Researchers at ASML have increased the power of EUV light sources from 600W to 1,000W, allowing EUV machines to produce up to 50% more chips by 2030. With higher power, wafer exposure times are shorter. Each machine can therefore process 330 wafers per hour by 2030 compared to 220 wafers per hour today.
The technology allows up to 100,000 tin droplets per second to be produced to print chip circuits using two plasma bursts instead of just one. Customers using ASML machines can reduce chip production costs because more can be produced at the same time.
ASML believes that the technique that increased power to 1,000W can be used to increase power to 1.50W and then 2,000W in the future. ASML has a monopoly on manufacturing machines that produce chips using the EUV technique, which is required for chips with sub-7nm technology.
China, which is blocked from purchasing EUV machines, is now developing locally-made EUV technology by reverse engineering older machines manufactured by ASML.
