ASML's panic: EUV lithography machine's new light source will reduce the cost by 50% and power consumption by 80%

At present, ASML is the only company in the world that can produce EUV lithography machine, and EUV lithography machine must be used to manufacture chips below 7nm, so ASML is equivalent to the neck of the world's advanced wafer manufacturers.

As a result, TSMC and other manufacturers had to buy the standard EUV lithography machine of 150 million euros launched by ASML. Later, they launched the High NA EUV lithography machine of 350 million euros, and Intel continued to buy it.

By constantly upgrading the EUV lithography machine, ASML has made a lot of money.

In order to monopolize the EUV lithography business, ASML tied many supply chains on the EUV lithography system to its own chariot. The acquisition and investment made by ASML left no cooperation opportunities for other competitors.

For example, ZEISS, such as TRUMPF and Cymer, are all tied to ASML chariots.

It can be said that if other enterprises want to take the ASML route to build EUV lithography machines, they will have no chance, unless they take a new path.

Recently, this new road has emerged. The most important part of the EUV light source in the EUV lithography machine has a new solution. Compared with the old solution, the new solution has lower cost, higher power and more advanced technology.

In the old scheme, it is very troublesome to generate EUV light. The scheme is called "laser plasma EUV light source (EUV-LPP)". It uses a carbon dioxide laser to bombard tin metal droplets, evaporate these tin beads into plasma, emit extreme ultraviolet (EUV), and then collect EUV through the lens.

This process is very complicated, and the cost is very high. At the same time, the power conversion rate is very low, about 3-5%. So the current EUV lithography machines are all electric tigers, because the power conversion rate is very low, and the final power that can be used is also low.

The new scheme is called free electron laser (FEL). With this scheme, it can also produce EUV light source, let the electron beam from the electron accelerator emit light in the undulator, and then amplify the FEL light to get EUV -- FEL light source.

Compared with the old scheme, once the cost is much lower, the tin ball is not needed, and the carbon dioxide laser is used for excitation. At the same time, the power conversion loss will not be very large.

According to the statement, if the EUV FEL scheme is used to manufacture the lithography machine, the manufacturing cost of the EUV lithography machine will be reduced a lot, perhaps less than half of the original.

More importantly, because the power conversion is much higher, it is not only 3-5% as before, but now it can reach more than 30%. The subsequent EUV lithography machine will not become a power tiger, and the power consumption will be greatly reduced to one fifth of the original, which is possible.

In addition, EUV-FEL can also be upgraded to BEUV-FEL to produce shorter wavelength (6.6-6.7 nm), which is better known than EUV's 13.5 nm wavelength, so it has higher resolution and can produce more advanced chips.

So many scientists said that EUV-FEL beam is obviously more suitable as the light source of EUV lithography machine.

At present, there are institutions in the United States and Japan studying this EUV-FEL technology. According to the saying, although it is impossible to use this technology to manufacture EUV lithography machine in a short period of time, it is believed that it will not be too long, perhaps three or five years.

What do you think of ASML? Once this EUV lithography machine is launched, the whole EUV lithography machine ecosystem will face a major reshuffle, and the global semiconductor pattern will change dramatically. Do you know whether ASML is panicking or not?