China touts home-grown chip lithography machines amid semiconductor self-sufficiency drive

Technology ministry claims ‘significant technological breakthroughs’ in deep-ultraviolet lithography by unnamed companies

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China has spent years pursuing technology self-sufficiency in chip production, but its progress in lithography systems remains slow. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 5:00pm, 15 Sep 2024

The Chinese government is promoting two domestically made chip-making machines that it says have achieved significant advances, as the country strives towards technology self-sufficiency amid US sanctions.

The lithography machines, which print highly complex circuit patterns onto silicon wafers, “have achieved significant technological breakthroughs, own intellectual property rights but have yet to perform on the market”, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which did not name the companies behind the two machines.

One of the deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines operates at a wavelength of 193 nanometres (nm), with a resolution below 65nm and an overlay accuracy below 8nm, according to a new list of “major technological equipment” published by the MIIT earlier this week. The other DUV machine has a wavelength of 248nm, with 110nm resolution and 25nm overlay accuracy, according to the list.

The two machines are still far behind the most advanced options available on the market. One of Dutch equipment maker ASML Holding’s most advanced DUV machines, for instance, can operate at a resolution of below 38nm with an overlay accuracy of 1.3nm.

DUV machines also lag behind extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines, which use light with a wavelength of just 13.5nm – almost 14 times sharper than DUV’s 195nm.