Chinese scientists and engineers are shrinking one of the most complex and expensive technologies in modern chipmaking down to desktop size and using it to manufacture 14-nanometre chips.
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While 14-nm chips no longer represent the cutting edge – commercial foundries have already pushed into the 3-nm realm – they remain a sweet spot for performance, cost and efficiency, powering everything from industrial automation to electric vehicles and smart wearables.
At the UltrafastX academic conference in late October, Hefei Lumiverse Technology, based in Anhui province, central China, unveiled an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light source technology.
“We specialise in semiconductor inspection and quantum chip manufacturing. One of our industrial clients has already utilised this light source to produce 14-nm chips,” a company spokesman said this week.
EUV light sources are a critical component of the lithography machines used to manufacture chips with processes below 7nm, but they can be incredibly complex, massive and expensive.
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For example, industry leader ASML’s NXE:3400B is about 12 metres long and 4 metres high.