The history of the US semiconductor industry has produced many legends, including Bell Labs, which invented the transistor; Gordon Moore, who pioneered Moore's Law; and Intel, which pioneered the Tick-Tack model. In contrast, the Soviet Union, a fellow Cold War power, remained largely obscure. Its much-lauded vacuum tube technology was ultimately eclipsed by large-scale integrated circuits. While the Soviet Union lagged behind in the field of large-scale integrated circuits, it still left a spark of innovation that continues to shine.

In 2025, Russia released its first 350nm lithography machine, jointly developed by Russia's ZNTC and Belarus' Planar. Thus, our protagonist Planar took the stage!

KB-TEM's Planar

Planar is better known in China as KB-TEM, which makes its original name seem unfamiliar and less approachable.

Planar, affiliated with the Belarusian "KB-TEM" Design Bureau (full name: "Design Bureau - Technical Equipment and Materials" Konstruktorskoe Buro - Tekhnicheskoe Oborudovanie i Materialy), was founded in 1963 and was a key component of the Soviet electronics industry. During this period, the company focused on the research and development of lithography equipment, semiconductor manufacturing technology, and precision instruments, serving the Soviet military and civilian microelectronics industries, laying the foundation for its technological expertise in lithography and micro-nanofabrication.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Belarus's independence, Planar underwent ownership restructuring, but retained its dominant state-owned position. Leveraging its Soviet-era technological heritage, the company gradually transitioned to market-oriented operations, expanding its product line to include lithography machines and semiconductor packaging equipment, and beginning to pursue international collaborations. Its technology, particularly competitive in contact and proximity lithography machines, has made it a key supplier to the semiconductor industry chain in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). Planar's core strength lies in its low-cost, highly reliable semiconductor manufacturing equipment, suitable for education, research, and small- to medium-scale production. Its equipment is widely used in research institutes in Russia and Belarus, and collaborations have been established with emerging markets such as China and India. For example, some Chinese universities and microelectronics companies have imported Planar's lithography equipment for research and development.

As a product of the Soviet planned economy and a heir of Soviet semiconductor manufacturing technology, Belarus has accumulated a wealth of experience in lithography technology. Although Planar lags behind market pioneers like ASML and Nikon, its contemporaries, such as GCA and Perkin-Elmer in the United States, have long since faded into history.

The History of Soviet Lithography Machines

Due to different technological approaches, the Soviet Union's semiconductor technology development lagged far behind that of the West and even East Germany, also part of the socialist bloc. China's early semiconductor technology also originated from East Germany: in the 1950s, East Germany assisted in the construction of China's first electron tube factory, the Beijing Electron Tube Factory, the predecessor of today's Beijing BOE.

The Soviet Union began planning to develop its own microelectronics industry in the late 1950s, but it wasn't until the mid-1960s that it developed domestically produced contact lithography machines, though many optical components still relied on East German Zeiss. In the 1970s, the Soviet Union first excited excimer lasers, laying the foundation for the subsequent development of light source technology for stepper lithography machines. In 1978, the Soviet Union initiated the development of a synchrotron radiation accelerator at the Zelenograd Research Center (later incorporated into the Kurchatov Institute) to explore extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography sources. To this day, synchrotron radiation and free-electron EUV remain the main high-power coherent EUV light source technologies being researched and developed in the industry. In 1987, the Lebedev Physical Institute announced world-leading EUV lithography research results, predating Bell Labs' work in the United States (reported in 1988). By the late 1980s, the Institute of Microstructure Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences had developed the multilayer mirror manufacturing technology required for EUV lithography. This technology was later adopted by ASML and became the standard structure for EUV reflectors and EUV masks.

Belarus also played a significant role in the development of Soviet lithography machines and the entire microelectronics industry. During the Soviet era, Planar was one of Eastern Europe's largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers, long responsible for the development and production of precision workpiece stages and high-precision displacement sensors for lithography machines. The Belarusian Academy of Sciences and its affiliated institutes participated in the development of coating processes and interferometry systems for optical components required for lithography machines. In particular, they provided critical nanoscale measurement and control technologies when the Soviet Union initiated basic EUV research in the 1970s. These institutions, along with the Zelenograd Science City in Moscow (the Soviet Union's "Silicon Valley"), formed a complete "theory-engineering-manufacturing" chain, with Belarus assuming the core responsibility for engineering implementation and precision manufacturing. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the lithography industry primarily remained in Belarus. Besides Planar, there were also companies like Peleng, which specializes in precision optical design and manufacturing, inheriting Soviet-era technology through university-enterprise partnerships. Notably, Peleng, in a seemingly Soviet-style "technologically retro" collaboration with ASML, has furthered Belarus's optical and precision manufacturing expertise.

Lithography Museum: From Contact to Direct-Write Lithography

The technological evolution of optical projection lithography has gone through several stages. Initially, projection methods primarily included contact and proximity lithography. Subsequently, scanning and stepper technologies emerged. 

Currently, stepper and scanner has become the mainstream. However, Planar's lithography systems did not enter this era, causing them to lag behind in the development of global semiconductor manufacturing technology. For the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) facing a complex geopolitical environment, this equipment remains one of the few "advanced" options available.

Proximity/contact lithography systems are the forerunners of optical projection lithography systems. GCA in the United States first developed and produced them in the 1960s, and steppers were developed in the 1970s. Therefore, not only today, but even in the 1990s, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the performance of proximity/contact lithography systems has long been unable to meet the requirements of large-scale integrated circuit manufacturing. 

However, proximity/contact lithography systems remain the mainstream production equipment in research and development, MEMS manufacturing, and packaging plants. Many of the currently popular SiC power devices also use this type of lithography equipment. The picture above shows a proximity/contact lithography system produced and developed by Planar.

Stepper lithography machines are no longer able to meet the current demands of ultra-large-scale integrated circuit manufacturing. Consequently, these lithography systems remain at the technological level of xenon-mercury lamps, supporting only sub-micron precision and resolution.

Planar's other key asset is its laser direct write lithography system, which eliminates the need for masks and can output patterns directly from GDS design files. This type of equipment is widely used in scientific research and small-batch chip production. Compared to traditional lithography equipment, the market for laser direct write lithography is highly competitive, with companies like Heidelberg Instruments and Raith in Germany and EV Group in Austria offering corresponding products.

Relying on its independent technological expertise and backed by orders from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and a small number of Central European countries, Planar has survived the turbulent technological and commercial landscape. Consequently, Planar has been called a "living fossil" of Soviet lithography technology, considered a valuable material and technological vehicle for the Soviet microelectronics industry. With the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, both China and Russia are focusing on developing independent semiconductor manufacturing technology, including their own controllable lithography machines. Planar faces increasingly fierce competition.

A versatile player: Switching to mask manufacturing

As a crucial component of photolithography, mask production is also a challenging area. Planar's mask product line boasts a unique configuration, closely resembling that of Japan's V-Technology. Both companies utilize laser direct write lithography and optical defect inspection technologies, but Planar is best known in the Chinese market for its laser defect repair capabilities.

Both use femtosecond lasers to physically ablate defective structures on the mask, thereby removing unwanted structures. With advancements in technology, both have also developed patterning methods using laser beams as the energy source for chemical vapor deposition (LCVD). Although laser repair offers significant resolution disadvantages compared to ion and electron beam defect repair, its greatest advantage is its ability to rapidly repair large areas. Therefore, it is primarily targeted at mask repair at technology nodes from i-line to KrF. Several mask factories in China have already introduced Planar's laser repair equipment and are using it in actual industrial production.

However, compared to V-Technology, Planar's ability to cope with market competition is still insufficient. Although Planar has participated in the Shanghai International Import Expo for the past two years for promotional purposes, V-Technology still excels in product delivery and ongoing maintenance support. Even in the market expansion of mask defect inspection equipment, V-Technology has performed exceptionally well. Not only has it successfully penetrated the Chinese mainland market, long dominated by KLA and Lasertec, achieving a breakthrough from zero, but it has also laid the foundation for the development of next-generation products.

In short, Planar, the last pride of the Belarusian and even Soviet-era semiconductor industries, has never stopped its progress. However, excellent products require the test of production lines, and Planar was ultimately a step behind. At a time when semiconductor manufacturing is deeply intertwined with turbulent geopolitics, Planar's final window of opportunity has arrived. If it fails to fully upgrade its product line, traditional customers may become competitors.

Source: Semiconductor Industry Observer

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