Japanese companies bypassed EUV lithography machines to build 2nm imprint equipment and refused to export to China, causing concern.
Suppressed by ASML, Canon could overtake in corners and become the pioneer of a new generation of lithography machines.
As the former international lithography machine market"Overlord"In the 80s of the last century, Japanese companies represented by Canon became famous in this field, and Canon alone accounted for nearly 40% of the global share. However, due to the emergence of ASML's EUV lithography machine, later, the Japanese lithography machine declined, until some time ago, Japan's ** "Asahi Shimbun" came to the news that Canon has developed another nanoimprint technology in 10 years, and the chip process can be as low as 2 nanometers.
This result is enough to shock the entire semiconductor industry, before that, all 7nm chip manufacturing could not bypass EUV lithography technology, and only ASML in the world has the ability to produce, Canon's move is equivalent to breaking its monopoly position and directly rewriting the market standard. A good article from the foreign media put it bluntly: this time, it was ASML's turn to panic.
It doesn't need lithography technology, can it still produce chips?
At present, there are not many manufacturers in the world that have the ability to produce lithography technology, only the Netherlands, China, Japan, the United States, and South Korea, among which the Netherlands has the first lithography accuracy.
According to the statistics of the International Semiconductor Association (SEMI), at present, in the field of integrated circuit lithography machines, ASML in the Netherlands, Canon and Nikon in Japan, and Shanghai Microelectronics in China are the four major manufacturers. ASML occupies 82With a 4% market share, Canon and Nikon each have a 102% and 765% of the market share, ranking in the last two places, Shanghai Microelectronics' market share is close to 0%. In addition, if only EUV lithography machines for 7nm or less are considered, ASML takes the entire share.
In order to monopolize this key technology, ASML has reached a group cooperation with more than 5,000 manufacturers around the world, so it is not worried about other manufacturers seizing the market, which also leads to other lithography machine manufacturers can not follow the road of EUV lithography machine, so they can only change careers. For example, Canon's R&D for years has focused on nanoimprint technology, claiming that without EUV lithography, it would be possible to produce chips of 5 nanometers or even smaller, and further reduce costs.
The cost of an EUV lithography machine is 1.2 billion yuan, 100,000 parts, 400 lines, 2 kilometers of catheters, and it consumes a lot of energy, referring to TSMC's financial data, its energy consumption last year was 191900 million kWh, Shenzhen has a permanent population of 18 million, and the annual electricity consumption is about 165500 million kWh, which means that the average annual energy consumption of TSMC, which introduced the EUV lithography process, is enough for Shenzhen residents for one year. In contrast, the Japanese company's nano-printing process can reduce manufacturing costs by 40% and energy consumption by 90%, so it's no wonder that Canon is leaning on this performance.
Overtaking in corners?Our country is far behind.
Science and Technology Times"digitimes"According to the report, South Korea's SK hynix has introduced Canon's nanoimprint equipment for testing and research and development, and it is expected that the equipment will be mass-produced in 2025 3dnand flash memory, Canon said that this set of engraving accuracy is 24~3.2nm, which can manufacture more than 100 wafers per hour, basically reaching the mass production level of 3DNAND.
It is worth noting that due to Japan's high-profile announcement of a ban on China a few months ago, 23 pieces of chip manufacturing equipment will be included in the export control list, so Canon's new printing technology cannot be sold to the mainland. However, there is no need to worry too much, this field has always been one of the hot technologies pursued by domestic chip equipment companies such as Suoda Weiye and Tianren Micro-Nano, although it is still in the stage of evaluating mass production, but from a commercial point of view, it has touched the 5nm level.
In recent years, China's industrial structure has moved from low-end production quantity to high-end technical quality, and there are countless examples like this: in the first 10 months of this year, China's total export value reached 5824300 million yuan, an increase of 88 over the previous year5%。
Made in China"Overwhelming.
Although it is not possible to introduce Canon's nanoimprint technology, it has at least brought new ideas and methods to China's semiconductor field, and I believe that in the future, Chinese companies will invest more R&D efforts in this branch of the industry to keep pace with the world.
Su Dawei, the person in charge of the forefront of the domestic lithography machine, publicly said:"Nanoimprint lithography technology has the potential to replace or even surpass the application of traditional lithography technology in the field of integrated circuit and chip manufacturing, and we are taking the initiative to develop the layout. "
China's manufacturing industry continues to be driven by technology self-research, it continues to expand and improve, perhaps as the "people" said: China's manufacturing industry has long been different.