20 years of restarting life

Chapter 3667, 193 Immersive Lithographing Technology

"Where are the disagreements at ASML now, and which voice has more influence and authority?"

Zhao Chang'an raised his glass and clinked it with his senior's, took a sip of wine, and didn't pick up any food or ask any questions.

"Having some food after drinking is good for your stomach. The owner of this Chinese restaurant is Chinese. Whenever I'm in Amsterdam, if I have time, I always come here to eat some food from my hometown. Although the taste is a little different from what I have in China, it's still quite authentic."

Xiao Yangming warmly invited Zhao Chang'an to serve him some food, and then picked up a piece himself. Chewing on the food, he said with a nostalgic sigh, "I haven't been back to China for over ten years since I started studying in North America. I've heard that things have changed a lot. I just don't know if our village is still so poor. We only get to eat meat during the New Year, and our staple food is half wheat and half sweet potatoes."

Zhao Chang'an has been traveling abroad frequently in recent years and has noticed a strange phenomenon: when he meets people who have been abroad for many years, they often prefer to invite him to eat at local Chinese restaurants.

It seems that he wanted to prove to his fellow countrymen in this way that although he was in a foreign land, he had never forgotten his roots.

But did Zhao Chang'an come all this way just to try this incongruous 'authentic Chinese cuisine'?

Moreover, you yourself said that you haven't returned to China for more than ten years. After graduating with a master's degree from MIT, Xiao Yangming joined Philips North America and later transferred to the Dutch headquarters, where he signed with ASML to participate in the technical upgrade of PAS500.

When he joined ASML, the company was already in a period of rapid expansion in global market share, so his salary was definitely not low, and he would certainly have annual leave every year.

This person actually lamented to me that he hadn't been back to China for over a decade.

Even if you don't go back to China, you can still contact your family through letters and phone calls. How could you not know that people in China are living a good life now?
However, every family has its own troubles. Although Zhao Chang'an was curious, he didn't care. He decided to talk about business and there was no need to make things complicated by rambling on and playing the emotional card.

He simply said, "The lives of ordinary people in China have improved. While we may not have meat at every meal, we can at least have a treat every now and then."

I picked up a piece of boiled pork slices with my chopsticks, and apart from the spicy, salty, and oily flavor, there was no other taste. The pork slices were also tough, probably frozen meat that had been sitting for who knows how long. They really used all their cleverness and wisdom on this.

"The safest approach at present is to develop a dry laser engraving stepper in a 157nm pure nitrogen environment. Although Nikon and Canon have an absolute technological advantage in this research direction, as world-leading companies, their billions of dollars of investment in recent years and the numerous technology patents they have obtained demonstrate the feasibility of this path."

Xiao Yangming said, "If we choose to follow this path, it would be the most foolish decision for all other companies. It's like throwing in billions of dollars to create a product that, even if successfully developed, could very well be like the PAS2000 and 2500—products with no market. Such a huge loss would only be agreed to by these shareholders if they were crazy. Alternatively, the US institutions within Sematech (the US Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology Alliance) could simply put in billions of dollars and try to get the EUV-LLC alliance to invest, but that's absolutely impossible."

"So, Sematech, a non-corporation organization in the US, is interested in 157nm pure nitrogen dry gas technology?"

Zhao Chang'an said, "This is inconsistent with their original intention of going to such great lengths, even selling Silicon Valley Group (SVG) to ASML."

“MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory), the University of Texas, the US Department of Defense, Department of Energy, national laboratories, the National Science Council, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have all been lobbying ASML to advance this technology,” Xiao Yangming said. “The second direction is to develop 157nm liquid-medium immersion lithography. This direction is too risky, almost equivalent to completely overhauling the already mature 193nm dry lithography architecture. Although there is some support for this approach, it is not significant, at least at the current level of technology, there are still too many obstacles to overcome. Moreover, both the time span and the massive investment are suffocating. However, almost everyone who truly understands the principles of stepper motors knows that the 157nm process will have to be faced sooner or later. Even if it is avoided now, when Moore's Law reaches the limit of time compression, it will eventually need to be restarted.”

"Comparing these two options, Sematech, the US non-corporate organization, clearly felt that ASML could conduct similar research and development with Nikon and Canon, which would at least maintain ASML's position as one of the world's top three in the lithography machine field and restrain Japan."

Before ASML launched the PAS5500 in 90, ASML's market share in the global lithography machine field was almost negligible, and it had been operating at a loss since its inception, losing money for six years.

Fortunately, there were orders from TSMC, in which Philips holds a 27.4% stake; otherwise, no one would have bought ASML's PAS stepper machines.

Starting with the PAS5500, ASML has used this single product to squeeze out many other lithography machine companies worldwide and become the world's third largest.

It was precisely because of the outstanding performance of the PAS5500 that Europe and the United States suddenly felt a passionate impulse and desire to surpass Nikon and Canon and become the global leader in lithography machines, and were unwilling to be controlled by others in this field.

He hurriedly and uninvitedly went around making connections, and in 97, he formed the Sematech Alliance.

In 99, ASML began acquiring Silicon Valley Group (SVG), the only large-scale lithography machine company in the United States. ASML surpassed Canon and became the world's second-largest lithography machine manufacturer, second only to Nikon.

It was this sense of crisis that led Nikon and Canon, two Japanese companies, to join forces and develop the next generation of 157nm lithography machines, setting aside past grievances.

Seeing this, Intel, Motorola, AMD, and others proposed a truce to Nikon and Canon, which involved forming the EUV-LLC (Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography) alliance. These companies would invest in Nikon and Canon and divest their lithography machine divisions. This was tantamount to robbery, and it was met with widespread condemnation in Japan, where they naturally refused to agree.

The Plaza Accord back then really screwed over Japan, and naturally they don't want to be fooled again this time.

So Intel, Motorola, AMD and other companies approached ASML again, offering to provide funding for the development of EUV lithography machines, which led to the current debate over ASML's development path.

"There is also the choice of engraving source. In addition to DUV and EUV, XPL (X-ray near-field lithography), electron beam lithography and ion projection lithography represent four different directions. Companies and research institutions around the world are advancing these engraving technologies. However, apart from these, the most popular technology in the company is currently 193nm immersion lithography."

Zhao Chang'an was stunned for a moment, looking at Xiao Yangming with some surprise.

“At the SPIE microlithography conference at the end of last year, MIT’s report showed that 157nm technology has too many problems and instabilities in a pure water environment, but for 193nm, there is almost no difference from the data in air.”

Xiao Yangming said, "Chang'an, you may not fully understand the significance of this report. Actually, you'll understand it after thinking about it for a bit, especially since you're a microelectronics major. This means that we can use the mature 193nm process and immersion lithography technology to change the medium between the lens and the wafer from air with a refractive index of n~1 to water with n=1.44 (corresponding to a wavelength of 193 nanometers), effectively reducing the wavelength to 134 nanometers. This solves the most fundamental wavelength problem."

"The most vocal advocates for this technology are Philips, Intel, and Carl Zeiss, all members of the EUV-LLC alliance. If successful, ASML's market share would jump from second to first globally, leaving Nikon and Canon far behind. However, many technical challenges remain, and even with significant resources, success is not guaranteed."