Canon targets ASML with new cheaper lithography technology

“We would like to start shipping this year or next year, said Hiroaki Takeishi, head of Canon’s industrial group, to the Financial Times. “We want to do it while the market is hot.”

Canon wants to position its new nanoimprint lithography technology as a cheaper alternative to the extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) chipmaking machines used to make the most advanced semiconductors. The market is currently dominated by Dutch company ASML. While the company’s machines are expensive, costing over $150 million apiece, they are also vital to making the most cutting-edge chips, designated as 5-nanometer chips or smaller.

Nanoimprint lithography stamps the chip’s design directly onto a silicon wafer, while EUV instead uses light to etch circuit patterns.

Canon has spent over a decade trying to develop its own chipmaking technology, and says it has only now made it commercially viable. The company claimed to the Financial Times that the technology uses significantly less power than ASML’s EUV machines, while being “one digit” cheaper. Canon has previously claimed that its technology can already produce a 5nm chip, and the company is targeting a 2nm chip, the most cutting-edge chip that companies like TSMC and Samsung hope to mass produce.

Most consumers may know Canon for its products like cameras and printers, but the company also has a history as a supplier of semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Yet it fell behind ASML in the race to develop lithography technology.

Twenty years…