Chapter 407: Posing The Question And Solving It
“General Manager Lin, I want to emphasize to you once again that Canon’s NIL technology has major defects. It is absolutely not as user-friendly as Canon promotes!
It has crucial, almost, in my view, unsolvable defects!”
Dr. Chen Lei, who led the team from Shanghai Jiaotong University’s Frontier Technology Center to Utsunomiya City in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan, to fully receive NIL technology from Canon’s Optical Technology Research Institute, said.
Dr. Chen Lei is China’s top expert in condensed matter physics. He previously worked at the Texas Electronics Research Institute in Texas, America, and is a talent that China went to great lengths to bring back home.
He is also the only Chinese Engineer among those present who has actually come into contact with Canon’s NIL lithography machine.
In October 2023, Canon officially announced the launch of its first NIL equipment FPA-1200NZ2C for commercial production, and successfully delivered it to storage giants like Kioxia, Hynix, and American research institutions.
Allowing the equipment to undergo verification, testing, and process integration in clients’ factories.
Among them, the American institution responsible for receiving the NIL equipment is the Texas Electronics Research Institute, which is also one of the core members of the American Semiconductor Research Alliance.
The Texas Electronics Research Institute obtained this equipment not for production, but for research and development of advanced semiconductors and prototype fabrication.
Lin Ran nodded, signaling Dr. Chen Lei to continue.
This was the first time this only Chinese Engineer in the NIL field had met him since returning home.
After all, Lin Ran had just returned to Shanghai, and Dr. Chen Lei had also just returned home.
Dr. Chen Lei took a deep breath and nodded.
He took off his glasses and carefully wiped them with a microfiber cloth. This habitual movement cleared his chaotic thoughts, making them orderly again.
“Okay, General Manager Lin.” He put his glasses back on, his gaze sweeping over everyone present.
“First, I must admit that Canon’s promotion is not a lie.
Under ideal conditions, NIL can indeed achieve everything they claim.
I have even seen with my own eyes, in their laboratory, single-layer wafer samples imprinted with NIL technology, with precision and yield rates reaching astonishing levels.
But this is like a concept car that can break records on a professional track, yet once driven onto congested city streets, it might not even match an ordinary family car.
Its defects are not in the upper limit, but in the lower limit, in every unremarkable step from laboratory to large-scale mass production.
I summarize it into the following points. The first and most fatal one, which I call the defect waterfall.”
As soon as this term came out, it caused a small commotion.
SMIC representative Liang Mengsong was clearly very sensitive to the word defect and immediately frowned.
Dr. Chen Lei held up one finger, his tone becoming extremely serious: “Traditional photolithography, whether DUV or EUV, is non-contact.
I believe everyone here is very clear on this point.
Light passes through the mask and projects onto the wafer.
Even if there is a dust particle on the mask, after reduction by the optical system, the impact on individual chips is relatively controllable.
But NIL is contact-based, physical imprinting!
This means that if a nanometer-level particle lands on the template, or is generated during the imprinting process, what happens?”
He paused, giving everyone time to think about this problem.
“The result is that this defect will be stamped like a seal by the template onto every chip unit it contacts.
Even more terrifying is that this particle may contaminate the template, turning the template itself into a source of contamination, continuously and repeatedly replicating this defect on every subsequent wafer.
This is not a point problem, but a line or surface disaster.
We call it Defect Propagation, defect dissemination.
At the Texas Electronics Research Institute, we once had a project where a minor contamination led to the consecutive scrapping of 13 wafers, resulting in direct losses exceeding 800,000 US Dollars.
What is Canon’s solution? Enhanced cleaning and real-time detection.
But this means the production line needs frequent shutdowns for detection and template cleaning.
The lost production capacity and time costs will crazily devour the money saved on equipment purchases!
This is the defect waterfall. Once the gate opens, it instantly overwhelms your yield rate and cost defenses.”
Dr. Chen Lei continued: “Then there is the materials science black box.
The core of NIL technology, besides the equipment, is one thing: photoresist, or as they call it, resin.
This is fundamentally different from the photoresist we understood in the past.
The formulation of this resin is the soul of the NIL process.
Its viscosity, fluidity, curing speed, and peel-off characteristics from the template—every parameter directly determines the success or failure of imprinting.
And this formulation is Canon’s absolute secret, co-developed with their partnering chemical companies. What does this mean?”
Dr. Chen Lei’s gaze sharpened: “It means that once we choose the NIL path, we are not just buying a machine, but binding ourselves to Canon’s ecosystem! We must continuously purchase their specified, expensive, patent-protected resin.
Want to develop our own replacement? Extremely difficult, because we don’t know what resin characteristics their machine parameters are designed for.
Want to change suppliers? Sorry, other suppliers haven’t been verified by Canon, and they take no responsibility for any issues.
General Manager Lin, do you understand? We are jumping from ASML’s hardware monopoly into Canon’s dual lock of hardware plus consumables! This is extremely passive strategically.
Of course, this time they will transfer the technology, so we are only restricted by consumables, but this is still equally serious.
It’s hard for us to bypass consumables. This is their 20 years of accumulation; we can only rely on time to grind it out, no other way.”
A accompanying technical official couldn’t help asking: “Dr. Chen, what about overlay accuracy? Canon’s demonstrated data shows very high interlayer alignment precision.”
Dr. Chen Lei looked at him and shook his head: “This is exactly the third trap I’m about to discuss: cumulative error.
Yes, in the stacking of just a few layers, NIL’s overlay accuracy looks great.
But logic chip manufacturing often requires dozens or hundreds of layers stacked.
NIL is physical contact; every imprint and demolding produces micron-level stress deformation and heat changes on the wafer.
These deformations are extremely tiny; in the first or second layer, you can hardly detect them.
But when stacked to the 30th or 40th layer?
These tiny errors snowball, eventually leading to catastrophic deviations in circuit alignment at higher levels.
This is like using a mold with tiny errors to build a 100-story skyscraper.
Up to the tenth layer, it looks perfect; by the fiftieth layer, problems emerge; by topping out, the whole building may be twisted, tilted, and on the verge of collapse.
What Canon shows us is always the perfect sight of the first ten layers, but they won’t and dare not show us what comes after topping out.
Because in Texas, no top-tier logic chip company dares to use NIL technology for critical processes exceeding 20 layers.
The reason Canon is willing to sell this solution is probably.”
The three major traps proposed by Dr. Chen Lei—defect waterfall, materials science black box, and cumulative error—are interlinked, from process, cost, to strategic security, and ultimately product reliability, revealing the defects behind what seems like a perfect technical proposal.
At the same time, it made everyone present marvel that he truly deserves to be the only expert who understands NIL technology, hitting the key points directly.
Lin Ran waved his hand: “Dr. Chen, I understand. These are all minor issues.
Don’t worry. All you need to do is go there, learn their stuff, and bring it back.”
Dr. Chen Lei said softly: “The reason I could return is that in that American circle, I, and Chinese scientists like me, are forever outsiders.”
He paused, seemingly organizing his words, expressing those feelings suppressed in his heart for so long in the calmest way.
“Why did I return home? Not because of the irresistible treatment at home, but because in America, scientists like me no longer have a foothold.
All my projects were reviewed, my team disbanded, my security clearance downgraded. They marginalized me completely in a very civilized way.
This is why I had to return.
But my return doesn’t mean I can ignore the problems with the NIL technology path, or comfortably reap countless benefits on this NIL path while watching us pour massive resources into it.
EUV has slammed the door on us—we can see it, touch it, everyone knows we need to build our own lithography machines.
But NIL is different!
NIL is a soft trap!
It won’t kill you immediately, but it will slowly drain our blood!
It will make our domestic massive investment in the nascent independent lithography machine project instantly lose internal support and confidence.
Everyone will ask: Why spend hundreds of billions and endure a decade for independent R&D? Isn’t buying Canon’s cheaper and better?
Once we believe it, once we bet everything on NIL, we give up our own efforts.
I don’t want our country, the blood and sweat of countless peers, to step into the trap I’ve personally experienced.
We can buy one or two to research, disassemble, analyze, and learn from it as a worthy opponent to beware of.
But we absolutely cannot pin our country’s semiconductor fate on others’ goodwill and a seemingly beautiful shortcut.
I’ve walked this road; I know the end is a cliff.”
Lin Ran clapped and said: “Dr. Chen, rest assured. You know, we all know, whether this road is a trap I don’t know, but I believe this road will surely bring them a surprise, an unprecedented surprise.
I like sugar-coated cannonballs—eat the sugar coating, then fire the cannonball back.”
Dr. Chen Lei entered Canon’s heavily guarded research institute with a heart full of anxiety.
He and his team of twelve gathered China’s top experts in materials science, precision machinery, optics, and software engineering. Everyone felt a thrill—we’re here to collect the spoils.
Although Dr. Chen Lei had warned of risks before departure, Lin Ran’s guarantee was irresistible.
Except for Dr. Chen Lei, no one had contact; based on promotional materials, Canon hyped this technology to the skies.
In their eyes, Lin Ran was even more omnipotent.
Everyone was quite expectant.
Greeting them was Canon’s chief engineer for the NIL project, Mr. Suzuki.
“Dr. Chen, experts, welcome to Utsunomiya.” Suzuki said in fluent English Language, “According to the intergovernmental agreement, over the next three months, we will fully demonstrate to you the operation process, maintenance, and process parameters settings of the Canon FPA-1200NZ2C nanoimprint lithography machine.”
Before entering the massive ultra-clean workshop, an uninvited guest joined them.
“Hello everyone, I’m David Davidson,” an American White Person in KLA company uniform smiled and extended his hand. “I’m the technical consultant sent by KLA to assist Canon in ensuring perfect integration of our SpectraShape 11 optical detection system with the NIL equipment. Pleased to work with you all.”
Dr. Chen Lei shook his hand, alarms ringing in his mind.
KLA is an American company, the lifeline of semiconductor yield control.
A technical consultant appearing here—with Dr. Chen Lei’s experience working in America—this is absolutely no coincidence.
Entering the ultra-clean workshop, the FPA-1200NZ2C stood quietly there.
Unlike ASML’s EUV lithography machine that resembles a huge, bulky monster, it looked like a futuristic medical device.
Suzuki’s explanation was remarkably generous.
He detailed the NIL equipment’s working process:
He demonstrated how the equipment, like a printer, precisely sprays nanometer-scale resin droplets onto 300mm silicon wafers, controlling flatness error within 0.1 nanometer.
They saw how the robotic arm, with micron-level precision, covers a quartz template over the wafer and performs physical contact in a vacuum environment, stamping the circuit pattern.
The entire imprinting process completes in seconds; through ultraviolet illumination, the resin cures rapidly, perfectly replicating the circuit pattern.
Everything seemed so simple, elegant, and efficient.
Back at the hotel that evening, a relatively young engineer from the Chinese team excitedly said to Dr. Chen Lei: “Teacher Chen, this is simply a dimensional strike! Such a simple principle, such low cost! If we can solve.”
Dr. Chen Lei said nothing; his frown deepened. Could General Manager Lin truly be omnipotent enough to solve problems that the entire American Semiconductor Research Alliance couldn’t?
Could humanity achieve this?
Canon’s NIL equipment shipped in 2023 and was originally set to enter formal production in 2025—not complex logic chips, just basic NAND flash memory chips.
Even so, Kioxia and Hynix haven’t solved this issue.
The American Semiconductor Research Alliance goes without saying—they couldn’t solve it either.
So what exactly does General Manager Lin have in mind? Could it be like Lin Benjian’s divine stroke of using water as a diaphragm back then? Countless doubts swirled in Dr. Chen Lei’s mind.
When the team began probing core technical details, as Dr. Chen Lei had said, they hit the invisible wall for the first time.
“Mr. Suzuki,” Dr. Chen Lei asked at a technical seminar, “The core of NIL technology is template perfection.
Can we visit your template manufacturing and repair workshop?”
Suzuki politely bowed: “Very sorry, Dr. Chen.
The template master is made using Applied Materials company’s electron beam writing equipment from America; its operation process and defect detection are not covered by our agreement, which is limited to the imprinting machine itself.”
The American consultant Davidson, sitting in the back row, looked up at that moment and gave Dr. Chen Lei a flawless smile.
In the afternoon, the team’s materials science expert hit another wall while analyzing the imprint resin’s composition.
“Mr. Suzuki, the chemical composition and ratio of this photosensitive resin is key to achieving low defect rates.
Can we obtain the relevant technical data?”
Suzuki’s response almost replicated the morning’s: “Very sorry, Doctor.
This resin is a patented compound from American Dow Chemical; we also directly import pre-encapsulated raw material kits.
Its formulation is an American core commercial secret, not within the scope of this technology transfer.”
By the weekend, when the team wanted to learn how to detect and classify nanometer-level imprint defects, Davidson finally stepped in personally.
While operating the expensive KLA detection equipment, he friendly explained: “So, you see, through our SpectraShape system, these defects smaller than 10 nanometers can be clearly identified.
Of course, the algorithm model for interpreting this data, and how to feed it back to upstream processes for correction, are all part of KLA’s patented software services.
Per the agreement, we will provide installation and technical support services for your factories on the Mainland.”
Late night, hotel room
Dr. Chen Lei and several core team members reviewed the gains from the past two weeks in the room. The initial excitement had vanished.
“I get it,” murmured an engineer responsible for process integration. “They’re not selling us a machine; they’re selling us a niche in their ecosystem.”
His unspoken subtext was: this niche is embedded in their ecosystem and impossible to escape.
Dr. Chen Lei walked to the window, looking at the quiet night view of Utsunomiya City outside the window.
“What I said before was right.” Dr. Chen Lei’s voice was unusually calm. “Now we just wait for General Manager Lin to solve the problem.
I’m very curious whether the problem meticulously set up by America is harder to solve, or the world’s most outstanding mathematics master has stronger problem-solving ability.”
This was also the only question left in the team members’ minds after this period.
