ASML ships 100th EUV scanner

ASML has completed construction of its 100th EUV scanner and has sent it off to a customer after a small farewell ceremony, the equipment maker announced on social media. After evaluating several options before the turn of the century, the company definitively decided to throw its weight behind EUV as the successor of ArF lithography in 2001. Five years later, the first alpha demo tools were shipped, but it took another decade or so before chip manufacturers had enough faith in the systems from Veldhoven to use them for production. EUV chip manufacturing reached high-volume status in 2019 and in that same year, the first electronic devices with ‘EUV chips’ on-board were launched.

Shipment of the 100th scanner marks yet another milestone in the history of the technology, though it’s not yet fully mature. And, of course, ASML is already working on a new and improved version of EUV. The first high-NA scanners are slated for shipment in 2022.