Russian photolithographer - the impossible is possible
Photolithograph ASML. Source: arscomp.ru
Nowhere to move to the right
Why does Russia need its own photolithograph and what can it do?
It's worth starting a little further. According to many, in the 2st century, a sign of the development of the state is the ability to produce high-tech products. For example, smartphones or laptops. Strictly speaking, Russia fully complies with this qualification - the country produces quite competitive equipment. Here, Bitblaze Titan is a domestic laptop or YotaPhone XNUMX is a homegrown smartphone. The laptop is also built around the Russian eight-core Baikal-M processor. It would seem that a reason for pride is ready - we invite everyone to celebrate. But here the nuances begin.
Both a smartphone and a laptop are just a product of a compilation of imported components and fine-tuning of the entire technical orchestra. The work is not easy and requires high-quality brains, but has a lot of vulnerabilities. Dependence on suppliers, first of all. The famous Baikal-M is domestic only in design. And here, not everything is completely Russian - the processor core from the British office ARM. The production of the product from A to Z was organized at the facilities of the Taiwanese giant TSMC.
Similarly, the processor for smartphones "Skif" is manufactured from the Zelenograd SPC "Elvis" - "Electronic Computing and Information Systems". More precisely, it was made: the Taiwanese manufacturer refused all Russian developers.
Silicon crystal after photolithography. Source: domoticzfaq.ru
A well-developed microchip design industry has been created in our country. Among the leaders are MCST Elbrus, Baikal Electronics, STC Modul, Syntacore and the above-mentioned SPC Elvis. The irony is that independently developed Baikal-M chips and the most advanced ones from the Elbrus line, Russia is not capable of producing them on its own. Currently the best Russian factory of microprocessors "Mikron" is ready to produce products using 90 nanometer technology. In the order of pilot production, 65 nm is also possible. Baikal-M is designed for the 28nm process technology, and Elbrus-16C is generally for 16nm. Is this a tragedy? No, it does not matter much for the technological independence of the country.
The fact is that the technical processes mastered in Russia are more than enough for both the defense industry and the civilian sector. In the range from 65 to 180 nm, domestic manufacturers can build processors for modern machine tools, servers, household, automotive and military equipment. Relatively speaking, a cruise missile does not need chips on a 5-10-nanometer architecture. Such subtle technologies are required for smartphones and other wearable technology. For example, 5nm chips are built into Sony Playstation game consoles. But in Russia these are not produced.
At first glance, everything is fine - there are home-grown and quite high-quality manufacturers, developers are also in order, it remains only to adapt to the requirements of the domestic market. But there is one caveat - all production equipment is exclusively imported. Primarily photolithographs, critical components of a microprocessor factory.
Photolithographs are our everything
If you look at any Russian microprocessor production, be it Mikron, Milander, Module or Elvis, there are Dutch (ASML) or Japanese (Nikon, Canon) photolithographs everywhere. Of course, now even spare parts for this equipment cannot be officially supplied to Russia, not to mention finished machines. And it is not easy to create a photolithograph on your own. More precisely, it is very difficult.
A bit of theory. Any photolithographic machine is very similar to photo printing machines. Only everything is much more complicated and more expensive. For example, a kit of photomasks for printing chips can cost up to $10 million. Through these templates, an ultraviolet emitter (most often a laser) projects a circuit onto a silicon crystal coated with a photosensitive composition - this is how the future microchip blank appears.
This exposure procedure is repeated many times, interspersed with etching, doping, drying, and deposition. Modern processors can contain 12 or more layers, consisting of field-effect transistors, conductors, and other components. And this is all on the object, 100 thousand times less than the thickness of a human hair. Of course, production is organized in ultra-clean rooms and in special buildings isolated from external vibrations. Experts like to say that even a tram passing a couple of blocks from the factory can affect the accuracy of chip manufacturing.
The actual monopolist among manufacturers of photolithographs is the Dutch ASML. Japanese Nikon and Canon make much less perfect. The world center for the production of microchips on these same photolithographs is located in Taiwan.
Domestic projects of our own photolithographs appeared 10–12 years ago, but then, for some reason, it was decided to freeze this direction. Just defrosted now. At the Zelenograd Nanotechnology Center, by order of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, they began to develop a machine for a 130-nm process. According to the most conservative estimates, it will take up to ten years. It is one thing to create a working prototype and quite another to ensure the smooth operation of already serial products.
The second project focuses on a photolithograph for the 350nm process technology. Such chips are in great demand, for example, in the defense industry. Until recently, the military-industrial complex generally managed 600-nm and even micron microprocessors.
Mikron plant in Zelenograd. The most advanced microprocessors in Russia are made here. Source: Zelenograd-info.rf
The problem is that Russia is not able to 100 percent replace all production chains and components with its own raw materials. Even if you manage to create your own photolithograph, you will have to form an entire industry of consumables and components. For example, the liquid photoresist needed to develop a “pattern” on a silicon chip is produced by a few companies in the world.
Of course, all this story will operate at a loss, there can be no talk of any market relations. The state will have to subsidize both the production of microchips and the assembly of future photolithographs. Most of the products will go to government agencies, since there is practically no wide market for domestic microprocessor technology.
Russia needs its own photolithograph not at the end of the current millennium, but in two or three years. The resource of imported equipment will soon run out, and the entire microelectronic industry will simply stop. Of course, you can buy something from the Chinese, but even they will not deliver their most modern developments to Russia. Moreover, not everything is in order with the development of microprocessor machines in our neighbors.
Beijing has long been under "photolithographic" sanctions, and is not yet able to independently produce products smaller than the 45-nanometer process technology. A case in point is Huawei, which was banned by Trump in 2018 from placing orders for microchips on Taiwanese TSML. As a result, stagnation and loss of the market relative to more successful competitors. Whether Huawei will be able to get out of the hole is unknown, but the company has already patented a photolithograph for a 10-nanometer process technology. However, it can take years from a patent to a finished sample.
Dutch ASML has been developing breakthrough photolithographs at extreme ultraviolet (EUV) for at least twenty years, allowing chips to be printed using 5-nanometer technologies and even lower. And such a project cost about 20 billion dollars.
Here is a photolithograph swung at Rosatom. We are talking about the project of the National Center for Physics and Mathematics in Sarov, created by presidential decree.
EUV photolithograph from ASML. Source: ravenfile.com
A little more theory. Why create EUV at all?
It's all about the wavelength of ultraviolet used in conventional photolithographs - about 120-140 nanometers. Physical laws do not allow, even with all possible tricks, to create topology chips below 40–65 nm. ASML decided to radically reduce the operating wavelength of radiation to 13,5 nm, that is, they actually went down to soft X-rays. In order not to frighten anyone, the technology was given the name "extreme ultraviolet".
On paper, everything is simple - less wavelength, less resolution. Print chips down to 2nm. The main difficulties arise with the radiation itself - 13,5-nm X-ray waves absorb everything, from air to lenses. The optics were replaced with a system of high-tech mirrors, which only the German Carl Zeiss can make in the world. In short, the roughness on each such product should not exceed 1 nm. Of course, photolithography is possible only under conditions of high vacuum, which creates additional difficulties for both developers and technologists. The radiation itself is formed after a powerful laser bombards a drop of tin, which turns into a plasma that generates the desired 13,5-nm wave.
In general, the project of a home-grown EUV photolithograph is comparable in complexity to the space program. This is a real challenge for both Russian industry and scientific organizations. According to Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Sergeev, there are domestic developments in X-ray mirrors at the Institute of Physics of Microstructures, and Rosatom is ready to provide multikilowatt lasers.
In parallel, the Institute of Applied Physics created a “prototype prototype” of a photolithograph that allows creating chips using 7-nanometer technology. But, we repeat, years, if not decades, can pass from the creation of a prototype to a serial product.
National Center for Physics and Mathematics in Sarov. Source: atomic-energy.ru
Even more revolutionary is the project of maskless X-ray nanolithography, which is being developed at the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute" and the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology. A prototype is already ready, testing of which will begin in 2026-2027.
good News and forecasts regarding the prospects of the first domestic photolithograph are still more than bad. But our industry has recently habitually shifted the timing of the creation of finished products strongly to the right. This applies in particular to aviation, automotive and other critical industries. Whether microelectronics will be on this sad list, time will tell.
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