Lead
As an important production tool in semiconductor equipment, lithography machine is also the largest equipment on the production line, and plays a pivotal role in the manufacture of chips, just like the "heart of the semiconductor factory".
In the field of semiconductors, the importance of lithography machines should not be underestimated, in chip production, it is mainly used for image transmission on silicon wafers and lithography light source irradiation, and the chip design pattern is copied onto silicon wafers.
At that time, the United States had always been a leader in the field of science and technology, and its semiconductor industry accounted for about 70% of the lithography machines, and their lithography machines had the world's most advanced optical system, capable of taking very detailed, high-resolution images, and at the same time very accurate alignment.
In 2019, the United States announced a ban and sanctions on many Chinese chip companies such as ZTE and Huawei, which once again aroused the vigilance of the domestic chip industry.
If the power of the mainland nation is not lithography?
To this end, the country immediately set off a wave of lithography machine manufacturing, China's lithography machine capacity expansion officially launched, with the recent news that a company in Shaoxing to establish a lithography machine factory spread, caused a wide range of discussions.
The development of China's lithography machine production capacity focuses on expansion.
As part of the value chain, semiconductor equipment manufacturers have the most important competitiveness from innovation and intellectual property rights, and they can also expand their service range by repairing and maintaining equipment.
Now, the Shaoxing-based company claims that its lithography machines can be customized and repaired by multiple well-known lithography machine brands at the same time, solving the problem of a serious lack of lithography equipment in China's chip industry chain.
At the same time, the birth of domestic lithography machines has also further responded to the export control restrictions of the United States and the West on China, enhanced the competitiveness of domestic lithography machines in the global market, and broken the shortcomings of the mainland in the core equipment of high-end manufacturing.
At present, the only company in the world that can produce 28nm process lithography machines and their equipment levels are roughly as follows:
The first is the EUV lithography machine produced by ASML in the Netherlands, which currently mainly serves the upper right corner of 28nm, as well as the upper left corner of 7nm, then the NSR-S652D produced by Yutron/Nicos of Japan, which mainly serves the lower left corner of 28nm, and then the RVE-001B produced by REVIONIC, which mainly serves the lower right corner of 28nm.
It can be seen that although domestic lithography machines cannot promote the development of China's lithography machine technology at this stage, the capacity expansion of Chinese enterprises, as well as demand, are likely to promote the development of the domestic semiconductor equipment industry.
At the same time, in the context of the high risk of blockade, China urgently needs to build a reliable semiconductor equipment industry chain, and the risk of blockade mainly comes from remote control and implantation of backdoors.
The remote control restrictions of the US blockade of Chinese chips basically start from the two cores of the processor and the operating system, and the embedded backdoor is more likely to appear in the chip equipment manufacturing process, such as the contract chip production equipment of TSMC, SMIC, Tianyu and other enterprises.
This link mainly involves EUV technology of key materials, lithography machines and other equipment, and its risk can be said to be the greatest, especially the lithography machine has the greatest risk potential.
From the perspective of the principle of lithography machine technology, it itself uses an optical system for lithography, which is relatively easy to use, and EUV is the most advanced technology in the current lithography machine.
Among them, the main way of "implanting the backdoor" is to implant the control chip, control the operation of the chip by controlling the logic circuit in the chip, and then realize remote control, thereby reducing the performance of the chip.
On the other hand, the controller will also be implanted, which has the advantage of not occupying the logic resources of the chip, but it is relatively troublesome, and more people are needed to control the implanted controller, that is, more people can control it remotely.
Progress in the production of domestic lithography machines.
However, the situation forces us to hope for domestic production, and mainly from three aspects of breakthroughs: the first is independent controllable, and independent controllable is to rely on their own strength to get rid of the dependence on other people's equipment procurement, so as to reduce the risk, and at present, some domestic enterprises are making breakthroughs from this aspect to accelerate the research and development of domestic lithography machines.
The second is the demand for customization, for some non-commercial needs, we can reduce the risk by customizing domestic chip solutions to meet these needs and bypass Western sanctions.
The last is the maintenance capability, the maintenance capability can also reduce external risks, the mainland now has the ability to repair and maintain chip equipment, this ability can continue to improve the process of the mainland's chip industry chain further.
In particular, the maintenance capacity can be used as a measure of a country's strength, and the stronger the maintenance capacity, the stronger its strength.
Enterprises such as SMIC in the mainland have strong maintenance capabilities and can continue to develop infrastructure for the mainland's chip industry chain.
Therefore, it is entirely feasible for the mainland to counter the risk of export controls on the mainland on the basis of the semiconductor equipment industry.
At the same time, the improvement of maintenance capacity has other benefits, such as improving the capacity of the mainland's maintenance service industry, and at the same time reducing the risk of the mainland's maintenance service industry, so the maintenance capacity is very important.
In China, Shanghai Microelectronics is progressing smoothly on the road of independent research and development of core technologies, and it can be said that it is the mainstay of domestic research and development of lithography machines.
Shanghai Microelectronics has independent R&D capabilities, and the industrial base is under the framework of the relevant policies proposed by Made in China 2025, and the industrial system of the mainland in the field of semiconductors is gradually improving.
The development momentum of the mainland in semiconductor equipment is good, but it still needs to increase its efforts to further strengthen the independent research and development of EUV lithography machine technology, and at the same time cooperate with international enterprises to improve the research and development level in the field of semiconductor equipment.
The breakthrough direction of domestic lithography machine.
There are two key points that need to be broken through in the research and development of domestic lithography machines: the first is to improve the technology of the optical system of the lithography machine, and then to improve the technology of system integration of the lithography machine.
The core of the lithography machine is the optical system, if a complete set of optical system technology system that meets the domestic needs can be established, the difficulty of research and development of domestic lithography machine will be greatly reduced.
Especially in the lithography machine technology of 28nm process, the domestic research team has made remarkable progress and continues to move forward on this basis.
At the same time, Continental's R&D strength in semiconductor equipment has been continuously enhanced, accelerating the technology accumulation and market penetration of domestic lithography machines.
With the change of the times, the global scientific and technological environment is undergoing earth-shaking changes, in the manufacturing industry, the trend of global manufacturing complexity is constantly strengthening, at the same time, independent and controllable is also regarded as the commanding heights by more and more countries.
In the field of semiconductor industry, the leap in the strength of the mainland is not only manifested in international competition, but also in the face of the huge demand of the domestic market.
The demand for semiconductor equipment in the domestic market is very huge, and the lithography machine, as the core part, is the primary problem facing the continuous upgrading of the semiconductor industry in the mainland.
At the same time, the capacity expansion and technological breakthroughs of lithography machines are equally important, which can provide new technical ideas and solutions.
In the face of the current demand of the domestic market and the development trend of the industrial chain, manufacturers can not only produce, but also maintain, which will be an important supplement to the mainland's chip industry chain.
epilogue
At present, the mainland still needs international cooperation, combined with mature international technology, and actively catches up with the pace of advancement.
At the same time, entrepreneurs need to look to the future, take the initiative to seek solutions to current hot issues, constantly make up for the shortcomings of the mainland in technology research and development and the international market, promote the healthy development of the mainland's industrial chain, and help the mainland stand out in the global semiconductor equipment industry.