Revolutionary Lithography in the Netherlands
In a facility located in Veldhoven, in the southern Netherlands, engineers shoot 50,000 droplets of molten tin every second into a vacuum chamber. Each droplet gets captured by a laser, turning it into plasma that emits light at a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers—an incredibly tiny measurement that’s less than one-thousandth the thickness of a human hair. This plasma is momentarily 40 times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
The device responsible for this intricate operation is known as an EUV lithography scanner, and it’s manufactured by the Dutch company ASML—essentially the only business making such machines. They are vital for the functioning of smartphones and other tech.
Welcome to the crucial hub of Veldhoven.
EUV lithography scanners can be considered some of the most complex manufactured objects on Earth. ASML reported a staggering 32.7 billion euros in sales for the year 2025, allocating around 4.7 billion euros to research and development. The scanner itself is a heavyweight, tipping the scales at over 150 tons. To transport it, you’d need about 250 wooden crates, 40 cargo containers, several cargo planes, and 20 trucks.
The Ultimate Printing Machine
Lithography is a printing process where the pattern on a mask is optically projected onto a silicon wafer coated with photoresist. The exposed areas are then chemically modified to create circuits. To comply with the Rayleigh criterion, which states that smaller features require shorter wavelengths of light, the industry has been gradually shortening wavelengths. This has shifted from visible light through ultraviolet to deep ultraviolet at 193 nanometers, achieving improved performance through clever uses of immersion fluids and computational fixes.
However, taking it to the next level with extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light at 13.5 nanometers necessitated a fundamentally different machine. Why? Because EUV gets absorbed by air. Glass lenses won’t work, so specially made reflectors take their place. The mirrors must be polished to extremely precise tolerances and have surface imperfections that can create errors at that wavelength. These mirrors, crafted by Germany’s Zeiss company, boast a diameter of approximately one meter and consist of over 100 alternating layers of molybdenum and silicon, each just a few nanometers thick. They represent the smoothest object ever created by humans.
ASML didn’t achieve this remarkable standing simply by genius. The company, founded in 1984 as a joint venture between Phillips and ASM International, began in a small shed on the Phillips campus. Initial funding was limited, and the team was essentially told to figure things out. Their first product didn’t pan out. The company made it through by aggressively licensing its technology and collaborating with suppliers. When EUV emerged as the next necessary step for the industry, ASML found itself at the heart of the endeavor. It acquired the Silicon Valley Group in 2001, which was strategically close to U.S. research centers focused on basic EUV research. Then, in 2013, it brought light source development in-house by acquiring Cymer. They initiated a co-investment program in 2012, attracting Intel, TSMC, and Samsung to invest 1.38 billion euros for the opportunity to help fund EUV’s development while owning a share in the company that provides these tools.
The first electronics utilizing EUV technology hit the market in 2019, although research began back in the 1980s. Early on, Nikon and Canon were formidable competitors in the lithography realm, but they fell behind, primarily due to insufficient networking. They lacked the capacity for supplier and customer co-investments, which proved essential, especially in an industry that often requires patience and strategic dependencies.
Financial Gains
Scanners offer a highly disciplined approach to examining materials at scales that are hard to relate to normal experiences. For context, a human hair is roughly 70,000 nanometers wide, while ASML’s next-gen scanner, the High NA EUV, boasts a resolution of around 8 nanometers. Achieving this demanded a redesign of the optical system to use anamorphic optics, where the image is displayed at differing scales horizontally and vertically.
It would be an error to assume ASML’s advantage rests solely on its scanners. The true edge lies in the large base of machines already operating in factories across Taiwan, South Korea, and the United States. The annual service revenue stands at 8.2 billion euros, with a 26% growth rate in 2025. Our field engineers work globally, addressing roughly 95% of issues on-site, thereby cultivating a level of expertise that other competitors can’t easily replicate.
The Dutch government began restricting the export of ASML’s advanced tools in 2023, with further limitations imposed in subsequent years. The U.S. has requested its allies to enhance similar regulations. China, which accounted for about a third of ASML’s sales in 2025, is now cut off from cutting-edge systems and is expected to represent just 20% of sales by 2026. In May 2026, the Dutch government officially rejected a U.S. proposal to extend these export restrictions. The dynamics surrounding Veldhoven’s private enterprise now play a constant role in global diplomatic discussions.
ASML has more than 44,000 employees representing 143 nationalities across over 60 locations and sources about 80% of its components from a global supplier network. The machine capable of creating the world’s tiniest shapes comes together through a wide array of collaborations—including expertise in optics from Germany, laser technology from Germany, light source proficiency from the U.S., and clientele based in Taiwan, South Korea, and the U.S. What looks like a Dutch company is actually a globally coordinated network that has developed over decades into an entity operating almost like a single machine.
Many view the digital realm as weightless, as though computing is more of an atmospheric condition rather than a product of specific factories operated by real people under distinct export licenses. EUV lithography complicates the illusion of a seamless economy. The supposedly frictionless digital world is underpinned by tin plasma, incredibly smooth mirrors, and the Dutch government’s ongoing willingness to provide necessary permits. The illusion of ubiquitous computing stems from carefully managed scarcity, managed by a singular network located in Veldhoven.
