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Tracing the Emergence of Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography

Lessons for Identifying, Protecting, and Promoting the Next Emerging Technology

John VerWey

July 2024

Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the most important technology to have emerged out of the semiconductor industry in recent years. This report presents a case study of its development from the 1980s to the present. Using bibliometric data, this report details the evolution of the research community responsible for its development and the many scientific breakthroughs made on EUVs over a decades-long path to commercialization. The paper concludes with lessons learned for policymakers interested in protecting and promoting the next generation of emerging technologies.

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Executive Summary

This paper presents a case study on the most important technology to have emerged in the past decade: extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. In 2019, when the first commercial electronics enabled by EUV were released, the technology was hailed as “the machine that saved Moore’s Law.”www.technologyreview.com/2021/10/27/1037118/moores-law-computer-chips/; Sander Hofman, “Making EUV: From Lab to Fab,” ASML, March 30, 2022, www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/making-euv-lab-to-fab.'>1 All of today’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chips, smartphones, autonomous driving systems, and high-performance computers contain semiconductors fabricated using EUV lithography. The Dutch company ASML has emerged as the sole supplier of EUV machines, winning a 30-year race that granted the company a monopoly on selling the tool essential for fabricating leading-edge semiconductors.https://seekingalpha.com/article/4564513-the-holy-trinity-of-semis-asml-leadingmarket-recovery.'>2

However, while ASML gets well-deserved praise for developing and commercializing EUV, this paper’s focus is on the research community that supported EUV from the beginning: the academics in Japan, the United States, and Europe; the public-private partnerships; the conferences; and the industry collaboration that laid the groundwork for EUV in the 1980s and 1990s. Without this community, “the most technically advanced tool of any kind that’s ever been made” would not have been possible.www.zeiss.com/semiconductor-manufacturing-technology/smt-magazine/so-does-euv-lithography-work.html.'>3 This paper traces the academic, government, and industry actors involved in a multi-decade moon-shot project that ultimately saw EUV ascend from a speculative emerging technology to the mechanism that makes Nvidia’s leading-edge AI training chips and Apple’s latest smartphone possible.

Careful study of the research community that supported EUV development is particularly relevant for policymakers and the semiconductor industry today. EUV research began in the 1980s, when the U.S. semiconductor industry was trying to fend off ascendent Japanese firms amid significant government intervention on both sides. At the same time, the industry recognized that a new generation of lithographic light sources would be necessary to fabricate future advanced chips to maintain Moore’s law. Similar circumstances exist today, with policymakers in the United States, Europe, and Asia engaged in once-in-a-generation efforts to protect and promote their respective semiconductor industries, all while ascendent Chinese firms attempt to challenge industry leaders. Meanwhile, the entire semiconductor industry recognizes a slow-moving existential crisis: rapid advances in AI must be sustained by correspondingly rapid advances in computational power. However, the end of Moore’s law is in sight, and not even EUV can save it.https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/resources/moores-law.html#gs.281pa2.'>4

The development of EUV reflects many of the emerging technology themes observed in previous CSET analyses.https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/through-a-glass-darkly-mapping-emerging-technologies-and-their-supply-chains/.'>5 Research collaboration among academia, industry, and government has occurred for decades, making progress on associated technologies in fields such as materials science, plasma physics, and chemistry. This progress has been documented in the form of journal article publications, patent filings, and conference proceedings. Over time, specific technologies would transition from government labs to the private sector, frequently through public-private partnerships and consortia formed to address and overcome technical hurdles. Eventually a private firm would assess a market opportunity, make investments to increase the technology’s maturity, collaborate with customers, and commercialize the technology. Government support has always been essential at various points along the way.

Bibliometric study of the EUV research community during the period...