Could China’s ion implanter ‘scalpel’ carve out secure hi-tech chip supply chains?

Chinese nuclear scientists have developed a world-class “microscopic scalpel” essential to various forms of chipmaking, potentially unblocking a bottleneck in the country’s efforts to fortify key supply chains.

The China Institute of Atomic Energy said on Saturday that it had developed the nation’s first high-energy hydrogen ion implanter called the POWER-750H, saying it performed on a par with advanced international standards.

Ion implanters are a critical part of some forms of semiconductor manufacturing, accelerating ions to embed them in silicon wafers.

“For a long time, China had relied entirely on imports for high-energy hydrogen ion implanters, with foreign technological barriers and market monopolies restricting domestic progress in this field,” the institute said.

“Drawing on decades of expertise in nuclear physics and accelerator technology, the China Institute of Atomic Energy leveraged tandem accelerator technology to … achieve full independent design capability – from fundamental principles to complete system integration – for tandem-type high-energy hydrogen ion implanters.

“The successful domestic development of … [the] implanters strengthens China’s self-reliance in the semiconductor industry.”