water purifiers and dispensing systems. Merck is actively incorporating digital and ultrafiltration technologies into its lab & clinical water systems to provide cloud-based quality monitoring as well as for the production of ultrapure water. Its electronics division provides a variety of semiconductor materials, such as photoresists for photolithography; high purity wet process chemicals; speciality gases; materials for chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and atomic layer deposition (ALD); and spin-on dielectric materials. Alongside these materials, the company also provides integrated circuit packaging for the finals stage of fabrication.

In December 2021, Merck announced a joint venture with Palantir Technologies which will be named Athinia and work to work to resolve semiconductor industry supply chain issues by using artificial intelligence and data collaboration. In January 2022, the company announced a new $28 million factory in Chandler, Arizona, which will contribute to its gas and chemicals delivery system businesses for semiconductor manufacturing. The factory will focus on production of its GASGUARD and CHEMGUARD product lines, with operations expected to start by the end of 2022.

In June 2022, Merck announced a contract to open a production plant complex in Zhangjiagang, China to supply of semiconductor materials, including thin film materials and electronic-grade gases. The company will invest $83 million in the project over an unspecified time period.