China Claims A Breakthrough In Silicon Photonics As It Tries To Circumvent US Export Controls On EUV Lithography

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When you continuously throw billions of dollars of funding at a persistent problem, chances are that you'll eventually succeed. This has been China's playbook all along to try to find a way to declaw US export restrictions that have virtually eliminated the Asian giant's access to the cutting-edge Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. However, a recent development in the emerging field of silicon photonics has now reportedly advanced China a significant step closer to achieving self-sufficiency in the chip fabrication arena.

For the benefit of those who might not be aware, silicon photonics uses light in the infrared spectrum instead of an electric current to transfer data within and between microchips via an on-chip photonic integrated circuit (PIC), offering a much higher bandwidth at a fraction of the power consumed by the traditional chip architecture. This method leverages existing fabrication techniques and offers one potential avenue for overcoming limitations encoded within the Moore's Law.

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This brings us to the crux of the matter. JFS Laboratory, a state-funded lab in China's Wuhan province, has now managed to light up a laser source that was integrated with a silicon-based chip, filling "one of the few blanks" in China's opto-electronics technology.

As a refresher, China established JFS Laboratory back in 2021 with a seed funding of 8.2 billion yuan or $1.2 billion.

Of course, this development comes as China has been relying on the mature Deep Ultraviolet (DUV) lithography to manufacture chips on the 7nm node. The consensus holds that China will need access to EUV lithography if its desires to efficiently produce chips on the sub-7nm nodes. That access, however, remains a pipe dream for now, with the US holding the proverbial