Posted on 11/18/2022 5:09:51 AM PST by FarCenter
Canon is moving ahead with a plan to build a new factory in Japan to double the production of its semiconductor lithography equipment.
The planned facility will produce both the standard KrF and i-line machines that constitute the bulk of the division’s sales and the nanoimprint tools that Canon hopes will open a new era in semiconductor manufacturing.
Addressing investors after the announcement of third-quarter results in late October, Canon’s management referred to “our leading-edge nanoimprint lithography equipment.”
Indeed, Canon’s lithography gear is leading edge in the nanoimprint world. But is it a threat to ASML’s monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) photo-lithography equipment, as some have suggested?
Canon’s new factory will be built in Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, at an estimated cost of over 50 billion yen (US$357 million) including equipment. Operations are scheduled to begin in 2025, when Kioxia reportedly plans to start using nanoimprint lithography in mass production of its NAND flash memory.
Kioxia, formerly a division of Toshiba and now an affiliate, makes NAND flash memory chips in a joint venture with Western Digital. It is the second largest producer after Samsung Electronics with about 30% of the global market. NAND flash memory chips are used to store information in solid state drives, USB flash drives, SD cards, digital cameras and cell phones.
Toshiba/Kioxia, Canon and photomask maker Dai Nippon Printing have been working on nanoimprint technology for several years. Canon entered the nanoimprint business in 2014 through its acquisition of Molecular Imprints, a spinout from the University of Texas in Austin.
Now known as Canon Nanotechnologies, the company has secured more than 170 patents covering imprint tools, materials, masks, process technology and imprint-specific device designs.
Other producers of nanotech lithography equipment include Electronic Visions Group (EVG), SUSS MicroTec and Obducat, all of which are European.
Dai Nippon Printing established a commercial production system for nanoimprint templates in 2015. Toshiba announced plans to use the technology to make NAND flash memory in 2016.
So Canon is building a smallish fab. So what? What does it mean? Is this a breakthrough in price, performance, capacity, speed or something else?
TECH PING!.....................
If true, this may be a way to get to 2 or 3 nanometer node chips without using ASML’s very expensive extreme ultraviolet photolithography.
Canon isn’t building a fab. It’s building a factory to produce the equipment that goes into a fab.
Thanks. That’s clear.
With the way the world (ex. North Korea) is going, I don’t know that I’d pick
Japan for my facility site.
Once that had a mature and competetive chipmaking industry, they issue a patent.
I don't trust the Japs.
I was thinking Japan is an an odd place to be building it now.
Hyper-NA after high-NA? ASML CTO Van den Brink isn’t convinced
After decades of innovation in lithography, high-NA EUV might prove to be the end of the line, thinks ASML CTO Martin van den Brink.
https://bits-chips.nl/artikel/hyper-na-after-high-na-asml-cto-van-den-brink-isnt-convinced/
Maybe Canon is based there. I don’t remember.
Otherwise we need to keep strategic interests home.
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