EUV lithography
Also known as: EUV, extreme ultraviolet lithography, EUVL, High-NA EUV
Extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography is the manufacturing technique that prints the smallest features on today's most advanced chips, using light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometres.
Only one company in the world, ASML of the Netherlands, makes EUV machines. While they're often described as the most complex machines ever built, the more important fact is strategic: without them, no one can make leading-edge chips at scale.
EUV lithography, explained at three levels
At home
Making a chip is a bit like printing a picture, but with light. The smaller the light's 'brush,' the tinier the details you can print. EUV uses an extremely fine brush, letting chipmakers pack billions of transistors onto a chip the size of a fingernail.
At work
EUV machines are essential for making the most advanced chips used in smartphones, AI servers, and laptops. Because only ASML builds them and they're expensive and scarce, they influence which companies can produce cutting-edge chips.
At home
Older chipmaking used deep ultraviolet light at 193 nanometres. To print smaller features, manufacturers had to expose each layer several times, which was slow and error-prone. EUV's much shorter wavelength lets them print fine patterns in fewer steps.
At work
EUV light is absorbed by almost everything, including air and glass, so the machines operate in a vacuum and use special multilayer mirrors instead of lenses. The light is produced by hitting tiny droplets of molten tin with a powerful laser tens of thousands of times per second. Throughput, uptime, and mask quality all affect the cost of every wafer.
At home
High-NA EUV increases the numerical aperture from 0.33 to 0.55, which improves resolution but shrinks the area exposed in each shot, complicating chip design. In my view, it shows how each step forward in chipmaking now costs dramatically more, which is part of why progress is slowing and getting more expensive.
At work
EUV raises yield challenges such as stochastic defects, where random variation in photons and resist chemistry causes tiny printing errors. Masks need protective pellicles that can survive EUV exposure. Strategically, Dutch and US export controls on EUV have shaped China's chip ambitions, pushing Chinese manufacturers to stretch older deep ultraviolet tools further with multiple patterning.
Real-world examples
At home
Carlos read that his new phone's processor was built on a '3-nanometre' process. Curious, he learned that making it required EUV machines from ASML, each the size of a bus, using light produced by blasting tin droplets with lasers.
At work
Lena is a supply chain analyst at an electronics maker. When planning next year's product, she flagged that the new processor depended on EUV capacity at a single foundry, and she built extra lead time into the launch schedule.
How it compares
| feature | EUV lithography | DUV lithography |
|---|---|---|
| Wavelength | 13.5 nanometres | 193 nanometres (ArF) |
| Used for | Leading-edge chips | Mature and many advanced layers |
| Optics | Mirrors in a vacuum | Lenses, often with immersion in water |
| Suppliers | ASML only | ASML, Nikon, Canon |
| Machine cost | Well over $150 million | Much lower |
EUV prints finer features in fewer steps, at far higher cost and with only one supplier.
For analysts
EUV explains why advanced chips are expensive and why supply is tight. I'd treat any roadmap that assumes cheap, plentiful leading-edge chips with scepticism, since the cost of each new process generation keeps rising.
History & origin
Researchers worked on EUV for decades starting in the 1980s, and many experts doubted it would ever be practical because generating enough EUV light was so difficult. ASML, backed by investments from Intel, TSMC, and Samsung in 2012, pushed it to production readiness. EUV entered high-volume manufacturing in 2019, with TSMC's N7+ process and Samsung's 7-nanometre process. Each machine costs well over $150 million and ships in pieces in multiple cargo containers. ASML then developed High-NA EUV, which can print even finer features; the first such system went to Intel at the end of 2023. Export controls have kept EUV out of China. In my opinion, EUV is the clearest case of a single company quietly becoming a chokepoint for the global economy.