ASML, Zeiss say next-generation chipmaking technology may be ready in 10 years

By Toby Sterling

AMSTERDAM, Oct 8 (Reuters) - A successor to ASML's most advanced chipmaking machine could be ready in about 10 years, engineers for the company and its optics partner Carl Zeiss said in a peer-reviewed paper.

The tool, dubbed "Hyper NA", would print smaller circuitry while re-using much of the companies' existing technology, the paper said, though challenges remain.

The machine, which ASML has begun developing but has not committed to producing, matters for the company's future prospects, as well as those of its partners and competitors. 

ASML had no immediate comment.

The company is Europe's most valuable by market capitalization, thanks to its monopoly on lithography tools that use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light to print the tiny circuitry of AI chips.

SMALLER, FASTER CHIPS

The paper in the October issue of the Journal of Micro/Nanopatterning, Materials and Metrology says Hyper NA could print features as small as 5 nanometers, more than a third smaller than ASML's current "High NA" EUV tool. 

Though chipmakers are improving chips with 3-D designs, smaller features remain key for speed and power usage, and lithography is a limiting factor.

Among chip manufacturers, Intel has begun using High NA in production, while last month Samsung and SK Hynix said they would follow in 2028 and TSMC in 2030.

The paper said Zeiss can already make mirrors precise enough for Hyper NA, and the machine would be barely larger than High NA tools, already the size of a double-decker bus.

Beyond Hyper NA, the authors said, tools would likely need to use a shorter wavelength of light, still a matter for academic research. 

They said ASML's current light source "can be reused as is" for Hyper NA, while mentioning in a note that an alternative technique with free electron lasers would not change the lighting system's design.

Those remarks are relevant for US startups including xLight, which is developing free-electron laser light sources that Elon Musk has hinted he might favor at his Terafab chip plant in Texas, and for Substrate, which is pursuing X-ray lithography.

(Reporting by Toby Sterling; Editing by Jan Harvey)