Build China’s ASML

[user nl]

“An ASML EUV machine contains over 100,000 components sourced from 5,000 suppliers [while] ASML serves merely as the integrator,” according to the article by SMIC co-founder Wang Yangyuan, Empyrean chairman Liu Weiping, YMTC chairman Chen Nanxiang and Naura chairman Zhao Jinrong and professors from Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The article, “Building an independent and controllable integrated circuit industry system”, appeared in the February issue of the Chinese journal Science and Technology Review. The online version was published on Wednesday.

EUV is used to print nanoscale patterns onto silicon wafers for cutting-edge chips. ASML has been barred from exporting EUV machines to China.

While the article noted that China had made “breakthroughs” in EUV laser, dual-stage platform and optical systems, “integrating them with national efforts is a problem that must be solved during the 15th five-year plan period”, which runs up to 2030.

https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3...ational-drive-build-chinas-asml-amid-us-curbs

 

[Barnsley]

https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/3...ational-drive-build-chinas-asml-amid-us-curbs

“An ASML EUV machine contains over 100,000 components sourced from 5,000 suppliers [while] ASML serves merely as the integrator,” according to the article by SMIC co-founder Wang Yangyuan, Empyrean chairman Liu Weiping, YMTC chairman Chen Nanxiang and Naura chairman Zhao Jinrong and professors from Tsinghua University and Peking University.

The article, “Building an independent and controllable integrated circuit industry system”, appeared in the February issue of the Chinese journal Science and Technology Review. The online version was published on Wednesday.

EUV is used to print nanoscale patterns onto silicon wafers for cutting-edge chips. ASML has been barred from exporting EUV machines to China.

While the article noted that China had made “breakthroughs” in EUV laser, dual-stage platform and optical systems, “integrating them with national efforts is a problem that must be solved during the 15th five-year plan period”, which runs up to 2030.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/eas...conomy-gdp-target-15th-five-year-plan-5969961

BEIJING: China set its 2026 economic growth target at 4.5 to 5 per cent, marking the first downgrade since 2023, according to the government work report delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Thursday (Mar 5).

The target was set at “around 5 per cent” for the past three years.

The move signals a more cautious outlook as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with deflationary pressures, a protracted property downturn and heightened trade tensions with the United States.

4.5 to 5 per cent is also the lowest growth target since 1991.

“Rarely in many years have we encountered such a grave and complex landscape, where external shocks and challenges were intertwined with domestic difficulties and tough policy choices,” Li said.

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This is actually quite interesting considering the talk on expanding expenditure in areas , specifically Semicon related

 

[user nl]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/eas...conomy-gdp-target-15th-five-year-plan-5969961

BEIJING: China set its 2026 economic growth target at 4.5 to 5 per cent, marking the first downgrade since 2023, according to the government work report delivered by Premier Li Qiang at the opening session of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Thursday (Mar 5).

The target was set at “around 5 per cent” for the past three years.

The move signals a more cautious outlook as the world’s second-largest economy grapples with deflationary pressures, a protracted property downturn and heightened trade tensions with the United States.

4.5 to 5 per cent is also the lowest growth target since 1991.

“Rarely in many years have we encountered such a grave and complex landscape, where external shocks and challenges were intertwined with domestic difficulties and tough policy choices,” Li said.

------

This is actually quite interesting considering the talk on expanding expenditure in areas , specifically Semicon related

Yes, while the Chinese population decreases since 2022 and Trump fights the energy/oil wars of the last century, China knows it needs EUV-technology to keep up in the 21st century wars around the new oil:

https://moderndiplomacy.eu/2025/08/...hips-controls-the-world-the-silicon-cold-war/
The great power struggle of the twenty-first century is no longer waged in battlefields or oil markets. It is now fought in the microscopic circuits of semiconductors. Its value was once dismissed and they were seen only as the invisible backbone of consumer electronics and chips but they have now become the front line of geopolitical rift.What began as a trade war of tariffs and accusations has evolved into something more dangerous: a full-fledged technology war, built on a deceptively small yet strategically profound object, the semiconductor. As they say, “whoever controls the chips, controls the world.”

Regarding their energy supply it is amazing what they are building:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/business/china-solar-tibetan-plateau.html

On the Tibetan Plateau, nearly 10,000 feet high, solar panels stretch to the horizon and cover an area seven times the size of Manhattan. They soak up sunlight that is much brighter than at sea level because the air is so thin.

Wind turbines dot nearby ridgelines and stand in long rows across arid, empty plains above the occasional sheep herder with his flock. They capture night breezes, balancing the daytime power from the solar panels. Hydropower dams sit where rivers spill down long chasms at the edges of the plateau. And high-voltage power lines carry all this electricity to businesses and homes more than 1,000 miles away.

China is building an enormous network of clean energy industries on the Tibetan Plateau, the world’s highest. The intention is to harness the region’s bright sunshine, cold temperatures and sky-touching altitude to provide low-cost, renewable energy. The result is enough renewable energy to provide the plateau with nearly all of the power it needs, including for data centers used in China’s artificial intelligence development.

While China still burns as much coal as the rest of the world combined, last month President Xi Jinping made a stunning pledge. Speaking before the United Nations, he said for the first time that the country would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions across its economy and would expand renewable energy sixfold in coming years. It was a moment of global significance for the nation that is currently the world’s biggest polluter.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysi...re-than-a-third-of-chinas-gdp-growth-in-2025/
In 2025, China achieved another new record of wind and solar capacity additions. The country installed a total of 315GW solar and 119GW wind capacity, adding more solar and two times as much wind as the rest of the world combined.
Clean energy accounted for 90% of investment in power generation, with solar alone covering 50% of that. As a result, non-fossil power made up 42% of total power generation, up from 39% in 2024.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/19/china-population-falls-again-birthrate-record-low

 

[Fred Chen]

Well, taking SMEE as a reference, they're not learning or deploying fast enough.

 

[Fred Chen]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1953062116136751510

 

[user nl]

Well, taking SMEE as a reference, they're not learning or deploying fast enough.

Yes, it is though to do all this EUV-system integration with technology sourced from only your own country.

China has the advantage though that EUV-technology works, also economically for HVM, something ASML and the western world didn't know some 40 years ago when the first baby steps were set:
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-fab

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/...-HVM-Conference/10.1117/12.2572271.full?SSO=1

There are many smart people in China and now that they have decided they simply need EUV for "existential survival", they will get something going the coming 5 years. In the West it was clear at some point that all resources (e.g. with financial support by INTEL, SAMSUNG and TSMC) needed to go to ASML to pull this off.

Now China needs to organize this not as a competition within their country, like solar, EV, AI, but as a single integration project. Perhaps under the leadership of Huawei, with HVM by 2028-2030?
https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/made-in-china-euv-machine-targets-ai-chip-output-by-2028/

I do not expect many western fabs to buy Chinese made EUV-tools, so ASML will probably still serve the western market as a monopolist for decades.....

 

[Fred Chen]

Yes, it is though to do all this EUV-system integration with technology sourced from only your own country.

China has the advantage though that EUV-technology works, also economically for HVM, something ASML and the western world didn't know some 40 years ago when the first baby steps were set:
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-fab

https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/...-HVM-Conference/10.1117/12.2572271.full?SSO=1

There are many smart people in China and now that they have decided they simply need EUV for "existential survival", they will get something going the coming 5 years. In the West it was clear at some point that all resources (e.g. with financial support by INTEL, SAMSUNG and TSMC) needed to go to ASML to pull this off.

Now China needs to organize this not as a competition within their country, like solar, EV, AI, but as a single integration project. Perhaps under the leadership of Huawei, with HVM by 2028-2030?
https://asiatimes.com/2025/12/made-in-china-euv-machine-targets-ai-chip-output-by-2028/

I do not expect many western fabs to buy Chinese made EUV-tools, so ASML will probably still serve the western market as a monopolist for decades.....

China has been doing EUV research and following ongoing EUV developments, although I don't know if they have been attending the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conferences in person, or if they're banned.

But they should know about stochastics. And that TSMC uses multipatterning.

(They should improve their multipatterning, in that regard.)

https://twitter.com/x/status/1953062116136751510

To have a NIL platform out already is a hushed milestone. True, that it still needs to be improved to more competitive specs, but it is out of the gate.

 

[user nl]

China has been doing EUV research and following ongoing EUV developments, although I don't know if they have been attending the SPIE Advanced Lithography Conferences in person, if they're banned.

But they should know about stochastics. And that TSMC uses multipatterning.

(They should improve their multipatterning, in that regard.)

To have a NIL platform out already is a hushed milestone. True, that it still needs to be improved to more competitive specs, but it is out of the gate.

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nanoimprint-lithography-stop-saying
My impression is from reading e.g. this story is that NIL will not replace EUV for leading edge lithography.

What Huawei is working on is laser-based EUV technology a la ASML, but prehaps leaving out the large CO2 lasers? And perhaps replacing this all with solid state laser technology. China is very good in solid state laser technology.

Note that ASML has now, for the 800-1000 Watt EUV sources, also partially moved to hybrid 1 um solid state -10 um CO2 laser technology in their 3-laser droplet source technology.

I would not be surprised if ASML would also move to complete solid state laser technology at some point after 2030. Solid state lasers are much more energy efficient compared to CO2 gas lasers. ASML is also trying to get the energy budget of EUV lithography under better control.......


https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ae4998/meta

Abstract
Picosecond (ps) laser pre-pulses offer a promising route to optimize tin droplet targets for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources. We numerically simulate the deformation of a 23 μm-radius liquid Sn droplet induced by a ps laser pulse (λ = 1064 nm) across a range of pulse energies. The simulations reveal that an intense shock wave launched into the droplet drives a cavitation cavity at the droplet’s center for all pulse energies. However, a secondary spallation cavity near the rear surface appears only when the laser power density exceeds ∼2.73 × 1013 W cm−2, corresponding to a shock pressure threshold of about 0.8 GPa. Below this threshold, only a single central cavity forms, whereas above threshold the droplet develops two cavities (central and rear), resulting in a highly deformed acorn-like morphology. In addition, the simulations quantify the scaling of key expansion parameters, such as the axial and radial dimensions of the expanding liquid shell and its velocity, with respect to pulse energy. These results provide quantitative criteria for cavitation and spallation in laser-driven droplets and can guide the design of optimal pre-pulse conditions for EUV sources.

AFFILIATIONS

Key Laboratory of Atomic and Molecular Physics & Functional Material of Gansu Province, College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, People’s Republic of China

 

[user nl]

See also here:
https://www.trendforce.com/news/202...y-u-s-develops-laser-to-boost-euv-efficiency/
https://euvlitho.com/2024/P35.pdf

It seems Trumpf (ASML's laser supplier) is also working on Thulium based solid state laser technology:
https://optics.org/news/13/2/26

 

[Fred Chen]

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nanoimprint-lithography-stop-saying
My impression is from reading e.g. this story is that NIL will not replace EUV for leading edge lithography.

NIL is said to target < 10 nm features. The biggest issue is the mask or template, it has tighter defect, placement, roughness, and CD specs than scanner masks, and it also has limited lifetime. The authors did not understand that the SADP is for the template not the wafer. Throughput is also something that needs to improve. Overlay is <2.5 nm but needs to improve further.

An added opportunity for NIL is the possibility to pattern the successive dual-damascene via and trench layers as one layer: https://www.kioxia.com/en-jp/rd/technology/topics/topics-42.html

I don't expect DNP is supplying the NIL template for the Chinese system, so whoever the domestic supplier turns out to be has their work cut out for them.