Carl Zeiss, Explained: Germany’s Semiconductor Optics Master

germany-based carl zeiss ag is a fascinating company fascinating even if you do not take into account that they make lenses and optics for some of the coolest systems in the world when you are etching patterns as wide as a small virus you have graduated beyond simple lenses now we have to call them optics systems these massive multi-component systems are at the very heart of the multi-million dollar photo lithography machines that asml makes without them asml has no machine for tsmc samsung or intel in this video we're going to continue with our deep dive into the semiconductor industries critical suppliers with a look at one of asml's closest partners the makers of the optic systems that led high-energy uv light etch wafers and a company with an utterly fascinating history carl zeiss but first i would like to ask if you might be interested in the patreon if you like what this channel does you can support the work by joining the early access tier early access members get to see videos long before that they are released to the public so head on over to the patreon page and take a look i deeply appreciate anything you'd be able to sign up for thank you and on with the show this company and its history is fairly well documented in wikipedia and i recommend that you read it the company that would eventually become carl zeiss ag was founded in 1846 by carl zeiss a german scientific instrument maker born in 1816 in weimar germany zeiss was one of twelve siblings he was born into a family of artisans and in 1846 zeiss set up a microscope workshop there he would repair university equipment make microscopes and sold scientific instruments like eyeglass lenses and thermometers his workshop did well under his exacting care and soon expanded in 1866 zeiss recruited ernst abba a brilliant 26 year old physicist from the university of jenna abba's insights on the movement of light rays through microscope lenses helped the company to move beyond crude trial and error manufacturing and gave it a leg up on its competitors zeiss died in 1888 but the company continued to grow over the years abba took over and founded a series of new business lines in search of diversification zeiss moved into measuring instruments camera lenses binoculars telescopes and more this diversification helped the company grow and survived the turmoil of the 1800s by world war one the company was making military optics products like binoculars periscopes and gun sights they were the world's largest maker of cameras at the time but 80 percent of the revenue came from military products this probably had not been the founder's intention but such is the case with many companies the company has a very interesting ownership situation to say the least after zeiss's death dr ernst abba purchased sole ownership of the company from carl's son he then transferred his ownership to what is now called the carl zeiss foundation uh i'm not even going to try to pronounce it in german he then wrote into the foundation guidelines a variety of social reforms like health insurance pensions profit sharing equality and hiring decisions overtime pay and nine hour work days the foundation has no owners or shareholders but abba did not want to create a nonprofit rather he wanted to guarantee that the company would continue to exist after his death and that its employees can partake in its economic success the company was told to optimize for long-term economic success and any excess profit would be invested into the working population of the city of jenna so more like a cooperative than a charity which is pretty interesting since most cooperatives i know of are more like pizza shops than high-tech companies imagine google being set up as a cooperative in the 1930s the nazi party attempted to put a representative inside the foundation but they resisted eventually a compromise was reached the foundation board members became nominal members of the nazi party in exchange for independence at the end of world war ii the united states army first arrived at and occupied the city of jenna in 1945 bassoon had to withdraw as the city fell within the soviet zone of influence as part of a policy to bring leading german scientists under american control the americans quickly spirited away 130 of the company's top technicians and executives they will be resettled in the west german city of oberkohen the board members having been nazi party members during the war readily agreed these critical individuals would go on to rebuild a factory and the company from memory alone at first there was hope that the company could remain together but then in 1947 the soviet army shipped 94 of zeiss's jenna based equipment as well as 300 of their employees back to the soviet union as war booty these would later help found the kiev brand of cameras so now we have zeiss in west germany which started off as opton but then became zeiss oberkohen and then we have zeiss in east germany often called zeiss jenna or veb carl zeiss jenna the veb stands for state-owned enterprise the two operated separately over the next few decades offering the same products and battling out in overseas court over who owned the trademarks overseas eventually after 18 years the two split the world in half and agreed not to use the zeiss trademark in each other's half of the world they can still operate there just not use the zeiss name zeiss of west germany would use the name opton in eastern bloc countries zeiss of east germany went with something called osgena in western block countries due to their respective circumstances both companies started off with nothing but still flourished over the years there is definitely an interesting future video about how the two companies fared under socialist and capitalist regimes zeiss jenna in particular became an east german flagship company diversifying into new areas like military technology space technology and semiconductors then came german reunification zeiss jenna found itself in trouble it had substantial overlap with its western sibling but was at an economic disadvantage having lost the critical soviet military market these were economically turbulent times reunification was messy east german industrial output fell by 51 from the previous year three million east germans would lose their jobs west german companies were raiding eastern companies for their best parts amongst all this zeiss jenna negotiated with its western brother over its future after many years a settlement decided that the east german parts of the traditional zeiss company microscopes medical instruments what not would be acquired by the west german part as well as the name the remainder a 6800 employee diversified firm now renamed to genoptic operated in semiconductors laser optics and automation at first it was in danger of collapsing but then the government stepped in buying 80 percent of the assets and saving thousands of high-paying jobs in 1998 the company conducted a 400 million usd ipo and is doing well today today carl zeiss ag is a large sprawling company they have four segments industrial quality and research medical technology consumer markets and semiconductor manufacturing these various divisions provide optical systems for industries as varied as consumer eyeglasses cars medical surgeries and measuring machines slash microscopes like many of the other companies that have discussed in this channel carl zeiss spends a whole lot on r d 812 million euros in 2020 or 13 of their entire revenue considering the sophistication of their products it makes sense for the rest of this video we're going to focus on the products in their semiconductors manufacturing division carl zeiss smt a large portion of the world's microchips are made using zeiss technologies the company is a joint venture between carl zeiss ag which has majority share and asml itself who has a 24.9 stake in the business per their annual report the company's core product here are the optics at the heart of the lithography scanners and steppers that asml makes let's get started with duv deep ultraviolet lithography or duv uses ultraviolet light rays in the 193 nanometer or 248 nanometer range duv techniques power the majority of processed nodes today zeiss the company has been building deep ultraviolet imaging systems for nearly 100 years carl abba himself had proposed the possibility of a microscope using ultraviolet light as far back as 1874 but it would not be until 1899 that the company was able to develop a quartz lens suitable for uv microscopes in the 1960s the company embarked on leveraging its microscope techniques to build a lens for microlithography this was the first time that any such lenses had ever been made microlithography requires that light distortions be controlled very tightly across a relatively large space makes sense since you do not want your ic design to be inaccurately transferred onto the silicon one lens turned out not to be enough so zeiss combined multiple smaller lenses together to create a big massive optics system and look at how the multiple lenses are arranged together into this double bulge structure this funny looking bulge and waist structure reduces field curvature which is a common optical problem that causes objects to be sharp only within a certain area in the frame it cannot all be in sharp focus simultaneously what that means in lithography is that if you are trying to project a design across too large of an area field curvature can cause inaccuracies at the areas of the frame where they are not sufficiently sharp throughout the 1980s and 1990s zeiss borrowed and mixed together new tricks from their microscope work to accommodate changes in the industry and increase the resolution at which they are able to project an ic design onto the wafer then in the 2000s the discovery of emerging lithography allowed for the next breakthrough in resolution improvement previous lithography techniques had an air gap between the wafer and the stepper seems simple enough immersion lithography replaces that with water so now you are shooting ultraviolet light through water add silicon first propose and validated for semiconductor use by taiwanese scientist bern lin the technique allowed foundries to etch structures as small as 40 nanometers today zeiss's top products for this lithography technique are the starlith 1900 series including the 1900i they are some of the company's top selling products ever the company invested over 450 million euro into a brand new factory and had to overcome substantial new engineering challenges so to build this specific optics system extreme ultraviolet lithography or euv is the next step in the semiconductor fabrication roadmap it is a disruptive technology used in today's cutting edge process nodes the fact that it is using a brand new wavelength requires a lot of radical changes to the optics system the key issue is that all available materials can absorb high-energy uv light including the air itself this means lenses are not possible the uv light would not be able to pass through them thus zeiss would have to craft an optic system entirely out of multi-layer mirrors zeiss first began working on its euv optic system with the initiation of a micro exposure tool in 1995. you can think of it as a smaller version of what the final tool would be like a mini horse collaborating with the lawrence livermore national lab and berkeley lab in california they delivered the first prototype in 2003 they continued to refine the design five times over the next couple years in 2015 the first full field euv optic system named the starlith 3100 was delivered for asml to put into their asml adt nxe 3100 adt meaning alpha demo tool gamers complain about paying for early access look at intel and tsmc paying millions for an early access alpha demo tool the starlith is a multi-component system that consists of collector optics and aperture illumination optics reticle and projection optics first light from the euv light source hits the collector which collects and then projects that light through the aperture at medium focus into the illuminator the illuminator spreads out the light evenly the now uniformly illuminated light then reflects off the reticle which contains the ic chips designs and is then finally projected onto the wafer the 3100 pioneered the optical system's core mechanics which would be later refined in further releases like the starlit 3300 3400 and so on today it makes up a critical part of euv based process nodes at seven nanometers or lower carl zeiss is a large company that owns many other divisions and is involved in many things for this video i only focus on the aspects involved in semiconductor manufacturing but the other divisions are also very much worth studying in 2020 the semiconductor division made 1.8 billion euro in revenue it grew 12 year-over-year while the rest of the group's division saw revenue declines due to the pandemic today it contributes 30 percent of the group's business and holds critical strategic importance in german industry the group's unique ownership structure ties it to its community in a way i don't often see in the united states being a critical strategic partner alongside asml the company is basically the only one of its type japan-based nikon and canon asml's closest competitors make their own optics systems for their lithography devices an arrangement that did not work as well as what asml and zeiss have as part of the research for this video i briefly took a small peek into how zeiss's duv and euv optic systems work to be honest it was one of the most difficult things that i've ever read this is a fantastically complicated artisan system and it makes me wonder how nikon or anyone else for that matter can catch up all right everyone that's it for tonight um thanks for watching if you want more content you can like and subscribe to the channel i would appreciate it if you did and remember to hit up the email newsletter and sign up want to send me an email drop me a line at john asianometry.com i love getting letters from viewers until next time i'll see you guys later

Channel: Asianometry

Views: 389,427

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Id: K0teMtLT9XI

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/QualityVote]

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[u/JayArlington]

A note on Asianometry.

This channel has been amazing for helping me learn about the Semiconductor sector. Anyone who finds this space interesting should check him out.

As for this video, this is one of the most impressive looks at a company that is SUPER interesting. A lot of cool information about EUV/DUV too so ASML fans will enjoy (note that ASML owns a chunk of Zeiss.

[u/gargle88]

my friends working at Zeiss like to say that they do the physics/science legwork for ASML. I don’t know how interesting they’re from an investment point of view though.

[u/TrumXReddit]

Thanks for the post jay!

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I never looked at the company from a semi-cap view, but I want to at least add my first hand experience beeing in the medical field in germany:

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1. Every, I mean EVERY microsurgery visualization system I've seen and use(d) (think neurosurgery, spinal surgery and plastic surgery) in all clinics (except for one really non-modern clinic in I think 2015) I've been to including the one I work for, was from Carl Zeiss. Some clinics use multiple brands (although rarely), but every clinic I've been to at least has something from Zeiss. And I remember that 10 years ago while still studying and assisting operations as a student job, the neurosurgeons too used C. Zeiss
2. Our ophthalmologists both use Zeiss for diagnostics and surgery and they love it (so I was told)
3. Zeiss sponsored multiple courses while I was studying, that means they sometimes offer courses themselves or just provide "materials" in some form. All obviously advertisement which strengthens the brand identity
4. Several years ago, my ex-gf got her eyes done in one of the biggest femto-clinics in germany, and they obviously used Zeiss too.

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I can't talk about the rest of the company, but using some of their equipment on let's say a weekly basis, I can vouch for the products themselves. And at least some of their representatives are burning hot :P

[u/thistowniscrazy]

Jay, Thank You for sharing this amazing information. You rock!

[u/[deleted]]

I've got a couple of Zeiss camera lenses kicking around somewhere - they make absolutely beautiful glass. I had no idea they had anything to do with this space.

Thanks Jay as always.

[u/ReallyNoMoreAccounts]

/u/JayArlington , I'm a bit late to this thread, but do you have any insights as to what happened to the semiconductor industry during 2018 + earlier part of 2019?

Financials across the board were destroyed.