How China’s award-winning EUV breakthrough sidesteps US chip ban

As US restrictions continue getting tougher, Chinese researchers are coming up with innovative approaches to chip manufacturing

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Chinese researchers are working to come up with new methods for chip manufacture amid the strict US sanctions. Photo: AFP

Published: 6:00pm, 19 Jan 2025

New approaches in the development of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography are being pioneered by Chinese scientists, paving the way for the mass production of advanced semiconductor chips as researchers race to sidestep the strict sanctions put in place by the United States.

And one such project from the Harbin Institute of Technology was recently awarded first prize at the Harbin Provincial Innovation Achievement Transformation Competition for employees in universities and research institutes on December 30.

The research team took a completely different technological approach from Western methods to generate EUV laser light.

According to the institute’s website, the “discharge plasma extreme ultraviolet lithography light source” project, led by Professor Zhao Yongpeng from the school of aerospace engineering, “boasts high energy conversion efficiency, low cost, compact size and relatively low technical difficulty”.

“It can produce extreme ultraviolet light with a central wavelength of 13.5 nanometres, meeting the urgent demand for EUV light sources in the photolithography market,” the official report said.

In the semiconductor industry, the most complex and difficult-to-manufacture machine is the photolithography machine.