A secret laboratory in China has quietly assembled a prototype extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system and is now testing it stealthily, which means that the country may be close to replicating the most advanced technology that currently exists on Earth, reports Reuters.
The tool was reportedly developed by reverse engineering existing scanners from ASML and is said to be on-track to make prototype chips in 2028. If the information is correct, then Chinese scientists have made numerous breakthroughs across multiple disciplines in just a few years instead of decades, a scenario that appears extremely unlikely. Further analysis of the report indicates that China's laboratory is far from completing the tool, meaning that the country is years away from making chips using EUV lithography.
China's alleged EUV scanner
The system was reportedly completed in early 2025 inside a highly secured facility in Shenzhen and occupies nearly an entire factory floor. The Chinese machine reportedly generates EUV light with a wavelength of 13.5nm using the same laser-produced plasma (LPP) method as ASML Twinscan NXE machines, not the particle accelerator-based steady-state microbunching (SSMB) method designed at Tsinghua University or discharge-produced plasma (DPP) technology developed at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), which might prove the point that the system was reverse-engineered or at least contains a substantial amount of technologies pioneered by ASML.
(Image credit: ASML)
ASML's laser-produced plasma (LPP) method uses tiny molten tin droplets, roughly 25–30 microns in diameter, which are injected into a vacuum chamber at a rate of about 50,000 droplets per second. Then, a high-power CO₂ laser first fires a low-intensity pre-pulse at each droplet, flattening it into a disk-like shape, followed by a more powerful main pulse that vaporizes the flattened tin and creates a superheated plasma with temperatures exceeding 200,000°C. This plasma emits isotropic EUV light, which is then collected by a large multilayer collector mirror and directed into the lithography system's reflective optics for patterning silicon wafers. This process repeats tens of thousands of times per second.
The machine is reportedly larger than the original, but it is operational in the sense that it can generate EUV radiation. However, it has not progressed to make usable chips as it still struggles to replicate 'the precision optical systems' features by Twinscan NXE systems. Furthermore, there is no word about power of the EUV light source, a crucial parameter that defines whether a tool can or cannot be used for volume production.
Not operational, for now
The report clearly states that the Chinese EUV scanner cannot currently be used to make chips, but the Chinese government reportedly wants the first chip prototypes to emerge in 2028, two or three years down the road. However, a more realistic target is 2030, four or five years from now, which is a long time. Meanwhile, from the report, it is not completely clear what stage the Chinese team is at today.
(Image credit: ASML)
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