SAQP (Self-Aligned Quadruple Patterning)

2024: Product Announcement

At the end of March 2024, it became known that the Chinese company Huawei Technologies, together with a partner, developed its own technology for the production of 5-nm chips. This achievement will help the PRC in the implementation of a comprehensive import substitution program against the background of tough sanctions from the United States.

SiCarrier, a government developer of chip manufacturing equipment, is participating in the project together with Huawei. They received patents for a low-tech but potentially efficient way to produce advanced semiconductor products. We are talking about the SAQP - Self-Aligned Quadruple Patterning method: it provides for the processing of blanks in four passes.

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Фото: Unsplash

SAQP technology makes it possible to produce chips without the use of modern lithography equipment in ASML deep ultraviolet light. Based in the Netherlands, ASML is the world's only supplier of advanced EUV machines for deep ultraviolet photolithography. However, the company cannot supply such equipment to China due to the current sanctions.

According to Dan Hutcheson, vice chairman of TechInsights, SAQP technology is good enough for China to produce chips at 5 nm. However, Hutcheson says, in the long term, the PRC will still have to solve the problem of the lack of EUV equipment.

Leading contract manufacturers of semiconductor products, such as TSMC, use EUV machines, since such equipment provides the highest yield of good products. If Huawei and its partners continue to use alternative semiconductor manufacturing methods, the cost of a single chip could be higher than competing products.^[1]

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