ASML has the best lithography equipment on the market. Of course, it’s so expensive that chip makers will suffer

ASML owns the most advanced chip manufacturing equipment on the planet. This company from the Netherlands has dominated the lithography machine market in recent years with its ultraviolet (UVE) equipment, but just over a month ago His leadership became even stronger. thanks to the delivery of its first second-generation EUV machine. Intel has it at its Hillsborough plant in the US, and it’s even more advanced than conventional EUV equipment.

Using this high-aperture UV lithography equipment (EUV High-NA (abbreviation in English) semiconductor manufacturers can theoretically produce integrated circuits beyond the 3 nm barrier. To make this possible, ASML implemented a very advanced optical architecture that has an aperture of 0.55 compared to the 0.33 found in first-generation EUV lithography equipment.

This improvement in optics allows higher resolution patterns to be transferred to the wafer, making it possible to manufacture chips using more advanced integration technologies than those currently used in 3nm nodes. However, that is not all. And that’s it ASML also improved the mechanical systems who are responsible for processing the plates with the goal of making a single high aperture UVE machine capable of producing more than 200 plates per hour.

ASML’s UVE High-NA lithography equipment costs twice as much as its predecessor

A first-generation extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine contains more than 100,000 parts, 3,000 cables, 40,000 bolts and a full two kilometers of electrical connections, and ASML’s new high-aperture EUV machines are even more complex. In fact, one of these latest pieces of equipment costs about $300 million, while a first-generation EUV machine costs about $150 million.

ASML intends to supply its customers with 600 deep ultraviolet (UVP) lithography machines and 90 UVE lithography machines annually starting in 2025. It’s an ambitious plan, no doubt, but it’s believable because it’s reasonable to assume that the engineers at this company know the technology behind their UVP and UVE machines inside out. What is not so clear is that it will also be able to deliver annually starting in 2028, no less 20 high-aperture UV lithographs.

The production of each of these machines entails enormous technical challenges, but there is another parameter that we should not overlook: its cost. Jeff Koch, a semiconductor industry analyst who joined ASML just two months ago, says that despite the reduced complexity that comes with using a high-aperture machine, single sample High-NA hardware results in significantly more cost than hardware double pattern of conventional EUV machines.

Note before moving forward: the multiple sample is a lithography technique that involves transferring a pattern to a plate in multiple passes with an objective increase the resolution of the lithographic process. According to Koch, this increase in the cost of manufacturing integrated circuits, along with the high price of each high-aperture UVE lithography equipment, reduces the potential interest of these machines for some ASML customers, who may have difficulty amortizing the investment. .

Roger Dassen, ASML’s chief financial officer, disagrees with Jeff Koch’s conclusions. In an interview he gave to Bits&Chips, this executive claims to avoid double and even quadruple patterns This significantly reduces the complexity of advanced chip manufacturing processes, making ASML’s new UVE High-NA equipment the most cost-effective solution available on the market. It will be interesting to see if TSMC and Samsung follow in Intel’s footsteps and also bet on these devices in the short term. Let’s see.

Cover Image | ASML

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