China Accelerator

Chinese build single accelerator lithography factory (SALF), the crisis of US hegemony, China factory output and retail sales growth accelerating, US "foreign information manipulation" of China.

Oct 02, 2023

UPDATE: Contrary to commercial players such as Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML), which favours reducing the size of chip-making machines for export, the Chinese project aims to localise manufacturing by building a colossal factory housing multiple lithography machines around a single accelerator.

Debates on the crisis of US hegemony can be advanced by broadening empirical interests to include not only alternative and non-Western conceptions of hegemony, but also multiple contemporaneous alternative and non-Western traditions of history and their role and influence in shaping the emerging international order.

Preliminary signs of improvement had emerged in August, with factory output and retail sales growth accelerating while declines of exports and imports narrowed and deflationary pressures eased. Profits at industrial firms posted a surprise 17.2% jump in August, reversing July's 6.7% decline.

So how shameless is the US government in issuing a report that blames China for "foreign information manipulation"? What made them so confident as to blame a victim of their disinformation as "spreading disinformation"?

China plans to build a giant chip factory driven by particle accelerator

By Beijing Walker

Scientists said this unprecedented technology can overstep US sanctions and make China a new leader in semiconductor chip industry
Plans are now in progress to construct a huge particle accelerator to help researchers put into practice the cutting-edge technology

Cutting-edge technology to manufacture microchips could give the Chinese semiconductor industry a way around US sanctions.

China is exploring new avenues to bypass restrictions on lithography machines, which are used in the production of microchips. Using particle accelerators to create a novel laser source, researchers are laying the foundation for the future of semiconductor fabrication.

Plans are now under way to construct a particle accelerator with a circumference between 100-150 metres (328-492 feet) – roughly the size of two basketball courts. The accelerator’s electron beam will transform into a high-quality light source for on-site chip manufacturing and scientific inquiry.

The team from Tsinghua University is in active discussions with authorities in Xiongan New Area to select a construction site for the cutting-edge project.

Contrary to commercial players such as Advanced Semiconductor Materials Lithography (ASML), which favours reducing the size of chip-making machines for export, the Chinese project aims to localise manufacturing by building a colossal factory housing multiple lithography machines around a single accelerator.

This innovation could foster high-volume, low-cost chip manufacturing and potentially propel China into a leadership role in the industrial production of advanced chips, known as 2nm (nanometre) chips, and beyond.

Lithography systems are among the most sophisticated pieces of machinery ever created by humans. Currently, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) with ultra-short wavelength is widely used in the production of chips with 7nm nodes and below.

ASML is the only company that owns the technology and therefore dominates the market. As of the end of 2022, ASML had delivered 180 EUV systems. It also plans to ship 60 EUVs this year, according to a Bloomberg report published in April.

While there are many researchers chasing the technology, the Chinese scientists have been exploring a different path. It is a project that has been running since 2017, but due to Huawei’s breakthroughs in chip manufacturing, it was recently catapulted into public view.

“One of the potential applications of our research is as a light source for future EUV lithography machines. I think this is why the international community is paying close attention,” said project leader Professor Tang Chuanxiang from Tsinghua University in a report on the university’s website.

Since all the attention on the project has affected their normal scientific research, Tang’s team has stopped accepting interviews.

The theory behind the team’s research is a new luminescence mechanism called steady-state microbunching (SSMB). It was first proposed by Professor Zhao Wu at Stanford University and his student Daniel Ratner in 2010. Zhao is a former student of the famous physicist Yang Zhenning.

In short, SSMB theory uses the energy released by charged particles during acceleration to act as a light source. The result is a narrow bandwidth, small scattering angle and continuous pure EUV light.

Charged particles emit light when they are accelerated, and accelerators that use this phenomenon are among the brightest artificial sources of light available.

“The main challenge lies in guiding the distribution of electrons within the storage ring of the accelerator, causing them to achieve collective synchronous radiation. The device could produce high-quality radiations from terahertz waves at a wavelength of 0.3mm to EUV waves at wavelengths of 13.5nm,” Zhao said in an academic report at Tsinghua in October 2022.

“Unlike free-electron lasers, which produce pulsed lasers with high peak power, SSMB sources produce continuous light with high average power,” he said.

This characteristic has led to the broad application prospects of SSMB.

How the Tsinghua SSMB-EUV light source works. Photo: Tang Chuanxiang
Compared with current ASML EUV technology, SSMB is a more ideal light source. It has a higher average power and higher chip production output with lower unit cost.

ASML creates an EUV source from laser-produced plasma, where strong laser pulses are projected to liquid microdroplets of tin. The laser crushes the droplets and produces EUV pulse light during the impact. After complex filtering and focusing, an EUV light source with a power of about 250W is produced.

Before reaching the chip, the EUV beam undergoes reflection from 11 mirrors, each causing about a 30 per cent energy loss. As a result, the power of the beam is less than 5W when reaching the wafer. This can become an issue when manufacturing turns to 3nm or 2nm.

SSMB technology avoids such concerns. SSMB beams achieve a higher output power of 1000W, and due to its narrow bandwidth, fewer reflecting mirrors are needed, which naturally generates higher terminal power.

Zhao proposed this theory in 2010. Later, in 2017, Tang formed a dedicated team at Tsinghua.

The team conducted the first verification phase at Metrological Light Source (MLS) in Berlin, Germany. In 2019, the experiment was successful and they published a paper to illustrate the phenomenon in peer-reviewed journal Nature in 2021.

The new technology could see China become a global leader in microchip production.

Then in 2022, the team designed another prototype at Tsinghua University.

“An SSMB-EUV light source has been designed at THU, with designed EUV power higher than 1kW, and some key technologies are nearly ready,” said team member Professor Pan Zhilong during a presentation at an academic workshop in January 2022.

In February this year, the Hebei Provincial Science and Technology Department held a special meeting in Xiongan to discuss how to cultivate technology companies in the new district. Pan showed up to the meeting, further showcasing the team’s effort to bring SSMB to industry practice.

At the meeting, Pan introduced the plan for Tsinghua’s SSMB-EUV project. The team also visited Xiongan to select a site for future construction.

The establishment of a chip factory relies on funds and other engineering details. But more importantly, new ideas might bring new technical routes.
With no project progress disclosed to the public, Tang expected further efforts from the team and the industry to help SSMB grow.

“As a completely new light source, the experimental verification of the technology has been implemented. But it is necessary to build a solid SSMB light source research device operating in the EUV band,” Tang said in the Nature paper.

“Then we can [use the device to] cultivate scientific and industrial users, and polish the SSMB technology,” he said.

Tang believed the technology could help China get rid of future sanctions, but he did not talk about the specific progress of an SSMB-based lithography machine.

“There is still a long way to go before our independent development of EUV lithography machines, but SSMB-based EUV light sources give us an alternative to the sanctioned technology,” he said in the Tsinghua report.

“It requires continuous technological innovation based on SSMB EUV light sources and cooperation with upstream and downstream industries to build a usable lithography system.”

Tang also noted in the paper that the realisation of SSMB-EUV light sources will provide new tools for frontier research in materials science, basic physics, biochemistry and other disciplines.

China's economy stabilises, factory activity returns to expansion

The PMI, the first official statistics for September, adds to signs of stabilisation in the economy, which had sagged after an initial burst of momentum early in the year when China's ultra-restrictive COVID-19 policies were lifted

October 01, 2023 05:17 am | Updated 05:17 am IST - BEIJING

China's factory activity expanded for the first time in six months in September, an official survey showed on Saturday, adding to a run of indicators suggesting the world's second-largest economy has begun to bottom out.

The purchasing managers' index (PMI), based on a survey of major manufacturers, rose to 50.2 in September from 49.7, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, edging above the 50-point level demarcating contraction in activity from expansion. The reading beat a forecast of 50.0.

The PMI, the first official statistics for September, adds to signs of stabilisation in the economy, which had sagged after an initial burst of momentum early in the year when China's ultra-restrictive COVID-19 policies were lifted.

"The manufacturing PMI, plus the good industrial profit figures, suggest that the economy is gradually bottoming out," said Zhou Hao, chief economist at Guotai Junan International.

China's non-manufacturing PMI, which incorporates sub-indexes for service sector activity and construction, also rose, coming in at 51.7 versus August's 51.0.

The composite PMI, including manufacturing and non-manufacturing activity, climbed to 52.0 in September from 51.3.

Near-term data on the radar of economists include consumer spending for the longest public holiday this year. "Golden Week" kicked off on Friday with the Mid-Autumn Festival, which will be followed by the National Day break through Oct. 6.

Passenger travel by rail on Friday reached 20 million trips, a single-day record, state media reported on Saturday, in a bullish start to what authorities had forecast to be "the most popular Golden Week in history".

PROPERTY RISKS

More stable economic indicators will be welcomed by policymakers as they continue to grapple with a property sector debt crisis that has rattled global markets. The authorities have announced a series of measures to shore up the property market, including cutting mortgage rates, although the sector is far from being out of the woods.

New home prices fell the fastest in 10 months in August and property investment declined for an 18th straight month.

China Evergrande Group, the world's most indebted property developer with more than $300 billion in liabilities, said on Thursday its founder was being investigated over suspected "illegal crimes".

The Asian Development Bank last week trimmed its 2023 economic growth forecast for China to 4.9% from a July forecast of 5.0% due to the weakness in the property sector.

Analysts say more policy support will be needed to ensure China's economy can hit the government's growth target of about 5% this year.

"China's economy stabilised partly driven by the loosening of property sector policies," said Zhiwei Zhang, chief economist of Pinpoint Asset Management.

"The key issue going forward is whether fiscal policy will become more supportive. I think it will, but timing-wise the change of fiscal policy stance may happen next year instead of this year."

US' 'disinformation report' itself disinformation: Editorial flash

China Daily

Just within decades then-US secretary of State Collin Powell held a tube of white powder to justify their war on Iraq, which was mocked by all as "washing powder".

Maybe it's rather a convenient tool because the US does not need to check the facts. All it needs is to list what it has done and put China at the name of the doer. That the report was released by the State Department's Global Engagement Center further makes it untrustworthy because everyone knows that the US global engagement means, namely chaos, lies, and misfortune.

No matter how many lies one tells, that doesn't change the fact and turn black into white and white into black. It's time the US government got to know that.

Long Mekong

Discussion about this post