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How significant is retirement of Martin van den Brink from ASML?

kvas

kvas

Member
Martin was instrumental in the development of EUV technology and establishing ASML as the leader in lithography tools. Now with EUV hitting physical limits (e.g. shrinking focal depth, electron scattering in the resist) it seems that a visionary technical leader would make it more likely that the progress can continue, but Martin has retired and there's no new CTO. The new CEO also seems to be more of a business guy. Can this mean that in the long run, ASML's lead is in danger?

(I don't know that much about the industry, so this is an honest question)
 
I wouldn't think so. Lithography is just going to be of a relatively lower importance when materials and architecture are the main bottlenecks/opportunities for further scaling. This has been a trend since the late 90s and has become more and more true as time went on. As for ASML losing their litho lead, they could do nothing for the next decade and I doubt there would be anyone with a tool even comparable to those early 2018 EUV tools. And all indications are that their intent is to do anything but sitting still. As for a MVdB replacement being needed, you would assume they would have had a replacement lined up. But maybe he isn't fully out of the building yet, and that will come once he is fully retired. Either way ASML and their subcontractors are a village, with or without MVdB the story will go on.
 
nghanayem said:
As for a MVdB replacement being needed, you would assume they would have had a replacement lined up.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I would assume that, so I found it surprising that he announced his retirement (and my impression is that it was known for some time that he's going to retire soon but there was no particular urgency to do it now) before a replacement CTO can be announced. So I started wondering if maybe they are reconfiguring the company to be less about pushing the boundaries of what's possible and more about milking the existing EUV lead. OTOH, MVdB seemed more optimistic about the feasibility of Hyper-NA lately and that would mean that ASML has more innovation work cut out for them for another decade or so.
 
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