Canon's Advancement in Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment through Nanoimprint Lithography (NIL) Technology

Canon has expanded its portfolio of semiconductor manufacturing equipment using Nanoimprint lithography (NIL) technology to compete with industry leaders ASML and Nikon.

NIL has been in use over the past 20 years during which it overcame tremendous challenges. The technology is on its way to become a realistic method for commercial semiconductor production.

Unlike conventional photolithography equipment, which transfers a circuit pattern by projecting it onto the resist-coated wafer, this technology does it by pressing a mask imprinted with the circuit pattern on the resist on to the wafer like a stamp.

Currently, the technology enables patterning with dimensions equivalent to 5nm process nodes, which can extend to 2nm process with further improvements. Further, the absence of a light source with certain wavelengths reduces the amount of power used to manufacture the chips, contributing to CO2 reduction.

The traditional use cases of NIL technology have been in non-semiconductor applications such as biotechnology, hard disk drives, displays, sensing solar cells and photonics.

With this development, NIL technology will finally break into the mainstream semiconductor domain, although challenges in terms of defects, throughput, and yields need to be addressed before it is adopted for mass production. The overall NIL technology market could likely grow to a billion dollars in the next five years.

The technology will compete directly with mainstream lithography technologies: Optical lithography or EUV in the IC logic and memory markets that have been established for many years and have the potential to address new markets.

Currently, the technology is more suitable for memory customers as the memory design has built-in redundancy and is more tolerant to defects, unlike logic where the design is much more complicated. 

NIL technology will find a way to mature nodes in the beginning, which will bring down the manufacturing cost. However, using it as an alternative to EUV lithography for advanced nodes in high-volume manufacturing will take four to five years.

ASML effectively has a monopoly on cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The launch of Canon's NIL semiconductor manufacturing systems should offer an alternative in the coming years, which will help drive down prices. Canon’s share is likely to see some growth at ASML's expense.

The launch of Canon's system also comes at an opportune moment as firms around the globe race to bring new fabs online amid efforts to "reshore" some key manufacturing capabilities.

Canon's new system poses challenges to the multilateral export controls on advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment from the US, Netherlands, and Japan to China. These controls strictly apply to lithography and do not cover Nanoimprint lithography. This could provide a window of opportunity for Chinese semiconductor firms to gain access to equipment capable of producing <7nm semiconductors.