According to experts, the solution to increasing chip production lies not only in expanding manufacturing capacity but also in having the right precision tools.
At the end of June, Apple announced it would raise prices on its devices due to the chip shortage, stating that it had "never seen the price of a component increase so much and so quickly." Other technology companies, such as Microsoft, Sony, Dell, and HP, have also raised prices or plan to do so. The pressure is being felt throughout the electronics market: over the past year, memory chip prices have increased approximately sixfold, according to a Morgan Stanley report cited by Reuters.
The main reason for these price increases is the rise of AI, which has driven the cost of memory chips to levels that manufacturers can no longer absorb.
According to experts at LITILIT, a startup specializing in femtosecond laser manufacturing, as demand for chips grows, the world could also face a shortage of the precision tools needed to manufacture them. Nikolajus Gavrilinas, CEO of LITILIT, states that femtosecond lasers are increasingly used in the manufacture of the latest generation of semiconductors due to their high-precision processing with minimal thermal impact.
“In a modern chip node, even submicroscopic thermal damage renders a component unusable. As chips become more complex, manufacturers are turning to femtosecond lasers, which can remove material without causing any thermal damage to the surrounding structure. Since femtosecond lasers are also increasingly used in the production of equipment for data centers and many other advanced applications, the world could also face a bottleneck, as femtosecond laser production remains concentrated in a small number of facilities worldwide,” says Gavrilinas.
Gavrilinas points out that having a strong domestic production capacity for femtosecond lasers is especially important for Europe, which recently proposed the Chips Act 2, aiming to double the EU's global market share in the semiconductor sector from 10% to 20% by 2030. Similarly, the United States and China are also driving increased local chip manufacturing.
To address a potential shortage of femtosecond lasers, LITILIT has just begun construction of a new femtosecond laser factory in Vilnius. The factory aims to achieve a production capacity of 3,000 lasers per year within a couple of years of commissioning, making it the world's largest femtosecond laser plant.
The company manufactures lasers based on several patented inventions (link to patent 1, link 2), created by LITILIT co-founders Kęstutis Regelskis, Nerijus Rusteika, and Gavrilinas, in close collaboration with the Vilnius Physical Sciences and Technology Centre (FTMC). The company's long-term vision is to bring femtosecond lasers to large-scale applications, with cost, integration simplicity, and reliability similar to those of nanosecond fiber lasers.
“Typical femtosecond lasers can offer exceptional performance in their applications, but they are notoriously difficult to manufacture and require highly skilled production specialists. We have developed lasers with reduced component complexity, a specific design, and a high level of automation in the production processes. This makes them ideal for mass production at the scale required to manufacture semiconductors and other components that demand high-precision tooling,” explains Gavrilinas.
According to Gavrilinas, the lesson from the current chip shortage is that advanced manufacturing depends on more than just lithography capabilities. It also requires access to other essential tools for next-generation production: from femtosecond lasers to advanced packaging systems and precision materials processing
