Priced at hundreds of millions, what makes this lithography machine imported from the Netherlands so valuable?

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Not long ago, a piece of equipment worth 106 million yuan was transported from the Netherlands to Xiamen by air. Due to the high value of the equipment, it has very high requirements for storage and transportation - it must be kept at a constant temperature of 23°C. In order to avoid affecting the accuracy of the equipment, it also has extremely high requirements for stability during transportation. Therefore, the airport customs implemented full-time machine-side supervision of the goods by apron inspection. After the goods were loaded into a special temperature-controlled air cushion vehicle and moved under the customs' apron video surveillance probe, they were released that night after completing the emergency inspection.

So what kind of equipment can earn such high attention from airport customs and have a price tag of over 100 million per unit?

What is a lithography machine?

Lithography machines are one of the core equipment for chip manufacturing. They can be divided into several types according to their uses: lithography machines for chip production; lithography machines for packaging; and projection lithography machines for LED manufacturing. Lithography machines used to produce chips are China's biggest shortcoming in semiconductor equipment manufacturing. The high-end lithography machines needed by domestic wafer factories are completely dependent on imports . The lithography machines imported by Xiamen companies from the Netherlands this time are equipment for chip production.

In the field of high-end lithography machines, in addition to the leading ASML, Nikon and Canon have also made lithography machines, and Nikon has also received orders from Intel. However, in recent years, Nikon has been beaten by ASML without any ability to fight back, and the high-end lithography machine market is basically occupied by ASML - even Nikon's latest Ar-F immersion 630 is priced at less than half of the average price of ASML Ar-F immersion 1980D, but it cannot save the situation.

What is the reason? On the one hand, after Intel's new CEO took office, he no longer extended the 620D contract with Nikon, which caused Nikon to lose a major customer. On the other hand, it is also related to Nikon's own lack of technical strength. Nikon's lithography machine has many flaws compared to ASML, and the architecture designed in the operating system is flawed. In addition, the actual performance of Nikon's lithography machine is quite different from Nikon's official propaganda. This makes it impossible for TSMC, Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and other large wafer manufacturers to sell defective products in order to save a little money.

At present, Nikon's high-end lithography machines are basically beaten by ASML. In the mainstream semiconductor production lines, only a few low-end and old lithography machines are still Nikon or Canon, and the rest are basically dominated by ASML. To some extent, Nikon's lithography machines can only grab the market by selling them super cheaply. So, how cheap are they?

To put it in perspective, ASML's EUV NXE 3350B costs more than $100 million, while ArF Immersion costs about $70 million. In comparison, Nikon's lithography machine costs only one-third of ASML's.

Working principle of photolithography machine

The above picture is an introduction to the ASML lithography machine. Below is a brief introduction to the functions of each device in the picture.

Measuring table and exposure table: are the work tables that carry silicon wafers.

Laser: also known as the light source, one of the core devices of the lithography machine.

Beam corrector: Corrects the incident direction of the beam to make the laser beam as parallel as possible.

Energy controller: controls the energy that ultimately irradiates the silicon wafer. Underexposure or overexposure will seriously affect the image quality.

Beam shape setting: Set the beam to different shapes such as circular and ring. Different beam states have different optical properties.

Shutter: Prevents the light beam from reaching the silicon wafer when exposure is not required.

Energy detector: detects whether the final incident energy of the light beam meets the exposure requirements, and feeds back to the energy controller for adjustment.

Reticle: A piece of glass with a circuit design engraved on the inside, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mask stage: A device that carries the movement of the mask, with motion control accuracy at the nm level.

Objective lens: The objective lens is used to compensate for optical errors and scale down the circuit diagram.

Silicon wafer: a round wafer made of silicon crystal. Silicon wafers come in a variety of sizes, and the larger the size, the higher the yield. By the way, since silicon wafers are round, a notch needs to be cut on the silicon wafer to confirm the coordinate system of the silicon wafer. According to the shape of the notch, there are two types, called flat and notch.

Internal closed frame and vibration damper: isolate the workbench from the external environment, keep it level, reduce external vibration interference, and maintain stable temperature and pressure.

In the process of chip processing, the photolithography machine transmits the light beam through the mask with the circuit diagram through a series of light source energy and shape control methods, and uses the objective lens to compensate for various optical errors, scales down the circuit diagram and maps it onto the silicon wafer, and then uses chemical methods to develop it to obtain the circuit diagram engraved on the silicon wafer. The general photolithography process involves cleaning and drying the silicon wafer surface, coating the primer, spin coating the photoresist, soft baking, alignment exposure, post-baking, developing, hard baking, laser etching and other processes. The chip that has been photolithographically processed once can continue to be coated with glue and exposed. The more complex the chip, the more layers of the circuit diagram, and the more precise the exposure control process.

High-end lithography machines are completely dependent on imports

At present, the leader in the field of lithography is ASML of the Netherlands, which has occupied up to 80% of the market share and monopolized the high-end lithography market. Japan's Nikon was completely defeated by ASML in high-end lithography, even though Nikon's ArF lithography machine is priced at less than half of ASML. Intel, TSMC, and Samsung's lithography machines for processing 14/16nm chips are all purchased from ASML, and the lithography machines of wafer factories such as GlobalFoundries, UMC, and SMIC are also mainly from ASML.

More importantly, only ASML in the world can produce the most advanced EUV lithography machines. The two EUV lithography machines sold by ASML in the third and fourth quarters of this year were both priced at more than US$100 million. The average price of ArF lithography machines, which are one generation behind EUV, is also around 40 to 50 million euros. From the high quotations and the fact that only ASML in the world sells EUV lithography machines, it can be seen that the technical threshold of lithography machines is extremely high, and they are the product of the culmination of human wisdom.

In contrast, domestic photolithography machine manufacturers appear to be very shabby. Among the photolithography machines that have been mass-produced by Shanghai Microelectronics Equipment Co., Ltd., which is at the forefront of technology, the best performance is the one that can be used to process 90nm chips. It is no exaggeration to say that the technological gap is a chasm. It is precisely for this reason that the high-end photolithography machines needed by domestic wafer factories are completely dependent on imports. The ASML photolithography machine that was airlifted from the Netherlands to Xiamen Airport this time is a high-end photolithography machine used for chip production and manufacturing. Since it was declared imported by a company in Xiamen, the author speculates that this equipment is likely to be purchased from ASML in the Netherlands by the wafer factory jointly established by the local government of Xiamen and Taiwan's United Microelectronics Corporation. However, due to the restrictions of the Western Wassenaar Arrangement, China can only buy ASML's medium and low-end products, which can be seen from the fact that the price of the photolithography machine imported by local companies in Xiamen is only 100 million yuan.