35% of its chip manufacturing machines are already of Chinese origin

Foreign lithography and wafer processing equipment manufacturers are selling less and less in China. In 2024, the country led by Xi Jinping represented 41% of ASML revenuebut in 2025 this figure dropped to 33%. And presumably in 2026 will contract up to 20%. Something very similar has happened to the American wafer processing machine manufacturer Applied Materials: its sales in China have gone from 37% of its total sales in 2024 to 30% in 2025.

In addition, sales in China of the American companies Lam Research and KLA, and the Japanese Tokyo Electron, also have decreased during 2025 compared to those they obtained in 2024. This obvious trend is the consequence of two factors. On the one hand, US sanctions prevent US and allied manufacturers of lithography and wafer processing equipment from delivering their most sophisticated machines to their Chinese clients. The Dutch company ASML is most likely the most affected in this scenario.

On the other hand, in response to pressure from the US, the Chinese Government is supporting the adoption of machines of Chinese origin in its integrated circuit factories. In fact, in 2025 the national tools represented 35% of the equipment in use in semiconductor plants, and Xi Jinping’s Government aims to reach 50% in new factories during 2026. Its purpose is clear: China’s chip industry needs to achieve technological independence as soon as possible in its fight with the United States.

China has made great progress, but lithography remains its weakest point

The resources that the Chinese Government is allocating to its designers and manufacturers of wafer processing equipment are bearing fruit. And they already compete face to face with foreign companies in the field of deposition, thermal processing, etching and cleaning of wafers. However, there are still no extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photolithography machines of Chinese origin in Chinese IC factories. Presumably they will arrive before this decade endsbut this is for the moment China’s real Achilles heel.

One of the Chinese companies worth keeping track of is Pulin Technology. This organization has opted, like Naura Technology, AMEC (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. China) or Piotech Inc., to develop your own cutting-edge photolithography machines. And the achievements are coming little by little. In mid-2025 Pulin sent one of his clients your first cutting-edge equipment using nanoimprint lithography technology (known as NIL for its English name NanoImprint Lithography).

NIL technology is not new. The Japanese company Canon has its own commercial NIL solution for yearsand presumably its operating principles are essentially the same as those of the machine designed by Pulin. On paper, NIL photolithography equipment is an alternative to printing machines. extreme ultraviolet lithography (UVE) designed and manufactured by the Dutch company ASML, although no to the high aperture version of these teams. The latter are currently the most sophisticated and expensive that exist.

Very broadly speaking, the production of silicon wafers in the latter requires very precisely transporting the geometric pattern described by the mask to the surface of the silicon wafer using ultraviolet light and extremely refined optical elements. NIL lithography, however, allows the pattern to be transferred to the wafer without the need for intervention in the process. an extremely complex optical system. This strategy is simpler and cheaper, but it also involves the execution of several sequential processes that make it slower than UVE and UVP lithography.

Canon assures that its nanoimprint lithography equipment can be used to manufacture integrated circuits comparable to the 5nm chips that TSMC, Samsung or Intel produce with ASML’s UVE machines. And in the future, with the refinements that will arrive, they will be able to manufacture 2nm chips. In addition, a NIL equipment costs ten times less than an ASML EUV machine: 15 million dollars compared to the 150 million dollars that the Dutch company asks its clients for an EUV machine with numerical aperture 0.33. We still don’t know how much each Pulin NIL machine costs, but it is reasonable to predict that at most it will have a cost comparable to that of the Canon machine.

Image | Naura Technology

More information | Tom’s Hardware

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