ASML announces breakthrough in EUV light source technology, with chip production capacity expected to increase by 50% by 2030

IT House, February 23 — According to Reuters today, researchers at ASML have found a way to increase the power of key chip manufacturing equipment light sources, potentially boosting chip output by up to 50% by 2030.

IT House notes that Michael Purvis, Chief Technology Officer of ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) light source, stated in an interview: “This is not just a showy trick or something that can only demonstrate feasibility for a short period. It’s a system capable of delivering a stable output of 1,000 watts under all the same conditions as actual customer production environments.”

The report states that with this technological advancement announced on Monday, ASML aims to further distance itself from all potential competitors by improving the most technically challenging part of the lithography machines. This is a technical breakthrough in generating EUV light with the appropriate power and characteristics to enable high-volume chip manufacturing. The company’s researchers have found a way to increase EUV light source power from the current 600 watts to 1,000 watts.

The main advantage of this is that higher power means more chips can be produced per hour, thereby reducing the cost per chip. The chip manufacturing process is similar to “printing”: EUV light is projected onto silicon wafers coated with photoresist. With a higher-powered EUV light source, the exposure time needed for chip fabrication will be significantly shortened.

Teun van Gogh, Vice President of the EUV Lithography Business at ASML, said that by 2030, the upgraded equipment could process about 330 wafers per hour, compared to 220 wafers now. Depending on the chip size, each wafer can produce hundreds to thousands of chips.

The report mentions that ASML achieved this power increase by strengthening one of the most complex components of its lithography machines—the tin droplet generator. In this system, a large amount of carbon dioxide laser heats tin droplets into plasma (a super-hot state of matter), and then tin ions emit EUV light used in chip manufacturing.

The key breakthrough announced on Monday is doubling the number of tin droplets to about 100,000 per second, and shaping them into plasma with two smaller laser pulses, whereas current machines can only form plasma with a single pulse.

Purvis said, “This is very challenging because you need nanometer-level precision, and you must master laser technology, plasma science, and materials science.” He added, “Achieving this at the kilowatt level is significant, and we see a clear path toward 1,500 watts. Theoretically, there are no fundamental obstacles to surpassing 2,000 watts in the future.”