With the development of modern science and technology, the importance of chips is also increasing, and it can even be said that it has become a core product and strategic resource. In today's chip production process in the field of silicon-based chips, the lithography machine can be said to be one of the important equipment that cannot be bypassed.
Advanced chips with 7nm and below processes basically need to use EUV lithography machines, and EUV lithography machines are currently only manufactured and shipped on a large scale by ASML in the Netherlands, and only Canon's latest 5nm imprint equipment can be used for chip manufacturing below 7nm, but this equipment has not yet begun large-scale mass production.
Previously, the United States, together with Japan and the Netherlands, restricted the shipment of semiconductor equipment, especially lithography machines, which were basically unable to ship lithography machines with processes below 38nm. Not only that, judging from the current situation, the United States is considering expanding the export control of lithography machines, and even including the parts and maintenance services of lithography machines in the restrictions, so some American media said: The lithography machine incident is about to be settled.
In recent years, the rapid development of China's chips is obvious to all, the Chinese market has become one of the world's largest chip consumer markets, driven by strong market demand, more and more companies have begun to enter the chip track, which has also promoted the development of China's chip technology and production capacity.
However, it is very complicated to build a complete chip industry chain, especially in the field of high-end chips, the lithography machine alone requires more than 5,000 parts supply chain manufacturers to provide various parts, of which the number of parts is as high as tens of thousands.
For a long time, domestic chip foundry companies have mainly purchased ASML's lithography equipment, and some lithography equipment comes from Nikon, Canon and other Japanese equipment manufacturers. Judging from the public data, the number of lithography machine equipment we imported from ASML in 2023 will exceed 400 units.
This also means that if the United States really restricts the shipment and maintenance services of lithography machine parts, then the lithography machine equipment we buy at a high price will face the emergence of "scrap iron" or a significant shortening of service life. This is naturally unacceptable, so many Chinese companies have said that if the purchased lithography machine cannot be used, then ASML will be asked to buy back these equipment.
After all, after Huawei was included in the "entity list", many Chinese companies realized that they had to give up their illusions about American and Western companies, and this incident once again confirmed the mistake of the idea of "making is better than buying". Therefore, domestic equipment manufacturers are also accelerating the localization of semiconductor equipment such as lithography machines.
Nowadays, many Chinese enterprises or universities have invested a lot of money and manpower in the research and development of lithography machines, especially advanced EUV lithography machine technology, and have also made many technological breakthroughs in this field.
In fact, in addition to lithography machines, we also have a lot of development in other semiconductor equipment fields, for example, in terms of ion implanters, we have achieved 28nm full process coverage, you must know that ion implanters, lithography machines, etching machines and coating machines are known as the four most important core equipment in chip manufacturing.
This also means that in terms of semiconductor equipment, the performance and technological breakthroughs of Chinese companies have exceeded many people's predictions. Judging from this development, it is only a matter of time before we want to complete the localization of semiconductor equipment, and from this point of view, the lithography machine incident is indeed about to fall.
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