To enable further innovation in chip manufacturing, we developed a next-generation EUV platform that increases the numerical aperture (NA) from 0.33 to 0.55 (‘High NA’). The platform, called ‘EXE’, has a novel optics design and significantly faster wafer and reticle stages.

Researchers and scientists first began to explore EUV lithography in the 1980s, with the first successful applications of this new technology occurring toward the end of the decade.

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NXE lithography systems are used in high-volume manufacturing of advanced Logic and Memory chips. The first systems to use ASML’s novel 13.5 nm EUV light source, they print microchip features with a resolution of 13 nm, which is unreachable with deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography. Chipmakers use our NXE systems to print the highly complex foundation layers of their 7 nm, 5 nm and 3 nm nodes. Read about how EUV lithography went from imagination to reality.

EUV light is absorbed by everything, even air. So the whole light path and everything the light interacts with – from source to wafer – must be in high vacuum.

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Reticles contain the chip pattern to be printed on the wafer. In EUV, reticles are multilayer reflectors that use interference to reflect light from the pattern.

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Then, in 2010, the first TWINSCAN NXE:3100, a pre-production EUV system, was shipped to one of our major customers. Two years later, six more systems were shipped to different customers. The first EUV production system – the TWINSCAN NXE:3300 – was shipped in 2013, signaling another step forward in the development of this new technology.

Precision robot arms transfer wafers in and out of the system’s vacuum environment through an air lock, operating within a positioning accuracy of 25 µm and a uniform surface temperature within 2 mK.

The wafer stage positions the wafer to within a quarter of a nanometer for each exposure, checking and adjusting 20,000 times per second.

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But EUV was a challenging and costly pursuit and, in time, only ASML – with our partners and suppliers – continued work toward a viable system. In August 2006 we shipped the world’s first EUV lithography demo tool to the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering in Albany, in the US, and to imec in Leuven, Belgium. The college and company used these prototypes to learn about EUV and how it might fit into the semiconductor manufacturing process.

Leading-edge microchips contain billions of transistors. With each new generation (often referred to as a ‘node’), chipmakers pack in ever more and tinier transistors to make the chips more powerful, faster and energy efficient. Chips made with EUV lithography are enabling smart technology (cars, phones and homes), augmented reality, artificial intelligence and much more.

Work to industrialize the technology kicked off in 1994, with a coalition of semiconductor industry companies (including ASML) delivering the very first prototype. This prototype proved that EUV lithography was possible, and the industry started to pursue the technology.

If you have a relatively new smartphone, one of the latest gaming consoles or a smart watch, it’s likely you’ve benefited directly from EUV lithography technology.

The first High NA EUV lithography system was delivered in December 2023. The platform will support process development and is expected to be used in high-volume manufacturing in 2025–2026.

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Though there were delays and difficulties, EUV lithography turned a corner in 2016. Customers began ordering the NXE:3400 in higher numbers. At the beginning of 2020, we celebrated the 100th EUV system shipment.

The EXE platform will support high-volume chip manufacturing in 2025–2026, enabling geometric chip scaling into the next decade. That will include future advanced nodes, starting at the 2 nm Logic node and followed by Memory nodes at a similar density. By reducing the number of process steps in high-volume manufacturing, chipmakers will benefit from significant reductions in defects, cost and cycle time.

EUV systems use several multilayer mirrors instead of lenses to guide the EUV light to the wafer, shrinking the reticle pattern by a factor of four.

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Engineering EUV was anything but simple. ASML invested more than €6 billion in EUV R&D over 17 years. We acquired Cymer – a company specialized in light source technology – to accelerate EUV source development. And once the technology was developed, we had to overcome numerous technical challenges to meet chipmaker’s requirements for high-volume manufacturing.

Using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light, our NXE and EXE systems deliver high-resolution lithography and make mass production of the world’s most advanced microchips possible

EUV lithography makes scaling more affordable for chipmakers and allows the semiconductor industry to continue its pursuit of Moore’s Law. EUV systems are used to print the most intricate layers on a chip, with the rest of the layers printed using various DUV systems. Both types of technology will be required in parallel for many years to come and we’re continuing to advance both technologies.

EXE, or ‘High NA’, systems are the latest generation in EUV lithography. With a numerical aperture (NA) of 0.55, their innovative new optics provide higher contrast and print with a resolution of just 8 nm.

In spite of the global financial crisis in 2008, we continued to invest in EUV. In the Spring of 2008, the College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering used their demo tool to produce the world’s first full-field EUV test chips. And in 2009, we opened the buildings that would house cleanrooms and workspaces for EUV development and production at our Veldhoven headquarters in the Netherlands.

To generate EUV light, a CO2 laser fires two separate laser pulses at a fast-moving drop of tin. This vaporizes the tin and creates EUV light. It does this up to 50,000 times per second.

The dual-stage extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system is the first in a new generation of machines that will provide 8 nm resolution to support advanced Logic and Memory chip production.