I say the work is being distributed between multiple companies and is not an SMEE effort alone. Is a nation wide, multi company effort, include companies, research institutions and business funds in China.
For this kind of complex projects the best strategy is to Divide and Conquer, that is why you have EUV lithography, is impossible for SMEE to manage a project of this nature alone. Athougth they did try in 2011 with their 193nm dry scanner with not that bad results for nice military applications, 110-90nm 50wph, a dream machine for the Chinese military, who knows how many beautiful chips where patterned by this machine, that now power Chinese jets, missiles and drones.
They did the Arf laser, the optics, the software and the working stage mostly by themselves, that was way before the creation of RSlaser, Guowang Optical, U-precision and others.
For this kind of complex projects the best strategy is to Divide and Conquer, that is why you have EUV lithography, is impossible for SMEE to manage a project of this nature alone. Athougth they did try in 2011 with their 193nm dry scanner with not that bad results for nice military applications, 110-90nm 50wph, a dream machine for the Chinese military, who knows how many beautiful chips where patterned by this machine, that now power Chinese jets, missiles and drones.
They did the Arf laser, the optics, the software and the working stage mostly by themselves, that was way before the creation of RSlaser, Guowang Optical, U-precision and others.
Probably disagreements about the direction of the company, i can only speculate that before the sanctions in 2016 the he wanted to shift their R&D focus from frontend scanners to more profitable areas for them like packaging, FPD, MEMS, laser machines and non critical layers, they even reach an agreement with ASML in 2017 to collaborate in that area. I dont think ASML would help SMEE make high end lithography machines. I speculating that some people may have a disagreement with that. Either way the sanctions derailed all that.
