On October 4, according to foreign media sources, Canon will spend more than 50 billion yen (about 350 million US dollars) to build a factory in Tochigi Prefecture, central Japan, to expand the production of its existing chip manufacturing lithography machines. Current semiconductor equipment capacity increases
doubled. According to the data, in the global lithography machine market in 2021, ASML of the Netherlands will occupy 79.4% of the market share, while Nikon and Canon will occupy 10.4% and 10.2% of the market share respectively. Canon currently has two semiconductor equipment factories in Japan, and this new lithography equipment factory is Canon's first in nearly 21 years.
Construction of the new semiconductor equipment factory will begin in 2023, and the plant will begin operations in 2025, Canon spokesman Hiroki Kobayashi told Bloomberg News by phone on Wednesday. The company may also use the facility to produce next-generation chip-making equipment -- revolving around a technology called nanoimprinting -- but no final decision has been made because the technology is still under development, Kobayashi said.
The lithography machine is the key equipment in the chip manufacturing process. Washington has ensured that China does not have access to state-of-the-art lithography technology from industry leader ASML Holding NV, and is stepping up efforts to further restrict China's access to more mature lithography equipment.
According to previous data, compared with the currently commercialized EUV lithography technology, NIL technology can greatly reduce energy consumption and reduce equipment costs. The reason is that NIL technology is relatively simple, power consumption can be reduced to 10% of EUV technology, and equipment investment is reduced to 40% of EUV-only equipment. However, although NIL technology has many advantages, there are still many problems to be solved in the introduction of mass production at this stage, including the durability of the imprint head and the problem of easy formation of defects due to the influence of fine dust in the air. .
Tokyo-based Canon is lagging behind fellow Nikon Corp and Netherlands-based ASML in the supply of chip-making equipment used to make less advanced semiconductors at mature production nodes. Canon's lithography machine can only make 130-nanometer chips, a technology that first emerged more than 20 years ago, according to China Founding Securities.
Canon's move to build an entirely new factory signals anticipation of continued demand for older chip technology.
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