SMIC develops 3nm chip manufacturing technology

According to Gizmochina , SMIC is said to have developed second-generation 7nm chip technology that can be used to produce smartphone chips. Not stopping there, the company is currently pursuing research on 5nm and 3nm chip manufacturing technology.

SMIC is looking to make a breakthrough by producing 3nm chips with DUV machines.

The research is being conducted internally by the company's R&D team and is led by co-CEO Liang Mong-Song, a renowned semiconductor scientist who has worked at TSMC and Samsung and is considered one of the brightest minds in the semiconductor industry.

This means that the current constraints are not going to completely stop SMIC from developing more advanced chips beyond 7nm. They are simply slowing down the company’s progress, although a combination of factors has helped SMIC overcome the challenges.

SMIC is currently the fifth-largest contract chipmaker in the industry. The company has lost access to the most advanced wafer manufacturing tools, which has severely limited its ability to adopt new process technologies. Specifically, due to US sanctions, the company has been unable to obtain extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines from ASML, leaving it stuck with deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography for its second-generation 7nm chip manufacturing process.

The ASML Twinscan NXT:2000i lithography machine is SMIC’s best tool yet. It can etch at a manufacturing resolution of up to 38nm—a level of precision that is sufficient to produce patterns for 7nm chips. ASML and IMEC say that to produce 5nm and 3nm chips, the required manufacturing resolution will be 30–32nm and 21–25nm, respectively.

To achieve sub-7nm chip production without EUV, SMIC will need to adopt a complex multi-patterning process, which can affect yield and wear down manufacturing equipment. The cost of using multiple patterns is also quite high. Despite that, SMIC is determined to move towards 3nm chip production. If successful, producing 3nm chips using only DUV will be an important milestone for the Chinese manufacturer.

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