Photolithography (DUV/EUV)

Why can't India manufacture photolithography systems for chip production?

Every chip fab on Earth is gated by one machine, and only one country builds the most advanced version of it. As of 2025, ASML Holding of the Netherlands is the sole company that produces and sells extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography systems, the tools that pattern circuits at the 5nm and 3nm nodes. India, as of 2026, imports 100% of its photolithography systems and more than 90% of all its semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Photolithography is the act of printing a circuit pattern onto a silicon wafer using light. The difficulty scales with wavelength: deep ultraviolet (DUV) systems work between 193 and 248 nanometres and can reach 7nm with advanced multi-patterning, while EUV uses a 13.5nm wavelength to pattern below 4nm in single passes. An EUV machine costs roughly €150 million per unit and draws on some 800 global suppliers, with US-origin components significant enough that the machines are export-controlled. This is not a device a nation buys its way into building quickly.

India's fab roadmap is real but rests entirely on imported tools. Tata Electronics signed an MoU with ASML on 16 May 2026 to supply DUV equipment for its Dholera fab, the first Indian fab, approved by the Union Cabinet for ₹91,000 crore on 29 February 2024. Dholera is expected to produce its first commercial chips at 28nm to 110nm nodes by late 2026 — using ASML's DUV systems, not manufacturing them. Elsewhere, DRDO reported developing 4-inch silicon carbide wafers and GaN transistors up to 150W at ESTIC 2025, but this is compound-semiconductor materials work, not lithography equipment. The Semiconductor Laboratory at Mohali runs at 180nm and is completely reliant on foreign vendors for DUV photoresists, as no Indian company manufactures them.

The gap persists because a lithography system is an assembly of critical capabilities India does not yet hold: EUV light sources, precision optical mirrors, DUV-sensitive photoresists, photomask manufacturing, computational lithography software, and metrology and inspection equipment. Each is a deep supply chain in its own right.

Movement is visible at the materials end. IIT-Mandi demonstrated 20nm EUV-sensitive photoresists at Lawrence Berkeley Lab in 2012 and received MeitY funding for sub-10nm resists. India Semiconductor Mission 2.0, announced in Budget 2026-27, adds equipment and materials manufacturing, including lithography sub-components, as a focus area. Fab Economics estimates import dependence in fab project costs could fall from over 85% in 2024 to roughly 68% by 2030. Closing the equipment gap is a longer climb still.