China was supposed to be behind in chip-making equipment. Now its engraving technology is the standard and even TSMC uses it

Gerald Yin Zhiyao is the president and CEO of AMEC (Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment China), one of the largest chinese companies specialized in the design and production of the equipment involved in manufacturing integrated circuits. During a roundtable held at the end of July 2024 this veteran executive maintained that Chinese chip manufacturing equipment was at that time between 5 and 10 years behind its most advanced competitors in terms of quality and reliability.

Yin Zhiyao is one of China’s leading experts in semiconductor production equipment manufacturing. He has not hesitated on several occasions to publicly adopt a critical stance when assessing the degree of development of the Chinese chip manufacturing machine industry, which is why his statements tend to be interesting to say the least. And the one he did last Sunday on Chinese state television, and which has been picked up by SCMPit was.

According to Yin ZhiyaoAMEC’s ​​plasma etching technology has established itself as a standard in the integrated circuit industry and has been adopted by its major international rivals. In fact, according to the founder of AMEC, TSMC, the Taiwanese company that leads the chip manufacturing marketuses some of its machines in its production chain. It may seem like bravado, but it doesn’t have to be. It makes sense for TSMC to use semiconductor processing machines designed and manufactured by AMEC.

What China has and what it doesn’t have

Much of the sanctions deployed by the US Government seeks to put out of reach of Chinese companies the most advanced chip manufacturing equipment available on the market. In this scenario Yin Zhiyao holds something very reasonable: the US bans have accelerated the development of China’s semiconductor industry. In fact, at the end of 2023 the Xi Jinping Administration handed over to its main companies that are dedicated to the manufacture of semiconductor production equipment no less than 41 billion dollars.

Despite this effort, China still does not have extreme ultraviolet photolithography (UVE), which are suitable for manufacturing cutting-edge chips. At least not in large scale production. What it does have, as the head of AMEC states, are the engraving machines (etching) involved in the production of advanced integrated circuits. These devices are responsible for removing material from the exposed areas in order to physically sculpt the circuits on the silicon wafer.

In this context, it is important that we keep in mind that photolithography and etching are two different and consecutive stages that are repeated dozens of times during chip manufacturing. Photolithography aims to transfer the geometric pattern that describes the circuit from a mask or template to the surface of the silicon wafer using extreme ultraviolet light. This is the stage that ASML machines on the edge nodes solve. Immediately after, the engraving process takes place, which can be wet or plasma. This last variant bombards the surface of the silicon wafer with an ionized gas that produces a plasma. This is precisely the process carried out by AMEC machines.

Image | TSMC

More information | SCMP

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