SSA/800-10W (lithographic scanner)

2023: Product Announcement

At the end of December 2023, the Chinese company Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group (SMEE), which develops equipment for the production of chips, presented its first lithographic scanner for a 28 nm process technology - the SSA/800-10W system. This achievement represents a breakthrough in the PRC's desire to narrow the technological gap with foreign companies, which is important in the face of tough sanctions from the United States.

Taiwanese contract manufacturer TSMC has been manufacturing chips using a 28nm process technology since 2011, while China's SMIC introduced a similar technology in 2015. However, both SMIC and TSMC used the lithographic tools of the Dutch company ASML for this purpose. For SMEE, the creation of the SSA/800-10W scanner is of great importance, since the previously available SSA600 series installations support technological processes only with norms of 90, 110 and 280 nm.

SSA/800-10W

Export restrictions imposed by U.S. authorities prevent Chinese chipmakers from purchasing equipment and technology needed to make chips using norms less than 14/16 nm, 3D NAND memory chips with 128 or more layers, and 18 nm and lower DRAM RAM.

Additional restrictions on China by the Netherlands, Japan and Taiwan further complicated the situation. The US Department of Commerce has included SMEE in the list of organizations to be controlled: thereby, the US authorities are trying to prevent China from developing its semiconductor industry using its own tools. Against this background, the PRC government is actively stimulating the expansion of semiconductor industries in the country, as well as the development of processors and specialized accelerators, including for artificial intelligence applications.^[1]

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