EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET (EUV) LITHOGRAPHY MARKET ANALYSIS

Market Concentration and Competitive Landscape

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Growing Complexity of Integrated Circuits Requiring Advanced Lithography Techniques

There has been an unrelenting march towards integrating more transistors within the same silicon real estate to deliver enhanced functionality, affordability and efficiency of electronic systems. Semiconductor industry has continually encountered challenges related to device miniaturization as components size shrinks with each successive technology generation. Integrated circuits used to power new and emerging technologies like AI, IoT, autonomous vehicles require incredibly higher performance at much lower power levels. This growing complexity of chip designs exerts immense pressure on chipmakers to integrate billions of transistors on a single die, a requirement that existing lithography tools struggle to fulfil.

Developing chips for applications like data centres, supercomputers and edge servers pose even stiffer density demands. Achieving higher circuit density while maintaining process control and reliability require lithography techniques with much greater resolution, depth of focus and wafer throughput. While multi-patterning techniques were serving this purpose till date, these involve expensive multiple exposure steps thus limiting productivity. EUV lithography emerges as the most promising solution capable of precisely printing ever tinier features with a single exposure. It allows chip architects to place and interconnect record number of transistors on a die, thus, overcoming density bottlenecks. Leading foundries have been collaborating with lithography vendors to accelerate EUVL adoption in high volume manufacturing to meet the diverse performance needs of next gen systems. Relentless pursuit of achieving tera-scale integration levels can boost adoption of advanced lithography capabilities like EUV.

For instance, in January 2024, ZEISS Group, a leading provider of optical systems and semiconductor manufacturing technology, unveiled its High-NA (Numerical Aperture) Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system. This advanced system marks a significant advancement in semiconductor manufacturing, enabling the production of microchips with exceptionally fine features, surpassing the capabilities of existing EUV systems. The High-NA-EUV technology will facilitate the creation of more powerful, energy-efficient, and cost-effective chips, setting the stage for the next generation of integrated circuits.