Chinese chipmakers are using repeated DUV exposures to replicate advanced manufacturing without ASML’s EUV scanners, but larger dies, lower yields and slower production are widening the economic gap with leading-edge rivals.
China’s chipmakers have shown that advanced semiconductors can still be made without ASML’s extreme ultraviolet tools, but the workaround comes with clear penalties. According to Tom’s Hardware, export controls have kept EUV scanners out of China, pushing manufacturers towards older deep ultraviolet systems and far more complex multi-patterning steps. The result is not a simple substitution, but a slower and more expensive route to similar transistor density.
The underlying method is straightforward in concept and punishing in practice. Instead of printing a densely packed chip layer in one exposure, fabs break the design into several simpler patterns and align them through repeated passes. Tom’s Hardware reports that lithography specialist Chris Mack, co-founder and CTO of Fractilia, sees the economics tipping in favour of EUV once chipmakers need four DUV masks where one EUV mask would have sufficed. At that point, the extra overlays, process variation and alignment risk begin to outweigh the savings from using older equipment.
That trade-off shows up in both yield and chip size. Every extra exposure creates another chance for defects, while designers often have to leave more room around features to keep production reliable. That makes the die larger, which reduces the number of chips that can be cut from each wafer and raises the cost per usable unit. SemiconductorX also notes that China’s domestic foundries have managed 7nm-class densities with DUV multi-patterning, but at the cost of lower throughput and weaker yields than leading-edge competitors.
The limits are not purely theoretical. Tom’s Hardware cites a June Morgan Stanley report estimating that Chinese DRAM maker CXMT produced only around one-third as many bits per wafer as Western rivals, with lithography described as a hard ceiling on progress. At the same time, the report suggests China can still gain share by adding capacity, even if process efficiency lags. Morgan Stanley expected CXMT’s share of global DRAM bit supply to rise from 14% in 2026 to 16% in 2028 as new factories come online.
The broader lesson, analysts say, is that DUV can stretch farther than many once assumed, but not indefinitely. Micron’s use of DUV-only production for earlier DRAM generations is often cited as proof that older tools can still support competitive memory manufacturing when process control is tight and designs are adapted to the equipment. Even so, Micron later moved to EUV for its newer 1-gamma DRAM process, which it says improved bit density by more than 30% versus the preceding node. In Tom’s Hardware’s account, Mack argues that three nanometre and two nanometre production without EUV would be difficult to make economically viable, leaving China with a path that can narrow the gap, but not erase it.
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