Chinese semiconductor industry

tphuang said:

Interesting so, you can just have Guowang focus on producing immersive lens. That's good to know. Maybe they can scale to 20 in a couple of years. Not a lot, but enough to serve SMIC, YMTC and CXMT in the event of a full DUVi ban. Getting DUVi production going should be the biggest priority

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1661246845698338818

Remember when Dell claimed that it will phase out Chinese components? Well, it looks like Chinese consumers are phasing out Dell. It's foolishness for the American companies to believe you can serve the Chinese market without committing to China

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tphuang said:

The number 1 thing China should do is get America to ban the export of Nvidia chips to China. That way valuable Chinese AI developers will stop wasting time with Cuda

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FairAndUnbiased said:

this information is very hard to find because film smoothness is usually not something that the equipment vendor will just tell you, it is application and customer dependent. The RMS from polishing applies to the substrate surface so technically if you can polish the substrate flat enough, you can just use ALD. Not sure how molybdenum metal ALD is going in China.

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, but I don't know who is doing it on 4 m wide substrates. 4m is gigantic for a deposition substrate.

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ZeEa5KPul said:

This is excellent. This moves SMEE to the state of the art in immersion DUV optics. The most capable ASML immersion DUV machines have this NA and it's very close to the theoretical (unattainable) maximum of 1.44. This is crucial in attaining a domestic 5/7nm node capability and particularly important since SMEE's production capacity is so limited. Every machine it makes must count.

I'd like to summarize what I've gathered about the state of China's EUV project. I'll consider the mechanical side of things since I know jack diddly about the chemistry (photomasks, photoresists, and so forth). I welcome corrections and elaborations from more knowledgeable members.

Light Source​

As I see it, there are two and a half EUV light source projects in China: SSMB, which China seems to be pursuing alone, and LPP, the mainstream approach in which China is experimenting with several arrangements (hence the "and a half").

SSMB: This seems to be the most promising long term solution to commercial EUV light sources and success here would allow China to leapfrog market leaders. However, what I gathered from reading research papers about this is that the challenges are significant. The operating parameters of the envisioned synchrotron are difficult: a 1A current and microbunch spacing of 3nm. For context, there is no synchrotron in the world that operates at 1A; the highest I've seen is 0.5A and the SSRF operates at 0.3A. However, it's plausible that since these are research synchrotrons that have to support a broad range of experiments, it might be easier to optimize a narrower set of parameters to a higher level in an industrial synchrotron. For the microbunch spacing, there's no comparable parameter in any other synchrotron so I have no context to point to, but the precision here seems exacting. SSMB is still in very early stages with a synchrotron being built in Xiong'an New Area, so it's unlikely to be part of China's first EUVL device.

LPP: This has the benefit of an existing proof of principle. We hear rumours that this is in the prototype stage, but things are understandably shrouded in secrecy. This is probably the most developed of the approaches China is trying and is likely to be first to market. Even here China is experimenting with several laser mechanisms. The first, and probably most explored, is a high-power (tens of kW) CO2 MOPA laser; this is the approach ASML uses. We've seen research that alternatives like "fiber lasers" are being explored. This can mean one of two things:

1) A genuine solid-state fiber laser where the gain medium is a fiber optic doped with a rare-earth element. Although both CO2 and fiber lasers emit in the infrared, fiber lasers emit wavelengths between 1-2um (depending on the dopant), while CO2 lasers emit at 10.6um. This will almost certainly have implications in the interaction of the laser with the tin droplets. However, it would be great news if it's workable since China has a great deal of experience with high-power fiber lasers. I've joked previously that Norinco should take a Silent Hunter and point its laser at a tin droplet assembly.

2) A "hollow fiber" laser in which the fiber is just a transmission medium rather than the gain medium. In this arrangement, rather than have a monolithic CO2 MOPA laser, the output of several smaller CO2 MOPA lasers can be combined using hollow fibers. Classical fiber optics aren't usable here since glass absorbs 10.6um IR. Needless to say, this would be promising because smaller, lower-power modular lasers are easier and cheaper to build than giant, monolithic, high-power lasers.

Optics and Wafer Stage​

There's some great news here. EUV light is one of the most troublesome parts of the spectrum to deal with. The light is very difficult to generate and everything absorbs it. Water, air, silica, everything. Given this property, refractive optics like those used in DUV lithography are impossible. All optics have to be reflective (i.e., some type of curved mirror). In this particular case, mirrors are fabricated using alternating layers of molybdenum and silicon. To overcome this challenge, China needs to be good at manufacturing and polishing large, curved mirrors to very high precision.

Wait, what's that? Oh look, it's our old friends at CIOMP:

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(Note: Large Si/Mo aspheric mirrors have the added challenge beyond grinding and polishing the substrate in that precise control of Si/Mo layer deposition is required.)

There's not much to say about the wafer stage. We've already heard from havok that there's a prototype vacuum maglev dual-stage workpiece with multi-axis laser interferometer and all the fixin's you please.

It's all coming together!

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Denebola said:

No one on this forum talks about Nano imprint lithography (NIL). Does anyone know the state of China's progress in NIL?

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tokenanalyst said:

To think this guys get paid to write this stuff.

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-Huawei made an big investment in that company.

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Denebola said:

No one on this forum talks about Nano imprint lithography (NIL). Does anyone know the state of China's progress in NIL?

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ZeEa5KPul said:

This is excellent. This moves SMEE to the state of the art in immersion DUV optics. The most capable ASML immersion DUV machines have this NA and it's very close to the theoretical (unattainable) maximum of 1.44. This is crucial in attaining a domestic 5/7nm node capability and particularly important since SMEE's production capacity is so limited. Every machine it makes must count.

I'd like to summarize what I've gathered about the state of China's EUV project. I'll consider the mechanical side of things since I know jack diddly about the chemistry (photomasks, photoresists, and so forth). I welcome corrections and elaborations from more knowledgeable members.

Light Source​

As I see it, there are two and a half EUV light source projects in China: SSMB, which China seems to be pursuing alone, and LPP, the mainstream approach in which China is experimenting with several arrangements (hence the "and a half").

SSMB: This seems to be the most promising long term solution to commercial EUV light sources and success here would allow China to leapfrog market leaders. However, what I gathered from reading research papers about this is that the challenges are significant. The operating parameters of the envisioned synchrotron are difficult: a 1A current and microbunch spacing of 3nm. For context, there is no synchrotron in the world that operates at 1A; the highest I've seen is 0.5A and the SSRF operates at 0.3A. However, it's plausible that since these are research synchrotrons that have to support a broad range of experiments, it might be easier to optimize a narrower set of parameters to a higher level in an industrial synchrotron. For the microbunch spacing, there's no comparable parameter in any other synchrotron so I have no context to point to, but the precision here seems exacting. SSMB is still in very early stages with a synchrotron being built in Xiong'an New Area, so it's unlikely to be part of China's first EUVL device.

LPP: This has the benefit of an existing proof of principle. We hear rumours that this is in the prototype stage, but things are understandably shrouded in secrecy. This is probably the most developed of the approaches China is trying and is likely to be first to market. Even here China is experimenting with several laser mechanisms. The first, and probably most explored, is a high-power (tens of kW) CO2 MOPA laser; this is the approach ASML uses. We've seen research that alternatives like "fiber lasers" are being explored. This can mean one of two things:

1) A genuine solid-state fiber laser where the gain medium is a fiber optic doped with a rare-earth element. Although both CO2 and fiber lasers emit in the infrared, fiber lasers emit wavelengths between 1-2um (depending on the dopant), while CO2 lasers emit at 10.6um. This will almost certainly have implications in the interaction of the laser with the tin droplets. However, it would be great news if it's workable since China has a great deal of experience with high-power fiber lasers. I've joked previously that Norinco should take a Silent Hunter and point its laser at a tin droplet assembly.

2) A "hollow fiber" laser in which the fiber is just a transmission medium rather than the gain medium. In this arrangement, rather than have a monolithic CO2 MOPA laser, the output of several smaller CO2 MOPA lasers can be combined using hollow fibers. Classical fiber optics aren't usable here since glass absorbs 10.6um IR. Needless to say, this would be promising because smaller, lower-power modular lasers are easier and cheaper to build than giant, monolithic, high-power lasers.

Optics and Wafer Stage​

There's some great news here. EUV light is one of the most troublesome parts of the spectrum to deal with. The light is very difficult to generate and everything absorbs it. Water, air, silica, everything. Given this property, refractive optics like those used in DUV lithography are impossible. All optics have to be reflective (i.e., some type of curved mirror). In this particular case, mirrors are fabricated using alternating layers of molybdenum and silicon. To overcome this challenge, China needs to be good at manufacturing and polishing large, curved mirrors to very high precision.

Wait, what's that? Oh look, it's our old friends at CIOMP:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

(Note: Large Si/Mo aspheric mirrors have the added challenge beyond grinding and polishing the substrate in that precise control of Si/Mo layer deposition is required.)

There's not much to say about the wafer stage. We've already heard from havok that there's a prototype vacuum maglev dual-stage workpiece with multi-axis laser interferometer and all the fixin's you please.

It's all coming together!

Click to expand...

FairAndUnbiased said:

Problem with nano imprint is that the mask has to be the same size as the pattern, and the mask is contact and thus a wear component.

Also, how to fabricate hard, brittle ceramic patterns with nano imprint lithography? I've only seen it applied to polymer and metal which are ductile.

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tphuang said:

Given China's domination in polysilicon production

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estimated to reach 90% in the future, it's amazing they haven't been able to increase their market share in silicon wafers. I would imagine that changes over the next few years

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tphuang said:

I never really understood why people thought EDAs were that hard. It's just software at end of the day. China doesn't lack of software developers.

but the more important part is the partial support for 5nm. That tells me Samsung & TSMC are busy cooperating with Chinese EDA developers to have additional options and to eventually de-americanize also.

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