5 Must-Buy US Stocks to Buy Right Now

2. Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 111

Year-To-Date Performance: 54.80%

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) is one of the must-buy US stocks to buy right now. On April 8, Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) unveiled two new chipmaking systems, the Precision Selective Nitride PECVD and the Trillium ALD, for AI and high-performance computing, or HPC, chips. The company said that the new systems are engineered to help logic chip manufacturers build Gate-All-Around, or GAA, transistors at the 2nm process node and beyond.

Unlike older designs, GAA transistors wrap the gate material around all four sides of the current-carrying silicon nanosheets. This gives manufacturers far tighter control over electrical flow. Building these structures requires over 500 precise processing steps, which makes the tools used to execute each step critically important.

The company explained that the Precision Selective Nitride PECVD system deposits silicon nitride materials using a selective, bottom-up deposition process at lower temperatures. Its specific job is to maintain the integrity of trench isolation, which is the insulating barriers between transistors, during subsequent manufacturing steps. On the other hand, the Trillium ALD system handles the deposition of metal gate stacks inside the GAA transistors. It integrates multiple metal deposition steps onto a single platform, maintains high vacuum throughout to prevent contamination, and provides angstrom-scale thickness control for each layer of the gate stack. According to the company, both systems are already in use by leading foundry manufacturers working on 2nm and advanced nodes.

Applied Materials, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAT) is a semiconductor equipment company that provides manufacturing systems, services, and software used in the production of electronic devices. It supplies tools for processes such as deposition, etching, polishing, and inspection, which are used to fabricate semiconductor chips, display panels, and related technologies.