One would expect that reverse engineering technologies wouldn’t be impossible.
The importance of these technologies for China is huge.
Moreover, they have a massive budget and probably also own a couple of ASML’s euv lithography machines.
Why is it that they cant remake these machines?
I heard some sources say that it might take them a decade.
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I’m a thin film optics engineer and make some optics for ASML. Deep UV optics are incredibly hard to make. Any contamination during the process causes issues, absorption, laser damage, durability problems and the sources for that contamination are near infinite. A DUV optics shop will have spent years, maybe a decade getting their entire supply chain and internal tribal knowledge up to snuff. Things like that don’t necessarily transport well to another country. Like if our company said hey take everything you know, all of our documentation on all of our processes and go make these parts in China, it would take years to get that setup and that’s with DUV tribal knowledge! So sure, you could like DSIMS the optics and find out material and design, but knowing the theoretical design of something, and knowing how to successfully produce something that meets those design requirements are not the same thing.
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