Navigating Uncharted Waters: China's Pursuit of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Mastery

In an era where technological prowess shapes the destinies of nations, microchips are the “brain” for advanced technologies. The smaller the chips, the faster the computers. Dreams of dominance in AI, with supercomputers and advanced weaponry, are all nothing but fantasies without their powerful chips, which is why the US and its allies are endeavoring with the greatest efforts to impede China from accessing the most advanced microchips and to maintain their leadership in this field.

“The post-Cold War world has come to an end, and there is an intense competition underway to shape what comes next. And at the heart of that competition is technology,” stated Antony Blinkin, the US Secretary of State.

Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) is the process needed to build such critical chips—a technology currently possessed only by the Netherlands. As the world watches, China’s quest to procure EUV machines has the potential to revolutionize current conceptions of EUVs and cause threats to the stability of the world.

However, it’s not all plain sailing for China. China faces many obstacles, such as sanctions, in its attempt to build such machines. If China can circumvent these sanctions by building its own machines, its technological strength would be greatly increased, and Western attempts to constrain it would be much diminished.

The scale of the breakthrough China needs to make is significant. By far, ASML is the only company capable of creating EUV machines, and others mainly contribute by building components. China must tackle all the key components—the light source, optics, and the etching platform—of EUVs to contrast its self-reliant technology.

Current State of the Technology in China

Sanctions from the US, Netherlands, and Japan have restricted China from buying EUVs. Instead, China can only purchase less powerful Deep Ultraviolet lights (DUVs) from ASML—they bought  81 DUVs in 2021. Due to DUVs’ long wavelengths, they cannot produce chips that are as small and detailed as EUVs.  Using this process, China can produce chips with a diameter of 7 nanometers—the latest chips from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are 3 nanometers across.

The first option for China is to replicate current intricate machines. Current Lithography machines use light to create tiny patterns that act as instructions for microchips on a silicon wafer. To do this, EUVs use a circuit mask. Light is shone through the mask on the silicon, which is coated by photoresists, a chemical that reacts with light. Removing unwanted photoresists transfers the pattern on the mask to the silicon. It then goes through other processes, including ion implantation to change its electrical properties, planarization to smooth the wafers’ surface, dicing to slice the wafers into individual chips, and packaging to put the chips into a case for protection to become a microchip. Currently, China is struggling to fully replicate all parts of EUVs, including the optics and the etching platform but especially the step of lithography, the hardest step in the process of EUV.

China, on the other hand, resorted to a different approach in designing their EUVs. Tsinghua University, a leading institution in Beijing, plans to develop a new technology, the Steady-State Micro-Focused Extreme Ultraviolet Light Source (SSMB-EUV). In detail, the light source is a circular particle accelerator. Charged particles are kept in orbit by magnetic fields. The device achieves closely arranged particles through laser beams shaking electrons and forming them in groups. Then, removing unwanted photoresist, the pattern of the circuit is transferred to the chip. This type of particle accelerator offers several advantages, including creating electron bunches six orders of magnitude smaller than what is achievable with conventional accelerators.

Furthermore, SSMB-EUVs have high productivity for their high average power, great precision for their narrow bandwidth and high collimation, consistent products for their stability, and a low chance of contamination for their clean light source.

China’s plan is to create EUVs better than those created by ASML. With the new approach, continual improvements will offer the potential for China to create competing EUVs.

Policies

China's EUV ambitions are intertwined with military and economic objectives. For the military, due to EUVs’ power, it could balance the global military power. Researches are intended to mitigate geopolitical and supply chain risks, especially under the circumstance of continual US sanctions of EUV machines that aim to impede China’s fabs’ production below 14nm and China’s ambition of being proficient to forcefully take over Taiwan by 2027.

Economically, the development of technologies like EUVs, crucial for microchips in AI and computers, opens significant job opportunities.

To reach its goal and circumvent sanctions, China raised its priority to a level of national focus and made a significant push. China provided an enormous amount of funding, facilitated reverse engineering, developed the packaging technique, and imposed felicitous political policies.

Key advocations include “Made in China 2025,” which aims to increase self-sufficient chips to  40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025, the five-year economic plan, which claims the sector as a priority. In 2014, the “Big Fund” was initiated with US$21 billion, later added US$35 billion, with US$15 billion in local funds. Additionally, Document No. 8 offers exemption in tax and import duties to companies.

Though China has made progress through the approach of compiling various components to create a more powerful technology and studying the machines purchased from abroad in reverses, the reliance on foreign technologies remains, spending up to $400 billion to purchase semiconductors, and China’s current self-sufficiency rate is only around 20%.

Conclusion and Recommended Course of Action

China stands at a crossroad in its quest to build its own EUV with two primary options: continue investing in its own EUV or improve relations with the countries that already possess this technology.

Choosing to persist with internal development lays more decisions ahead: imitate existing EUVs or build its own system. Current vital parts of EUVs demand decades of relentless scientific research. Being self-reliant means full self-supply of all essential components, which no country is capable of. China, in the past year, mainly filed patents for light-emitting components in EUVs, but the current trend leads to disappointments. Fundamental science should be China’s primary focus if China wants to construct competing EUVs, however, with an extremely late start. Moreover, it demands that China overcome a number of challenges, including domestic brain drain and bureaucratic inefficiencies such as corruption.

The path offers significant long-term technological and economic benefits, reinforcing China’s position as a global force.

Alternatively, easing tensions with technologically advanced nations by reducing China’s global dominance could provide immediate access to necessary technologies, such as when Xi Jinping visited California as a peaceful gesture.

This strategy, however, risks compromising China's long-term autonomy and strategic objectives, and it is unlikely that China will be soon forgotten as a major threat.

Ultimately, the decision will have profound implications for the entire world. The ideal outcome is to resolve political tension and boost technological advancements through cooperation. But, if not the case comes fierce competition. A ferocious rivalry like the space race between the US and the USSR would reappear, bringing the burgeoning of technological advancement but greater political tension than ever.