A breakthrough from the chip giant.

ASML has made a new breakthrough in EUV technology. Photo: ASML .

ASML announced that it has made significant progress in light source technology for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which could boost chip production by up to 50% by the end of this decade. The announcement was made on February 23rd.

The Dutch tech giant is currently the world's only manufacturer of commercial EUV machines, a key component in advanced chip manufacturing used by the largest semiconductor companies such as TSMC and Intel. EUV technology is considered the "heart" of the circuit board printing process in modern semiconductor generations.

According to ASML researchers, the company has found a way to increase the power of its EUV light source from the current 600 watts to 1,000 watts. Michael Purvis, ASML's lead EUV light source technician, said the new system is not just a short-term experiment; it fully meets the operational requirements at the customer's facility.

"This is a system that can increase power up to 1,000 watts with all the same requirements as you can see," Purvis said at ASML's California plant.

Higher power output allows for shorter exposure times when printing chips onto photoresist-coated silicon wafers, thereby increasing the number of chips produced per hour and reducing the cost per unit. According to Teun Van Gogh, Executive Vice President at ASML, the company's goal is to help customers continue using EUV at significantly lower costs.

Mr. Van Gogh stated that by the end of this decade, each EUV machine could process approximately 330 wafers per hour, up from the current 220. Depending on the size, each wafer could contain anywhere from a few dozen to thousands of chips.

EUV technology is so complex that it has become a focal point of geopolitical competition. The US government has coordinated with the Netherlands to restrict the export of EUV equipment to China. Meanwhile, China is pushing its efforts to develop similar technology domestically.

In the US, startups like Substrate and xLight have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to pursue competitive solutions, with xLight receiving government funding under President Donald Trump.

ASML is the exclusive global supplier of commercial EUV machines. Photo: ASML .

To generate EUV light with a wavelength of 13.5 nm, ASML's machine fires droplets of molten tin into a vacuum chamber, where they are heated by a CO2 laser into plasma, a superheated state that emits EUV light. This light is then collected and directed by a precision optics system supplied by Carl Zeiss AG (Germany) to print the circuit onto a wafer.

The new advancements include doubling the number of tin droplets to approximately 100,000 droplets per second, and using two small laser pulses to shape the plasma instead of a single pulse as before.

Jorge J. Rocca, a professor at Colorado State University, commented that achieving a power output of 1,000 watts is "very impressive," highlighting the significant engineering challenge of this technology.

ASML stated that the new techniques open the way to increasing power output to 1,500 watts, or even 2,000 watts in the future. This will strengthen the company's advantage in the global semiconductor technology race.