..Looking farther ahead, the semiconductor market is expected to grow from $343B in 2016 to $415B in 2021 , Gartner Q1, 2017 update , About one fifth is delivered from the Netherlands.
Consequently virtually all State-of-the-Art chips in the world contain Dutch IP and are manufactured on and/or measured with equipment from the Netherlands.
In the past the market has been extremely volatile with year on year variations as large as 30%. More recent data shows that industry and market have become more stable. Driven by today’s trends, Moore’s law will from a technical viewpoint continue well into the next decade. The total R&D investment in this sector in the Netherlands by the industry is less cyclic and estimated over 1B€, more than one sixth of the Dutch private R&D3. As a result, in certain areas the Dutch industry is dominant, like in lithography, where ASML has a market share in excess of 80%, in some areas significant, especially at the high-end side (high resolution imaging, atomic layer depositions, assembly & packaging, etc.).
The increased business demand driving Moore’s law will provide growth to the total semiconductor equipment market of at least 25% (2021 – 54B$). The litho content now estimated to be over 8B$ (VLSI, May 2017) is likely to exceed this growth as it will mainly be driven by new technology nodes
Application and technology challenges
The strength of the Dutch national semiconductor equipment ecosystem finds its roots in the above mentioned consistency in R&D investments in the areas of Lithography, metrology, Imaging, deposition and assembly technologies. Moreover, this ecosystem taps into a strong knowledge base in Research Institutes, Academia and Industry together with a world class, interconnected supply chain.
The knowledge base includes scientific fields such as light-, electron- and EUV-optics, plasma physics, surface physics and chemistry, heat- and fluid-transport, precision mechanics, mechatronics, System Architecture & Design, electronics, vision, applied mathematics, materials science, vacuum technology, contamination control, embedded system technology, thin film technology, Advanced Data Science, etc.
This knowledge is applied in the Dutch SCE industry providing exceptional strengths in the following areas:
• Lithography systems, in particular (D)UV (Deep Ultra Violet) and EUV (Extreme Ultra Violet) technology, including tools, optics, and radiation sources, as well as NGL (next-generation lithography) technologies including E-Beam and mask-less lithography, (e.g. for unique chip manufacturing at low volume production) and advanced (often complementary) patterning strategies such as DSA (Direct Self Assembly) and Nano-Imprint. And application of e-beam inspection technology to enhance & expand lithography solution.
• Novel materials for new nano-structuring technologies, such as substrate materials, resists, chemical gases and pre-cursers etc. for next applications.
• Process equipment for thin-film manufacturing, including deposition, diffusion, anneal and removal techniques, and the corresponding manufacturing infrastructure.