Photo/Illutration Canon Inc. shows its nanoimprint technology to print circuit patterns on semiconductor wafers in Yokohama on Oct. 18. (Kanako Tanaka)

YOKOHAMA—After a decade of development, Canon Inc. began selling lithography equipment for semiconductor production, hoping to reclaim a share in the market.

The equipment is used to print fine circuit patterns on semiconductor wafers.

Japanese manufacturers once had a monopoly on the market for lithography systems, but they were overpowered by ASML Holding NV of the Netherlands.

It remains to be seen if the new equipment will allow Canon, the Japanese optics giant, to loosen the Dutch supplier’s grip on chipmaking systems.

“We are still facing challenges before we can reach the levels required for mass production,” said Kazunori Iwamoto, head of Canon’s Semiconductor Production Equipment Group.

But he said he believes the new technology could put up a good fight, for example, in complicated circuit patterns.

Canon on Oct. 18 unveiled the lithography system, which uses new “nanoimprint” technology, during an exhibition in Yokohama to showcase its technologies.

Fujio Mitarai, Canon’s chairman and CEO, described nanoimprint as a “game-changer.”

Kazuhiro Sugiyama of British research firm Omdia, who is well-versed in the semiconductor industry, said, “Canon’s successful market entry with the new technology would be a good thing for the market itself, given that ASML is currently unrivaled.”

Sugiyama added: “It will not be easy for Canon to overthrow the monopoly at once, but Canon could gain the upper hand in certain product categories, such as made-to-order articles of small lots and products with complicated circuit patterns.”

The new equipment draws on Canon’s well-regarded inkjet printer and camera technologies.

It involves dripping a minute amount of resist, or resin coating, on a semiconductor wafer the way a printer drips ink. A mask stereoscopically embossed with a circuit pattern is then pressed against the resist, like a stamp, printing the pattern on it.

Any possible misalignment of the wafer with respect to the mask does not exceed single-digit nanometers, officials said.

A nanometer is one one-billionth of a meter.

The technology being used in mainstream lithography systems these days involves printing a circuit pattern on a wafer by irradiating it with strong light.

It requires many lenses and mirrors to narrow the light beam and calls for repeated irradiation processes. This leads to high production costs and a heavy environmental burden due to the extensive power usage.

The nanoimprint technology consumes only one-10th of the power because it does not involve the use of strong light. It also has the advantage of a lower production cost because it allows a circuit pattern to be printed in a single process.

The equipment for nanoimprint lithography is also cheaper than rival products from other companies, which are believed to cost several tens of billions of yen (several hundreds of millions of dollars), the officials added.

The finer the width of the circuit pattern on a semiconductor, the higher the chip’s performance. The cutting-edge products being used in high-performance smartphones, generative artificial intelligence systems and other similar devices have become so fine in structure that they are characterized by a width of only 2 nanometers.

The nanoimprint technology can be used to make products of down to the 5-nanometer-node generation. Canon officials said they are hoping to someday make it applicable to products of the state-of-the-art 2-nanometer-node generation as well.

The market of lithography systems was practically monopolized by the two Japanese giants of Canon and Nikon Corp. until about 30 years ago.

Those companies, however, lagged behind ASML in pursuing subsequent technological development. The Dutch manufacturer now has a more than 90-percent market share.

And ASML is the only company that is capable of manufacturing lithography systems for making leading-edge semiconductors of single-digit nanometer classes.

Canon began developing the nanoimprint technology about 10 years ago in hopes of competing with ASML.

The company officials said they have already received inquiries from at least one of the world’s major chipmakers.

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