A very general question if you don't mind. How does a product go from lab to commercial production like EUV or photoresist material? Say a secret lab in Tsinghua managed to develop EUV, do they sell the blueprint to SMEE or what?
Chinese semiconductor industry
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I'm assuming a first generation EUV would want to do at least 7nm with a single exposure. A 2-3 nm error seems like an unacceptably high error for that kind of fineness.
Another question: This paper describes the platform used to develop photoresists, but not the photoresists themselves. Do you think that work will be published as well or kept secret?
7 nm chips aren't 7 nm. Their minimum feature size is ~40 nm.
Excellent analysis, there are some good news from this.
1- Is that they don't have to wait to ASML be allowed to export a EUV machine to research and develop, masks, multilayered mirrors and photoresists.
2- Its allow them to research the possibility of using EUV SSMB as a potential EUV light source alternative, we know that necessity is the mother of invention.
Another thing, this is an study i posted earlier but in this case is made by Tsinghua and in the other study is made by Fudan university and looks like Fudan is using larger doses of EUV radiation like almost 300 mj/cm2 while Tsinghua is using 10-15 mj/cm2.
ASML scanners deliver 20mj/cm2 and that give a throughput of 80 WPH, taking into account optics and other enhancements.
If a SSMB EUV Light Source can deliver a powerful dosage of EUV radiation, that could mean that they may won't need to put as much of an effort in developing the reflective optics, even considering the losses still could deliver enough dosage. Is that a correct assessment or i am missing something?
Nice! So these tested photoresists are already very good! Is there a rule of thumb to convert between "advertised" node size and the actual minimum physical size of a feature?
Also, given the heavy funding going into Chinese semiconductor fabrication and its various inputs, we might get into the rather insane situation where Chinese companies are selling photoresists to TSMC and Samsung before SMIC EUV lithography is up and running.
As far as i know how Chinese research institutions are working now is that they usually patented, they make a shell company to commercialize the product or they license the technology.
U-Precision and Unisoc is a company that comes out from Tsinghua university.
Qier electromechanics was from Zhejiang university.
There is no correlation between the nameplate "N nm" size, and the actual minimum feature size.
And yes there is the possibility of Chinese suppliers selling chemicals to other fabs before SMIC although unlikely.
ITRS is a defunct organization. It is now IEEE IRDS.
Tsinghua is academia. They do not generally focus on direct commercialization. That is the focus of industry laboratories.
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