Leading chipmakers Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. announced plans to adopt ASML’s latest chipmaking machines in the next several years—and they also joined Intel in agreeing to a crucial technology change that could boost chip production on the new machines by 40 percent.
This signifies the semiconductor industry’s broader embrace of high NA EUV photolithography technology that can cost up to $400 million per machine and is only provided by the Dutch technology company ASML, Bloomberg reports. The technology would allow chip designers to implement even smaller features in potentially more powerful and efficient next-generation chips produced for AI data centers and consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
ASML’s EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography machines enable chipmakers to use powerful laser light to imprint patterns in silicon wafers, layer by layer, and gradually form the computer circuitry that makes silicon chips work. But improving such EUV technology has required finding more powerful sources of light with even shorter wavelengths capable of creating even smaller features on silicon wafers.
This has necessitated development of an incredibly complex system of lasers that is continually zapping molten tin into plasma with temperatures around 200,000° C, along with mirrors collecting light from the plasma and redirecting it into a “bus-size” lithography tool for projecting the intricate circuitry patterns onto the silicon wafers, ASML researchers wrote for IEEE Spectrum. ASML’s newest high-numerical-aperture (high NA) EUV machines use bigger mirrors and an improved optical system to more precisely collect and focus light.
South Korea’s Samsung plans to use ASML’s high NA EUV machines in producing memory chips by 2028. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s TSMC aims to use the technology for manufacturing the most advanced chips for its customers—including companies like AMD, Apple, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm—starting in 2030.