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 used to work at ASML. I can tell you the semiconductor industry is in a constant sprint race. Machines, called “tools”, take 3-5 years to design.
For context: these were $30M in the early 2000s when I was there. And they required a $10M laser, constant support equipment, and 24/7 maintenance staff (I was this).
If another company were to buy one, tear it apart and try to copy it, they would be at minimum 5-7 years behind the curve. That is why self-innovation is the only way to win here. ASML, at least at the time, took excellent care of the employees, hired top talent, and worked with AAA vendors.
ASML doesn’t make the entire EUV machine all on their lonesome, they are a mother of all system integrators really. Different parts and subsystems come from different industry leading suppliers and they put it all together. Its not just one company, it’s an entire industrial ecosystem and ASML spent decades building it to begin with. Eventually competitors will replicate it, but it’s going to be years or even more than a decade behind ASML.
The machines that ASML make aren’t made from scratch by ASML. They source highly specialised parts from other companies who often only exist to supply those specialised parts.
As an example the mirror surfaces used by the EUV machine are specially made by Zeiss, who are a world leading optics company. So reverse engineering also involves reverse engineering that whole mirror process as well
The machines that ASML make aren’t made from scratch by ASML. They source highly specialised parts from other companies who often only exist to supply those specialised parts.
As an example the mirror surfaces used by the EUV machine are specially made by Zeiss, who are a world leading optics company. So reverse engineering also involves reverse engineering that whole mirror process as well
You’re making incredibly high-precision tools. To make those, you need slightly less precise tools and components. To make those…
None of the tooling and components that go into this stuff is off-the-shelf. They’re all bespoke, there’s very few people out there making them, and those people might not be willing or able to sell them to you anyhow.
To replicate ASML’s machines, you need to assemble the whole chain of suppliers for the components that go into those machines, the tooling to make the machines, and people with the skills to make it all work.
It’s not difficult to remake. What is difficult is to secure sufficient parts and suppliers so that you can create enough semicon fab tools to achieve a cost effective productivity that beats existing customers.
EUV requires a great understanding of some pretty high level physics. It generates extreme UV using laser pulsed tin droplet plasma, it’s going to take a while to get that down.
You don’t just magically learn the underlying physics and understand the quirks by taking something apart.
There are lots of fiddly little quirks in real engineering that are often subtle or even completely masked by how the system was built, especially when dealing with processes in the nanometer scale. Slight variations in the tin droplets could change the distribution of the UV. A motor that vibrates a bit different because they picked a different type of bearing could result in everything being garbage.
EUV research started in the 1990s but it wasn’t until 2018 that the first machine came to be. Reverse engineering, building, qualifying, and mass producing machines within a decade would still be a 3x speed up.
You’re also left with, why make the same thing?
If you’re going to spend 10-20 years and $100B on pretty raw R&D, why make today’s system? Why not work to design the system you’re going to need in 10 years? This is also why no one is really competing with ASML for EUV machines, don’t spend billions breaking into an established market when there is a new one just around the corner you could claim all of for the same price
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.
The machines that ASML make aren’t made from scratch by ASML. They source highly specialised parts from other companies who often only exist to supply those specialised parts.
As an example the mirror surfaces used by the EUV machine are specially made by Zeiss, who are a world leading optics company. So reverse engineering also involves reverse engineering that whole mirror process as well
The level of precision required is mind blowing. I’m the semiconductor, every iteration comes off the back of improvements in dozens of areas by dozens of specialized companies, with very specific knowledge required. I believe EUV took something like 20 years to develop. ASML has a monopoly because they’re the only ones who spent the time to figure it out
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