If you pay attention to the lithography machine, you must have heard a saying on the Internet that ASML mocked the Chinese lithography machine: “Even if you give a complete set of drawings, the Chinese people can’t build a lithography machine.”
It is impossible to verify whether ASML has said this sentence. However, He Rongming, the founder, chairman and general manager of Shanghai Microelectronics, said publicly that when the company was just founded, he led a team to Europe for investigation and said that when it was going to build a lithography machine, European lithography machine experts did say that.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
Of course, now it seems that this sentence is a joke, because Shanghai Microelectronics has built a lithography machine. Although the precision is still 90 nm, it is built.
However, from this sentence, we can still see how difficult it was for Chinese lithography machines in the past, and how disdainful Europe was for China to build lithography machines.https://store.stoneitech.com/
The first lithography machine in the world was built in 1961 by GCA in the United States. This is a contact lithography machine with an exposure accuracy of 1um and a line width of>3um, which is used for 2-6 inch wafers.
It is said that the first contact lithography machine in China was built around 1966. A 65 type contact lithography machine was built by the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in collaboration with Shanghai Optical Instrument Factory.
Later, the United States built a proximity lithography machine in the 1970s, and then launched a distributed lithography machine in the late 1970s
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But at that time, China was really weak, and semiconductors were not valued, which was almost zero. In addition, the United States imposed a technical blockade on China. Many people didn’t even know what the lithography machine was, let alone build it.
Therefore, for many years, the contact lithography machine has remained in China without new progress. More importantly, at that time, Chinese chip manufacturing did not keep up with the times. This contact lithography machine was not widely used, and was more used for research, which had nothing to do with industrial production.
It was not until the late 1970s that the Chinese scientific and technological community found that semiconductors were becoming more and more important, and semiconductors could not be separated from lithography machines, so it was clearly proposed to improve lithography equipment and catch up with and surpass the world’s advanced level as soon as possible.
So the Department of Precision Instruments of Tsinghua University, China Electronics Technology and other scientific research institutions made efforts again, and everyone began to develop new lithography machines.
It is said that the R&D team of Tsinghua University developed the distributed projection lithography machine in 1980, and by 1985, the 45 Institute of China Electronics Technology also developed the distributed projection lithography machine. Its performance is similar to that of GCA in 1978, which is only about 7 years behind.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
However, as before, the domestic chip industry itself is not developed. The lithography machine developed is also used for theoretical research. It has not been put into large-scale application in the wafer factory at all. However, the industrialization of the lithography machine separated from industrial production has been stagnant. It is basically built for the sake of manufacturing, not for the needs of the market.
After the 1980s, there was another wave of introduction in China. To put it mildly, it is better to buy than to make. As long as you have money, you can buy lithography machines and a full set of chip production lines from the United States, Japan and Europe. What else do you make?
So the lithography technology, which was only a few years behind, as well as the domestic chip industry, stagnated again in those 10 years, and was overtaken and left behind by the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea.
Until 1999, the Kosovo War broke out. In this war, the United States used electronic information technology to paralyze almost all the network systems of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
This has made the domestic scientific and technological circles really attach importance to the electronics, information and semiconductor industries, and at the same time changed their minds, that is, “buy rather than make”, because the things they buy are not their own, and once they fall out with the United States, the national information security will face serious threats.
So the development of advanced lithography machine was put forward again and included in the “863 major scientific and technological breakthrough plan”.
In 2002, Shanghai Microelectronics Equipment (Group) Co., Ltd., which undertook the task of tackling key projects, was formally established. The general manager was He Rongming. After the establishment of the company, he took his technical team to Europe and the United States to study. European experts looked down on them, and said: “Given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese people can’t make a lithography machine.”.
After the establishment of Shanghai Microelectronics, the lithography machine it wanted to build was the dry lithography machine with 193 nm light source, but at this time it had lagged behind the international level for more than 20 years, because Nikon and Canon had studied 193 nm lithography machine more than 20 years ago and were moving towards 165 nm.
At this time, ASML, in conjunction with TSMC, turned to a wet-type lithography machine, using water as the medium. It is necessary to skip 165nm, using water as the medium, so that 193nm light source is directly equivalent to 134nm light source lithography machine.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
After five years of hard work, in 2007, Shanghai Microelectronics’ lithography machine was successfully developed, but the core devices mainly came from the United States, Europe and other countries. The United States imposed an embargo on them, so although it was developed, it still could not be mass produced, just a castle in the air.
In the next decade, Shanghai Microelectronics can only work with the domestic supply chain to tackle various key materials, achieve domestic production, and break away from dependence on Western components. This effort took another 10 years. Until 2016, the 90nm precision dry lithography machine with 193nm light source in Shanghai Microelectronics achieved full mass production.
Later on, we all know that because the core components and technology of the lithography machine have been blocked, the lithography machine technology of Shanghai Microelectronics has not made much progress, and the current maximum accuracy is 90nm.
More importantly, the progress of the lithography machine must follow the progress of the industry. At present, the domestic wafer manufacturing equipment is basically from the West. The lithography machine is matched with other equipment. We buy ASML, Nikon, Canon, and basically do not use domestic ones.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
Coupled with the embargo and technical restrictions of the United States, the domestic lithography machine still lags behind the foreign countries for 20 years. It can be said that it has not completely come out of the predicament.
However, now we all understand that “buying is better than making”. Only what we own can not be blocked, so the lithography project has received unprecedented attention and has been trying to catch up.
More importantly, the chip industry also clearly understands that only its own can be controlled, and more and more domestic lithography machines are used to industrialize them. But to be honest, to catch up with the international level, we still have to continue to work hard, and it may take many years. We have to sit on the cold bench.
The difficult past of domestic lithography machine: given a complete set of drawings, the Chinese can’t make a lithography machine?
