It cannot be allowed penalizing with Asml tariffs

The commercial agreement signed by Donald Trump, the US president, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, at the end of last week states that the majority of the products imported by the US and manufactured by Europe will have a 15% tariff. However, strategic products will not be subject to any tariff. And the photolithography equipment that designs and manufactures The Dutch Company ASML They have a strategic role for both Europe and the US.

“We have agreed to zero tariffs for zero for a series of strategic products,” Clarifies the European Commission statement. “In this agreement all aircraft and their components are included, as well as some chemicals, generic components, semiconductor equipment, agricultural products, natural resources and critical raw materials. And we will continue working to add more products to this list.”

The US is a very important market for ASML, so this exemption from tariffs benefits it. Intel, Globalfoundries, Micron Technology, Texas Instruments, Samsung and TSMC are some of its clients in the country led by Donald Trump. These last two companies are not Americans, but They have chips factories in the US. In fact, the exemption of tariffs is so important for these companies as for ASML because the latter is the only company that produces extreme ultraviolet lithography machines (UVE). And they need them in some of their plants to produce avant -garde chips.

For Asml your effective monopoly is everything

ASML has no competition since its first UVE photolithography team placed on the market. Japanese Canon and Nikon companies, their natural competitors, also tried to develop this machine, but failed in the attempt. The technical and economic resources that were necessary to make it possible were so large that they decided to retire from the struggle with ASML. Free road. Today the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing machines that we can find in the TSMC, Intel, Samsung or SK Hynix plants It produces them ASML.

Currently his reign seems imperturbable. Canon has developed a team of nano -impression lithography that it seeks to compete from you to you with the UVE machines of ASML, but for the moment it is not clear that this technology will be able to rival The most advanced team of the Dutch company: the machine of High Opening Photolithography (UVE). Presumably thanks to it they can produce chips of less than 1 nm before this decade expires.

UVE photolithography equipment is extraordinarily sophisticated. The GPUs for artificial intelligence more advanced from Nvidia; The most powerful soc that Apple or the CPUs with the highest AMD performance are possible thanks to them. Of course, none of these companies make their own chips. They design them, but they are produced by the Taiwanese company TSMC using ASML UVE lithography machines. However, this European Corporation has not developed solo all innovations that have made its most advanced integrated circuit production equipment possible.

One of its most important allies is the American company Cymer. This company founded in 1986 specializes in the manufacture of lasers and deep ultraviolet light sources (UVP) and extreme (UVE). It has a very close relationship with ASML for many years; In fact, the role that Cymer manufactures in lithography machines is so relevant than in 2013 ASML bought this company of San Diego with the purpose of investing in it to accelerate the development of the technologies involved in UVE lithography.

Anyway, the transport of ultraviolet light from the fountain that produces it to the wafer is only possible thanks to the intervention of the mirrors that the other great ally of ASML designs and manufactures: the German company Zeiss. The role of Zeiss’s optical elements in these lithography equipment is crucial. And it is because they are responsible, leaving aside the most complex details, of moving the UVE light with a wavelength of 13.5 nm from the source that is responsible for its emission to the mask contained in the geometric pattern that is necessary to translate into the silicon wafer.

Image | ASML

More information | European Commission

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