Microsoft-Backed Lace Raises $40M to Reinvent Chip Lithography
Lace aims to revolutionize chipmaking with helium atom beam lithography.
Top Summary
- What happened: Lace, a Norwegian startup, secured $40 million in Series A funding to develop chipmaking lithography tools using helium atom beams.
- Why it matters: Lace's technology could potentially create chips with features 10 times smaller than current capabilities, challenging ASML's dominance.
- What changes: This could lead to smaller, more powerful, and energy-efficient electronic devices in the future.
- Who is affected: Chip manufacturers (TSMC, Intel), semiconductor R&D, the electronics industry, and consumers.
Lace's Innovative Approach to Chip Manufacturing
Lace, a chipmaking equipment startup based in Norway, has secured $40 million in a Series A funding round. The company is developing lithography tools that utilize a helium atom beam instead of light.
This innovative approach has the potential to create significantly smaller features on chips.
The funding round was led by Atomico and included participation from Microsoft’s venture arm, M12, Linse Capital, the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation, and Nysnø.
The Promise of Atom Beam Lithography
Current chipmakers like TSMC and Intel rely on ASML’s light-based lithography systems. Lace's technology offers a potential alternative.
Lace's helium atom beam is approximately 0.1 nanometer wide, enabling the printing of much smaller features.
According to CEO Bodil Holst, this method could enable designs approximately 10 times smaller than what is achievable with today’s tools.
John Petersen of Imec believes the concept could reduce feature sizes by an order of magnitude.
European Backing and Long-Term Vision
Lace's technology is the result of a decade of European research, stemming from the FabouLACE project, an EU-funded initiative aimed at developing a mask-less patterning method for a 2-nanometer process.
A related program, NanoLACE, received €3.36 million in funding from 2019 through 2024.
The European Commission has authorized Lace to bring the technology to market by 2031. Imec, a Belgium-based semiconductor R&D institute, will monitor and verify performance.
Seeking Alternatives to ASML's EUV Systems
The search for alternatives to ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) systems is driven by the inefficiencies of laser-produced plasma (LPP) EUV sources.
One retired researcher estimated that the overall EUV-LPP electro-optical conversion efficiency may be below 0.1%.
U.S. startups like xLight and Inversion Semiconductor are developing particle-accelerator-based light sources.
Research groups in Japan are exploring free-electron lasers that could be significantly more efficient.
Next Steps for Lace
Lace currently has prototypes and aims to have a test tool in a pilot fab around 2029.
The company presented an invited paper at a lithography summit in February.
What to Watch Next
Keep an eye on Lace's progress towards its 2029 pilot fab target and the performance verification by Imec. The development of alternative lithography technologies from companies like xLight and Inversion Semiconductor, as well as research in Japan, will be crucial to monitor for potential breakthroughs in chip manufacturing.