American startup Substrate has emerged from stealth with a mission to not only build lithography scanners that rival ASML’s EUV tools, but fabs that challenge TSMC to boot. Backed by prominent Silicon Valley investors, the San Francisco-based firm touts a vertically integrated model, combining lithography equipment development and chip production to slash the cost of leading-edge wafers from an estimated 100,000 dollars to below 10,000 dollars by the end of the decade.
Substate’s founder and CEO James Proud, a British-born American with no formal chipmaking background, said the company’s goal is deeply ideological: to restore American leadership in semiconductor manufacturing and reduce dependence on foreign suppliers. His mission reportedly has attracted the attention of Washington officials, including US Vice President JD Vance.
The firm is very secretive about its technology, other than working on “a new form of advanced X-ray lithography” powered by a particle accelerator. Using a prototype tool, Substrate claims to have printed a high-quality random logic contact array of 12nm critical dimensions and random vias with 30nm center-to-center pitch. These dimensions are in high-NA EUV territory.
Substrate isn’t alone in exploring alternatives in the advanced-lithography realm. Palo Alto’s Xlight, backed by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, is working on a particle accelerator-based EUV source that’s compatible with ASML’s scanners. Another US startup developing a compact synchrotron-based EUV-source, Lyncean Technologies, went bankrupt in 2022 (link in Dutch).
