With the rapid development of the economy, the demand for chips from domestic technology companies has surged, and people have begun to understand equipment such as photolithography machines. People may wonder why some companies can design high-end chips. For example, Huawei's Kirin chips are as good as Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, but they cannot produce them themselves and need OEMs. This involves a kind of "stuck neck" technology, photolithography machine. Let’s discuss the reasons why the lithography machine market is in short supply.
EUV lithography is also called extreme ultraviolet lithography. The production technology is difficult and the economic cost is high. High-performance chips require the use of EUV lithography machines for production. Data shows that the Dutch ASML company only shipped 26 lithography machines in 2019, and the price of an EUV lithography machine is about US$120 million. High-performance lithography machines will take a lot of time to transport, install and debug. Although the market is in short supply, in order to ensure production effects, the time and economic cost of transportation, installation, debugging and operation are large, and the effects cannot be achieved like those of consumer products such as mobile phones and computers. Mass production.
Another reason is that the production of EUV lithography machines uses many U.S. patents, so the successful sale of a lithography machine requires a U.S. license. As we all know, our country has been blocked by the United States in this type of high-performance technology. It is currently not possible to produce commercial EUV lithography machines in China, and there is an urgent need to introduce advanced foreign lithography machines. However, restrictions in this area by the United States have made the domestic market short of EUV lithography machines.
Given the actual EUV production status in my country and the blockade of foreign technology, it is conceivable that EUV lithography machines are in short supply in the Chinese market. EUV lithography machines can be seen as a technical means to restrict other countries, and long-term introduction is not a long-term path. In order for the country to have a place for high-end technology in this area, scientific researchers still need to work hard and get out of the foreign blockade. of a road.