My question is: How long is it expected that ASML will be the sole provider _on the planet_ for these lithography machines? Is their secret sauce literally impossible to replicate?
It’s fascinating how one of the most important pieces of tech regarding the future is held by one entity.
What I believe made them to start to fall behind around the time of first immersion tools is unwillingness to work with academia, and general closednes.
Too much NIH in other words.
Latest litho equipment is a multidomain know how which is not humanly possible to internalise inside a single company these days.
Japanese were fine when they were able to just ride on their superior optics expertise alone, and just put more, and more monstrous optics on the tool to achieve higher resolution.
But that model definitely broke when optics alone became insufficient to achieve a shrink. Now, a node shrink is an industry-wide effort no company alone can sell as a single package.
EUV is not only about a light source:
Godly level of mechanical engineering to articulate wafer stages, and the reticle.
Work with deep vacuum systems, and materials.
New lithography chemistry, photoresists in particular.
Mirrors manufacturing.
Alignment tech.
EUV Mask tech.
EUV inspection, defectoscopy and metrology.
EDAs, and cell design.
> That said, if I were one of those financial rating companies, I'd be downgrading Nikon's rating at the moment. You know, from something like A to BBB (using Standard & Poor's rating board). (Nikon publishes their Japan Credit Rating Agency value, which is currently A+/Negative for long-term debt. That would be the third highest rating, or "a high level of certainty to honor the financial obligations," though the outlook [Negative] is that the rating might be lowered.)