The Chip That Doesn't Need EUV Lithography: The Chinese Bet That Scares the Western Industry
The Chip That Doesn't Need EUV Lithography: The Chinese Bet That Scares the Western Industry
A Chinese startup based in Shanghai, Yuanjiwei, has announced the launch of what it claims to be the world's first pilot production line on 8-inch wafers entirely dedicated to two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. This was reported by the South China Morning Post.
The initiative is part of Beijing's broader effort to develop alternative chip manufacturing technologies to those of the West, in a context marked by U.S. export restrictions on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment.
According to the company’s statement through its WeChat account, the pilot line covers the entire production process: from the preparation of 2D materials to integration into finished chips, passing through tape-out, which is the final design phase that precedes actual production. According to Yuanjiwei, this marks the transition of Chinese technology in 2D semiconductors from laboratory research to engineering validation and industrial production.
For decades, improving chip performance has depended on miniaturizing transistors. However, as sizes approach atomic dimensions, this process has become increasingly complex and costly. One of the main issues is leakage current: a phenomenon where electricity continues to flow through a transistor even when it should be off, resulting in increased energy consumption and heat dissipation.
Two-dimensional materials, composed of one or a few atomic layers, represent one of the most promising paths to overcome these limitations. Unlike conventional silicon, which forms a three-dimensional crystal structure, in 2D layers, electrons predominantly move within an ultra-thin plane: a feature that, according to Bao Wenzhong, president of Yuanjiwei, allows for the creation of smaller transistors without needing to resort to increasingly complex structures, while still maintaining effective electrostatic control even at smaller scales where conventional silicon loses efficiency.
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Another advantage, according to the company, concerns the low levels of leakage current typical of 2D materials, which could result in lower energy consumption. Combined with three-dimensional stacking techniques, this feature could also allow for an increase in density over time without increasing footprint, thanks to the possibility of overlapping multiple layers of circuits on a single base.
It should be noted that Yuanjiwei has not developed a new material but rather an industrial process capable of transforming known research results into a repeatable manufacturing pipeline on a wafer scale. According to various industry observers, this is the true bottleneck that has so far prevented 2D materials from leaving the laboratories: numerous studies have already demonstrated the feasibility of high-performance electronic devices based on these materials, but the jump to consistent and reliable production across entire wafers has proven extremely complex, leaving silicon still firmly at the center of the chip industry.
Yuanjiwei has outlined a precise roadmap for the commercialization of the technology. By the end of the year, the company aims to develop a production process comparable, in performance terms, to a silicon-based process at 90 nanometers. The next, more ambitious goal is to achieve, by 2029, a fully domestic process equivalent to a 5-nanometer process without resorting to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV), the technology behind the production of the most advanced chips, which is restricted for China's access by U.S. export controls.
The project fits into a broader strategy through which Beijing is seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign equipment, involving universities, state laboratories, machinery manufacturers, and semiconductor companies. The declared aim, according to sources familiar with parallel initiatives in the field of EUV lithography, is to produce advanced chips using exclusively Chinese manufacturing machinery.
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Despite the enthusiasm surrounding the initiative, several industry experts attending the presentation of the pilot line emphasized that chip manufacturing remains one of the most complex industrial processes in the world, and no single company can, on its own, mature the entire 2D semiconductor supply chain: from materials to equipment, from design to manufacturing to testing, every link in the chain must develop in parallel.
Significant technical issues also remain unresolved. While scientific literature has repeatedly demonstrated high-performance 2D transistors in the laboratory, the challenge of producing millions or billions of identical devices with a level of reliability adequate to industrial standards is far from solved. Fan Hao, director for advanced materials at the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission, nonetheless defined 2D semiconductors as one of the most promising directions for the next generation of chips, destined to attract growing international competition.