China’s Chips Manhattan Project And The Semiconductor Skills Race - CleanTechnica

The article discusses China’s covert, large-scale effort to develop extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology, often likened to a "Manhattan Project," aimed at closing the gap in advanced semiconductor manufacturing. EUV lithography is critical for producing cutting-edge chips with features measured in nanometers, enabling higher transistor density, faster switching speeds, and lower energy consumption. This technology is extraordinarily complex, involving precision optics, plasma physics, lasers, vacuum systems, and advanced materials science. China’s progress, which includes developing partial working prototypes, signifies that the technological gap with the Dutch manufacturer ASML—the only company currently producing EUV machines—is shrinking from decades to years, though China has not yet matched ASML’s capabilities. China’s initiative emerged after the U.S. and its allies, including the Netherlands, South Korea, and Japan, imposed export controls to block China’s access to advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment, particularly EUV machines. Faced with exclusion from the most advanced chip nodes, China chose