This Laser Giant Received A Secret Visit From TSMC CEO

According to Korean media reports, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia visited ASML's headquarters in Holland on May 26th, and at the same time visited industrial laser giant 100 years of Germany's Tonspeed.
Wei's whereabouts were revealed by Christophe Fouquet, CEO of ASML, and Nicola Leibinger-Kammüller, CEO of Thomson, via social media.
TSMC is said to be considering the introduction of High NA EUV equipment for the 1.6nm process after A16, which is due for volume production in the second half of 2026, and using the existing Low NA EUV equipment until then, which is critical for sub-2nmprocesses.
According to the latest news, ASML's new High NA EUV lithography wafer production speed of 400 to 500 wafers per hour, the current standard EUV 200 wafers per hour 2-2.5 times the speed, that is, an increase of 100% to 150%, which will further increase production capacity and reduce costs.
Last year, Intel was the first in the industry to obtain ASML for its customized design of several High NA EUV equipment. The industry now expects Intel to fully utilize this new generation of lithography in its 14A (1.4nm) semiconductor process.
Previously, TSMC, for its part, had said that it would not buy ASML's latest High-NA EUV equipment, which it considered too expensive to make economic sense until 2026, but that idea seems to be wavering now.
The main protagonist of this secret visit was not only ASML, but also laser giant TRUMPF from Germany. Founded in 1923, TRUMPF celebrated its 100th anniversary milestone last year.
Trumpf Group is the only manufacturer in the world that can supply light sources for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. Therefore, EUV lithography business is also one of the focuses of Trumpf's development at present.
In fact, Trafigura has been investing in lithography laser generation systems for more than 16 years. Since 2005, Trafigura has been cooperating with Cymer Inc. in the United States, and has continued to deepen the cooperation after Cymer was acquired by ASML. For this purpose, TRUMPF has established a specialized subsidiary, TRUMPF Lasersystems for Semiconductor Manufacturing, focusing on the development and production of EUV lasers. 2015, ASML ordered 15 EUV lithography tools from TRUMPF , marking the EUV lithography business as the centerpiece of Thomson's development.
According to Trafigura's previously announced report for fiscal year 2022/2023 (ending June 30, 2023), total sales reached 5.4 billion euros, up 27% year-on-year.
Among them, the sales of EUV business reached 971 million euros, an increase of 22.2% year-on-year. Mainly to provide extreme ultraviolet (EUV) devices provide ultra-high-power carbon dioxide lasers used to drive the EUV emission in ASML's huge lithography tool source module.
For our country, there is still no enterprise can mass production of EUV lithography light source. However, according to the latest news, on May 14, the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Machinery of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIPM), in conjunction with Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) and Shanghai Institute of Technology (SIT), has made a major breakthrough in the field of Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) and soft X-rays, and has successfully realized the structural vortex light modulation. This milestone progress, not only marks China's extreme ultraviolet light source technology has taken a key step forward, more domestic lithography research and development has cleared the core technology barriers.
In addition, some domestic enterprises, such as AOP Optronics, Fujing Technology, etc., are also actively involved in the development and production of photolithography-related technologies. Among them, the major shareholder of the AOP photoelectric Changchun Institute of Optical Machinery of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which is involved in the domestic lithography light source, optical part of the R & D work;
And Fuching Technology is a technological unicorn of lithography upstream materials under CAS, which has developed KBBF, a nonlinear optical crystal material, full name KBeNbBFO, which can convert laser light into deep ultraviolet laser light of 176nm wavelength.
This deep-ultraviolet laser light source has extremely high energy and very high concentration, so it can be used to create deep-ultraviolet solid-state lasers. And in the field ofmanufacturing, it may improve the precision of existing photolithography by more than 10 times, thus greatly improving the efficiency and precision ofmanufacturing.
At present, although these domestic advances have not yet reached the level of mass production of EUV lithography light sources, they have laid the foundation for China's further development in the field of lithography technology.