As a capital-intensive and technology-intensive industry, the semiconductor industry has a lot of advanced technology and resources in the hands of a very small number of giants, and it is actually very difficult for latecomers to overtake in the corner, after all, the semiconductor industry is closely related to many fields.
Looking at the global semiconductor foundry field, the manufacturers standing at the head of the industry are basically only TSMC and Samsung, and they want to continue to achieve a breakthrough in the wafer process, and they must rely heavily on advanced EUV lithography machines, but the only company that can produce EUV lithography machines is the Dutch ASML company.
Due to the lack of EUV lithography machines in Chinese mainland semiconductor foundries, the level of wafer process will lag behind a lot, which is also a dilemma that we cannot overcome at present.
However, from the current situation, EUV lithography machine seems to be weakened by the entire industry, because the major semiconductor industry giants are looking at new areas, and photonic chips may become the main direction of attack in the future.
According to media reports, the Netherlands recently announced plans to invest 1.1 billion euros to develop photonic circuits, which is to seize the future semiconductor market and create the next ASML.
In addition, led by the German giant Q.ANT, 14 technology giants jointly established the "PhoQuant" project, which is part of the "Quantum Technology - From Basic Research to Marketization" project, which mainly develops photonic chip circuit technology.
For a series of actions of these giant companies, some foreign media said that this is equivalent to the default development prospects of photonic chips, and to a certain extent, they recognize the trend of replacing electronic circuits with photonic chips.
According to foreign media, as long as the photonic chip completes the technical verification, it will be output to the industrial community, and the manufacture of the photonic chip does not rely on the EUV lithography machine, so the role of the EUV lithography machine will continue to weaken.
The reason why the photonic chip does not need an EUV lithography machine is because the photonic circuit is fundamentally different from the electronic circuit, and the EUV lithography machine mainly increases the number of transistors by reducing the characteristic size of the transistor, and its operation mainly relies on electron migration.
Photonic chips are completely different, and their operations rely on light waves as the carrier of data operations, so the basic logic is 108,000 miles apart, and there is no direct connection with the EUV lithography machine, which is also the main reason why photonic chips are regarded as the next generation of semiconductor technology.
I have to say that this is simply a dramatic scene, to know that the EUV lithography machine is the crystallization of high-end technology in Europe, but now European countries are developing photonic circuit technology to replace ASML's EUV lithography machine through the next generation of technology.
But if you think about it, you will find that although ASML is a European company, the production of EUV lithography machines cannot be mastered independently, because most of the core devices still need to be supplied by the United States, which is why ASML cannot be shipped freely.
On the other hand, Europe's power of optoelectronic chip technology is also to be able to master the electronic chip manufacturing technology, because although Europe has the ability to produce EUV lithography machines, it does not have the industry's leading electronic chip manufacturing technology.
In fact, in the field of photonic chips, not only Europe is trying to overcome, the United States as early as 1991 to list photonics as a national development focus, in 2021 the United States led the establishment of a national optical and photonics core group, and invested heavily in support of photonic technology development.
However, China has not shown weakness in this field, for example, Zhongke Xintong Company has been preparing to build an internationally leading photonic chip production line, in addition, the mainland has successfully developed the first photonic chip of orbital angular momentum waveguide, and Huawei has also made some breakthroughs in this field.
From the perspective of the future development trend of photonic chips, the mainland may take this opportunity to achieve overtaking in the corner, but in the short term, photonic chips and electronic chips will still be in a stage of coexistence, but in the long run, photonic chips will become the mainstream of the industry will be the trend of the times.
At that time, in the semiconductor field, there may really be no EUV lithography machine. What do you think about this, welcome to comment, like, share.