Beijing may not be far from having its own EUV technology for chip production

The more the United States and the West try to block Chinese technological development with limiting measures, the more China will be forced to accelerate the pace of independent innovation. This trend has been repeated many times, as in the case of chips, and now it may manifest itself in the field of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for semiconductors. Michael Frank, a member of the 2430 Group, is also convinced that “America should embrace interdependence as a weapon against China.”

According to a research paper published in the sixth issue of this year's China Laser (March 2025), Chinese researchers have created an experimental platform for EUV light sources with internationally competitive operating parameters.

In other words, China may not be that far behind in the domestic development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for high-end chip production.

Experimental platform for extreme ultraviolet plasma light sources driven by solid-state lasers - China Laser

The team, from the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was led by Lin Nan, previously head of light source technology at ASML in the Netherlands.

ASML, the world's only manufacturer of EUV machines, which are critical for producing chips with nodes smaller than seven nanometers, has been banned from selling its most advanced models to China since 2019 due to pressure from the United States.

The paper points out that although the advantages of the carbon dioxide laser drive technology used by ASML are significant, Lin Nan's team recently found that the solid-state laser drive technology, developed over the past decade, also has many advantages and could be of great importance to China's independent research and development of EUV lithography and its key devices and technologies.

On the established experimental platform of the laser-guided plasma ultraviolet light source (LPP-EUV), the Chinese team has exceeded the high conversion efficiency, and the results obtained are at the top international and national levels.The researchers also estimate that the theoretical maximum conversion efficiency of the experimental platform of the light source may be close to 6 percent, and they plan to add further research to optimize the theoretical and experimental results.

Shortly after this research was made public, in a speech earlier this month, ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet said that “[China] could always produce some EUV light sources, but it will take many years.”

Who is Lin Nan?

According to the paper, Lin Nan was a research and development scientist and head of light source technology in ASML's research and development department in the Netherlands.

Before joining qiesta company, he studied under 2023 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Anne L'Huillier, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and received funding from the European Union's Marie Curie Scholars program

Nan Lin, researcher, Shanghai Institute for Precision Optical Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Laser

Nan Lin returned to China in 2021and is now a researcher, doctoral director and deputy director of the National Key Laboratory of Ultra-intense Laser Science and Technology at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Machinery of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he founded a research group on advanced lithography, which is responsible for the research work in this article.

Mastering the new technology of extreme ultraviolet light sources is a prerequisite for the Chinese semiconductor industry to radically solve the “bottleneck” problem, and Chinese researchers, represented by Lin Nan, are accumulating innovative potential in this field.

As mentioned above, Lin Nan has long been engaged in the research and development of light sources for IC manufacturing lithography and chip volume sensing and engineering applications, with more than 10 years of large-scale IC manufacturing and measurement equipment research, project development and management, to the point of applying for/authorizing more than 110 international patents in the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries.

In 2021, Lin Nan returned to China full-time to join the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aiming to meet the country's needs, and quickly built the R&D platform for extreme ultraviolet light sources.

The paper by Lin Nan's team claims to have successfully developed the LPP-EUV light source, a key component of a lithography machine that could be a major breakthrough for China's semiconductor industry.

The results were published as “Experimental study of EUV radiation characteristics of 1 μm laser-excited solid Sn-target plasma” in the sixth issue of China Laser, which was chosen as the cover article. Lasers in China

“The experimental platform for the LPP-EUV light source created (by Lin Nan's team) and the research results on the new mechanism of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) generation by laser plasma carried out with the help of this platform provide the technical support for the localized research and development of the solid-state laser-driven LPP-EUV lithography light source, which is of great importance for China to carry forward the research and development of EUV lithography and its key devices and technologies independently.”

The most central subsystem in EUV lithography is the laser plasma EUV light source (LPP), and one of the main challenges in its development is improving energy conversion efficiency (EC).

Carbon dioxide lasers have been chosen as the light source for commercial LPP-EUV lithography sources because of their ability to simultaneously achieve high-power, high refrequency, and narrow pulse width laser outputs and their Sn plasma excitation with high EC (>5%).

However, Linnan's team pointed out that recent studies have shown that the CE of the 1 μm solid-state laser excitation of Sn plasma is likely to meet the technical specifications of the light source for EUV lithography.

Moreover, pulsed solid-state lasers have reached kilowatt power after nearly a decade of rapid development and are expected to reach the level of 10,000 watts in the future; they are expected to replace CO2 lasers as the light source for the new generation of light sources for LPP-EUV lithography due to their compact size and high electro-optical conversion efficiency (~20%).

For this reason, the development of solid-state laser-driven LPP-EUV light sources is of great importance for China to independently pursue the research and development of EUV lithography and its key devices and technologies.

America should embrace weaponized interdependence against China

The more the United States and the West try to block Chinese technological development with limiting measures, the more China will be forced to accelerate the pace of independent innovation.

This trend has been repeated many times, as in the case of chips, and now it may manifest itself in the field of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography for semiconductors.

Michael Frank, a member of the 2430 Group, is also convinced that “America should embrace interdependence as a weapon against China.”

Michael Frank writes for the Project on Technology and National Security that US export controls on AI chips under the last two administrations have produced negative, unintended consequences.

These include the acceleration of China’s native development of technology and a simultaneous loss of US leverage over China’s behavior. A more effective strategy would be to allow exports of some critical technology that would foster an instrumental dependence which could be exploited when useful to the United States.

Why does ASML have strategic importance?

ASM is a Dutch photolithography company that has developed the unique advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography instrument.

The machine consists of several modules incorporating hundreds of thousands of components from multiple levels of nearly 800 global suppliers. The modules are built at 60 ASML locations around the world and shipped to the Netherlands for assembly

This technology was also developed with U.S. technological collaboration. Today ASML, which took 20 years to produce the machine with billion-dollar investments, is the only company in the world that can employ this tool.

If Chinese industry were to acquire such machinery, it would be able to reproduce it in three years, warned Nazak Nikakhtar, adviser to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

It is appropriate for the US and EU to cooperate defensively and offensively toward China. There is an battle going on in the global economic and trade system, and it should be an imperative that like-minded nations work together to emerge victorious.