Chinese researchers have achieved an early route to sub-3-nanometre chip production using older DUV equipment, challenging US-led export controls and demonstrating a potential Sanctions-resistant alternative to advanced semiconductor fabrication.
Chinese researchers have reported an early route to sub-3-nanometre chip manufacturing that avoids extreme ultraviolet lithography, a step that underscores how Beijing is trying to work around US-led export controls on advanced semiconductor equipment. According to the South China Morning Post, the work comes as ASML remains barred from selling its most advanced EUV tools to customers in China, leaving the country dependent on older deep ultraviolet systems for leading-edge development.
The latest progress was described by Ye Tianchun, a veteran of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Microelectronics, in remarks reported by Taiwanese media Digitimes. He said the institute had completed initial integration of stacked nanosheet-channel gate-all-around CMOS transistors using DUV equipment. In his account, the work represents an early process route for sub-3-nanometre manufacturing in China, although it remains a preliminary stage rather than a commercial production breakthrough.
Gate-all-around, or GAA, is widely viewed as a successor to FinFET transistor designs because it can improve control over electrical leakage at very small geometries. The significance of the Chinese work is therefore less about immediate mass production than about proving that complex device structures can be explored without EUV. That matters because ASML’s EUV machines are generally considered essential for the most advanced chip nodes, and China’s domestic industry has been forced to rely on older DUV tools and more elaborate patterning techniques.
Related reports suggest that Chinese chipmakers have been pressing ahead on multiple fronts. A separate analysis published by Tom’s Hardware and other specialist outlets said SMIC has already advanced a 7-nanometre-class process without EUV, while Design-reuse reported that the foundry had reached volume production of a 5-nanometre-class node using DUV. SCMP also reported that a Shanghai chip start-up, Yuanjiwei, is building a line aimed at 5-nanometre-equivalent chips without EUV by 2029. Together, these developments point to a broader effort to build an alternative, sanctions-resistant path to advanced logic and memory manufacturing.
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