China’s semiconductor ambitions just took a concrete step forward. The country has begun limited production of domestically developed immersion deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography machines, the critical tools needed to print circuit patterns onto silicon wafers.
Lithography machines project light through a mask to etch tiny patterns onto chips. Until now, the advanced versions have been controlled almost entirely by Western companies, most notably ASML in the Netherlands.
What’s actually happening on the ground
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, better known as SMIC, is China’s largest chip foundry. The company started testing a domestic immersion DUV lithography tool built by Shanghai Yuliangsheng Technology back in September 2025.
Yuliangsheng is a startup with ties to Huawei and SiCarrier. The machine is designed to handle 28 nm-class chip processes. Through advanced multi-patterning techniques, the tool could potentially reach 7 nm or finer nodes.
