There’s really nothing special about ArF lasers. It’s a very mature technology at this point.
Chinese semiconductor industry
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Quality of laser matters for low tolerance applications.
I’m well aware (have to deal with photon spread tolerances sometimes at work). But also, ArF is a mature technology. It’s not hard to do right if you put in the effort. There’s no mystery to the science and engineering.
Yet the amount of companies that manufacture this kind of equipment is quite small worldwide.
Also, even if you do have an ArF laser, if it was low power it means you need a lot more exposure time for the laser to do its job.
i.e. you get way worse productivity.
You would think with how expensive these lithography machines are (DUV machines can cost 40-50 millions, EUV machines can cost 100 millions USD) that they would have more competition if it is that easy to make one.
Still very much a niche market. Look at how much Huawei makes.
That’s not a reflection of a lack of of engineering ability. It’s just that this stuff has high capital costs so the number of players the market can support shrinks pretty rapidly. Costs are not always proxy for difficulty, just resource intensity and complexity. There’s no point devoting your engineering efforts to chase a business opportunity that’s expensive to do when the market already has mature solutions providers. Better to devote that talent to opportunities that have a higher reward to effort ratio. Much more effective, sustainable, and productive use of investment money.
Too often people conflate absence within an industry with a lack of ability when it’s really more a reflection of lack of business opportunity, which is partially why people get so surprised when countries or firms that used to have no business being a lead in a high tech sector suddenly manage to catch the lead.
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I'm too surprised China hasn't been more prepared. Autonomous drones clearly hold one key to future warfare. Surely PLA wasn't planning on using TSMC-made chips as 'brains' of its autonomous killing machines?
Hi OppositeDay,
China had the capability to produce up to 22nm (chips used in Beidou satellite), with 45nm SMEE LITHO( the current military chip usage) , 14nm next year with SMEE 28NM LITHO DUVL and 7nm in 2022 it's a continuing process. So for Chinese military and state security they are prepared cause they were under sanction for over a decade now and they were force to look for a local alternative for self sufficiency. Now the same story will be replicated in the civilian sector with the current and future sanction impose by the US, only a threat to your survival will force you to look for a domestic solution, a hard lesson learned.
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