may not be understood by many friends. In the past few decades of the development of the chip industry, many changes have occurred in the pattern. For example, the initial chip design required EDA tools, so EDA tool providers were just marginalized. However, with the improvement of chip integration, EDA tools have become the most upstream enterprise. Without EDA tools, chip research and development will be almost impossible.
But soon the importance of chip manufacturing began to become prominent until it entered the advanced process, chip manufacturing also began to enter the center of the chip industry. When it came to the 7-nanometer process, chip manufacturing equipment and materials also began to enter the center. The current advanced packaging technology has reached this stage.
The chip manufacturing equipment and materials we mentioned above include lithography machine and photoresist . Without high-quality photoresist, the chip cannot be manufactured. The use of photoresist is the previous program used by the lithography machine. The quality of the photoresist also directly determines the chip quality after the lithography machine is exposed. Therefore, although the research and development of the lithography machine is very difficult, the same is true for photoresist.
According to media reports, my country's photoresist company Nanda Optoelectronics stated that the company's ARF photoresist products have passed the verification of two companies, namely an memory chip manufacturing company and a logic chip manufacturing company. ARF photoresist, which is what we call "DUV photoresist", that is, the photoresist required for DUV lithography machines.
This photoresist can directly support the manufacturing of 7-nanometer process chips, and 7-nanometer is also the ultimate process used by DUV lithography machines. Therefore, we can see that on ARF photoresist, we have achieved domestic production of full process coverage and opened up the path of photoresist required by DUV lithography machines.
From a historical perspective, photoresist has laid the technical foundation in advance, so the subsequent corresponding lithography machine will not be far away. In fact, our domestic 28-nanometer lithography machine has made relevant gratifying progress before, mainly from Guowang Optics.
Guowang Optics is our domestic lithography machine supplier in exposure systems. Because our current domestic lithography machine has reached 90 nanometers, the problem of light source has been solved. Another key point is the exposure system. In the first quarter of this year, Guowang Optics successively issued bids for clean rooms and manufacturing equipment, and stated that it will provide products with 28 nanometers and below processes at the production base.
This means that the device import stage will arrive soon, and we don’t have to worry about when mass production will be done for now, but it can be basically confirmed that we have mastered the technology of the 28-nanometer exposure system, and our current job is to prepare for large-scale mass production. Taking the 5-nanometer factory built by TSMC in the United States as an example, it will introduce equipment in December and achieve mass production in 2024.
So in this way, Guowang Optics is about to move towards mass production, which is consistent with what we mentioned above. After photoresist, it is consistent with the historical development law of lithography machines. Therefore, it is said that ASML continues to supply. Previously, the US asked ASML to ban the supply of EUV lithography machines and also ban the supply of DUV lithography machines, which was rejected by ASML.
Recently, Dutch reiterated ASML's determination to continue supplying. ASML said that the laws of physics are the same in the Netherlands and in China. This means that Chinese companies can do what ASML can do. There is no doubt that now, what ASML predicts is very accurate. In fact, not only in DUV lithography machines, but also in EUV lithography machines.
For example, Huawei just announced an EUV lithography machine patent. In fact, we already have a considerable number of EUV patents. It is not only Huawei who is working hard. Shanghai Institute of Optical and Machinery of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been recruiting very subdivided positions in EUV lithography machines for a long time, which shows that we already have a very good understanding of EUV lithography machines and are also recruiting EUV light sources recently.
. After Nanda Optoelectronics broke through the "DUV photoresist", the next step was naturally to break through the "EUV photoresist". Overall, our domestic chip industry is developing rapidly, which is a grand occasion that has not been seen in the past few decades. Let me mention that just now, our chip design tool EDA has achieved full process coverage in analog circuits and other aspects. We are becoming more and more confident about the development of the domestic chip industry. If you think it is reasonable, thank you for giving me a thumbs up and reading.
