**: The content was compiled from TimesUnion by Semiconductor Industry Watch (ID: icbank), thank you.
As the U.S. Commerce Department completes its list of locations it may want to set up a new $11 billion federal computer chip manufacturing research center, it will be hard not to list Albany as a top choice.
While New York State U.S. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer may bear the greatest responsibility for Albany's rise to the top, after all, he drafted the $52 billion CHIPS and Science Act that would fund the new CHIPS Center — New York Governor Kathy announced plans to build a Worth 100 at Albany Nanotechnology on December 11 $100 million in a new computer chip lithography center, thus significantly raising Albany's candidacy.
Hochul is involved in the construction of the new research center, which will be located in a new building planned by Albany Nanotech, called NanoFab Reflection, along with Schumer and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and executives from IBM, Micron Technology, and other top semiconductor companies.
In the past, such announcements by Albany Nanotechnology have focused on job creation and building high-tech industries in the capital region.
This is also the case this time. For example, the new lithography center is expected to create 700 new jobs. It will also help Micron expand its planned $100 billion chip manufacturing base outside of Syracuse.
But there's a bigger theme at play, with a focus on the role that the new center will play in ***, and the role in developing the domestic computer chip industry not only in New York but throughout the United States.
Speaking at Hochul's press conference, D**id Anderson, CEO of NYCREATES, a nonprofit entity that controls Albany's nanotechnology company, said, "Our strategy is to make New York an innovation powerhouse for decades to come. We believe this ecosystem can be a model for the rest of the country and the rest of the world. ”
The CHIPS Act aims to reshape the U.S. computer chip manufacturing industry, which has lost a significant amount of production and market share to Asia over the past few decades.
While individual companies have applied for subsidies under the CHIPS Act to build new chip factories in the United States, the biggest reward is likely to be the $11 billion set aside for research projects, including the creation of a new federal chip research lab designed to keep the U.S. at the top of the curve. Be at the forefront of chip innovation.
Albany Nanotechnology has long been at the forefront of chip innovation. IBM achieved its biggest chip breakthrough at Albany Nanotechnology using one of the world's most advanced lithography machines manufactured by Dutch lithography company ASML. The latest, state-of-the-art ASML machines will be at the heart of the New Albany Lithography Center.
Photolithography is perhaps the most important manufacturing step in chip production. A lithography machine in a chip factory projects an image of the chip architecture onto the silicon wafer on which the chip components are manufactured. Every detail is atomic-scale, so the lithography machine had to be very powerful to etch such a small design.
The new lithography center announced on December 11 that it will use ASML's next-generation lithography machine, the Twinscan EXE: 5200, a so-called high-NAV ultraviolet scanner that is expected to cost up to $300 million or $400 million and is the size of a large bus.
The new NanoFab Reflection building will cost more than $400 million and will have a 50,000-square-foot cleanroom to house the machines, with delivery scheduled for late 2025. Essentially, the new ASML machine will allow chip companies to make more powerful products with smaller functional chips than are currently being manufactured. As one of the first places in the world to earn this degree, Albany has a huge advantage.
When we think about *** and the reason for creating the CHIPS Act, it's to maintain control of R&D and bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S.," said Kevin Younis, chief operating officer of the Empire State Development Corporation, the state's economic development corporation. The office said in an interview with Time Alliance. "That's the pathway, it's the critical path tool for all the advanced manufacturing industries around the world. This tool is necessary for everyone. ”
ASML's cutting-edge scanners are so powerful that both the United States and the Netherlands** have imposed export controls in an attempt to ban Chinese purchases.
It's a race for dominance, for technology dominance," Hochul said at a press conference on December 11. "At the heart of this race are semiconductors, which are the brains of our electronics. When you think about it this way, it's the technology that keeps airplanes in the air, keeps your refrigerator cold, and keeps our market and power grid running. Semiconductors: "It's definitely at the heart of our lives, even though you don't think about them on a regular basis. And cutting-edge technology is evolving rapidly before our eyes. ”
Hochul isn't just talking about the benefits of the new center for New Yorkers or companies like IBM and Micron that will use it, and it is expected that the center will be one of only two in the world to offer "open access" for new ASML scanners — and possibly for new federal labs as well.
We are not just talking about innovation, but also about the geopolitical balance of power. That's where the stakes come in. The geopolitical balance of power," Hochul added. "The U.S. used to dominate the industry. We rely too much on chips and components from places like Chinese mainland, South Korea, and Taiwan. As a result, this has had a huge impact on technological innovation, economic growth, and independence.
Schumer was very direct about how Albany's new lithography center at Nanotechnology would help Albany establish a national lab-on-a-chip.
"This significant investment will set the stage for my ultimate honor as the National Semiconductor Technology Center created in the CHIPS and Science Act," Schumer said. The federal ** will designate a national semiconductor technology center in the coming months, and I bet it will be based in Albany, and I will not stop using my influence as majority leader to ensure that happens. And we will succeed. We're knocking on the door. ”
A machine that sustains chip innovation
The computers that power our lives are becoming more complex and require more powerful chips. For the past decade, the standard system for manufacturing chips has been EUV lithography machines manufactured by ASML. They have enabled IBM and other companies to shrink the size of transistors to a few nanometers, tens of thousands of times thinner than a single strand. With these machines, IBM is demonstrating a path from 7nm to the latest innovative chips with 2nm nanosheet technology. 2-nanometer nanosheet technology holds an impressive 50 billion transistors on a single chip the size of a fingernail.
However, to print chip circuits at such tiny sizes, so precise laser resolution is required that even current machines find it difficult to do so in a way that is conducive to mass production. With the continuous advancement of technologies such as industrial intelligence, there is no doubt that sooner or later we will need more powerful chips. In order to build these, we need new tools and an ecosystem that can print smaller features to make them a reality.
Earlier, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced the creation of the High NA EUV Center at the Albany Nanotechnology Complex, a cutting-edge semiconductor research institute of which IBM is a key member. It will be the first and only publicly owned R&D center in North America with a high numerical aperture extreme ultraviolet (high NA EUV) lithography system. This machine from ASML can execute a new technology that paves the way for the development and production of chips with nodes even smaller than 2nm. The machine uses a laser beyond the ultraviolet end of the spectrum to etch circuit paths at the microscale.
The new system will be housed within the Albany Nanotechnology Complex, where IBM, the State of New York, and numerous industry and academic partners have been inventing the future of semiconductors for more than two decades.
New York State and industry partners will invest $10 billion to establish the High NA EUV Center, which will include the construction of a new facility called NanoFab Reflection at the Albany Nanotechnology Complex and the purchase of ASML's 5200 High NA EUV device. These investments will also support the expansion of an already thriving ecosystem and continue to enhance the ability of this company to push the limits of computing power.
The NanoFab Reflection will contain 50,000 square feet of new cleanroom space with the potential to create significant jobs in the region while creating a future for U.S. semiconductor research and production. The new construction of the complex will break ground in 2024.
IBM will play an important role in keeping the tool up and running and working with central partners to build new High NA EUV machines to produce more advanced chips.
About a decade ago, IBM Research used one of the world's first EUV machines in the same complex in Albany to design a process that would ensure that EUV lithography could be used to produce advanced chips at scale, first at 7 nm and then with 5nm chip processes. Albany's current system, installed in 2020, was key to IBM's development of the world's first 2 nm node chip in 2021.
The creation of the High NA EUV Center means that IBM will be one of the first in the world to use this powerful new tool, and some of the most innovative companies and institutions from around the world will now also have access to the latest semiconductor research tools. Existing Nanotech Complex members, including Tokyo Electron and Applied Materials, will acquire access to the new EUV machines with international partners such as Japan's Rapidus.
Albany Nanotech's new EUV tool will be the same as future high numerical aperture EUV tools when installed in a manufacturing facility. This will help ensure that the processes and designs invented by Albany Nanotechnology can be embedded in future generations of electronic devices.
The Albany Center for Nanotechnology's ecosystem of public-private partnerships is one of the center's unique key approaches. "These expanded partnerships represent a powerful new shared platform for global technology development and will serve as a foundation for expanded international cooperation between the United States and its allies," Hochul's office said in a press release. ”
Laser-based lithography has been key to designing and producing chips on a large scale for decades. Existing EUV machines, while supporting semiconductor process development over the past decade, are unable to achieve the resolution needed to pattern sub-2nm nodes into chips, thus facilitating large-scale production. These machines can be so precise – that's how IBM developed the first working 2nm node – but it takes three or four times with EUV light, not one. This, along with other issues associated with reducing feature size, means that researchers need to consider a new approach. The solution is so-called high numerical aperture (or high NA) EUV lithography.
This new method is functionally identical to the physical process of EUV lithography, but as the name suggests, the optics are larger, allowing higher resolution patterns to be printed on the wafer. If you've ever used a professional camera, you know that increasing the numerical aperture results in sharper focus, but it also means a shallower depth of focus. The same is true for high numerical aperture EUV lithography.
Researchers must ensure that the photoresist materials used in lithography can actually be resolved at these smaller sizes, and address the challenges that may arise from shallower depths of focus. For example, the pattern must not have any blurring, as this would cause the etching chip to be inaccurate. In addition, the masks used to print these patterns must also evolve to support these smaller features. High numerical aperture EUVs will be more complex machines than the first generation EUVs, and learning how to leverage it will drive semiconductor innovation for the next decade.
Just as EUVs require ecosystem integration, deep collaboration and partnerships are needed to bring high NAV EUV lithography into production. The Albany Nanotechnology Complex's High Numerical Aperture EUV Center will be a catalyst for advancing the development of semiconductors.