I haven’t seen an in depth analysis, but I also have not looked hard. I did read today: “One pivotal question is how far China has progressed in building its own EUV machine. Reuters, a news agency, reported in December that a team of former ASML engineers in China had completed a prototype EUV machine in 2025 and were testing it at a high-security lab in Shenzhen. ASML said it cannot control where former employees work, but they are bound by confidentiality agreements and in some cases the company has successfully taken legal action in response to theft of trade secrets.
The prototype had not yet created any working chips but the Chinese government had set a goal for it to produce functional ones by 2028, Reuters reported. ”
So basically China has been trying to build a EUV machine since roughly 2019, and still has several years to go. DUV would probably be relatively easier but still fairly difficult since visible light optics and mirrors cannot be used. Current semiconductor manufacturing requires thousands of steps, all of which have to sufficient yield for the final output to work.
So EUV level even in the easy case where you have access to employees who have worked on the machines and access to parts of the existing supply chain and likely state level support is still nearly a decade long project.
I haven’t seen an in depth analysis, but I also have not looked hard. I did read today: “One pivotal question is how far China has progressed in building its own EUV machine. Reuters, a news agency, reported in December that a team of former ASML engineers in China had completed a prototype EUV machine in 2025 and were testing it at a high-security lab in Shenzhen. ASML said it cannot control where former employees work, but they are bound by confidentiality agreements and in some cases the company has successfully taken legal action in response to theft of trade secrets.
The prototype had not yet created any working chips but the Chinese government had set a goal for it to produce functional ones by 2028, Reuters reported. ”
https://www.economist.com/china/2026/07/05/has-china-obtained-the-worlds-most-important-machine
So basically China has been trying to build a EUV machine since roughly 2019, and still has several years to go. DUV would probably be relatively easier but still fairly difficult since visible light optics and mirrors cannot be used. Current semiconductor manufacturing requires thousands of steps, all of which have to sufficient yield for the final output to work.
The China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund spent around $20 billion dollars in Phase I (2014 − 2019) to work on building DUV technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Integrated_Circuit_Industry_Investment_Fund
Visible light photolithography semiconductor making can be done in a home shop as has been done by Sam Zeloof for example: https://www.hackster.io/news/etching-pcbs-sam-zeloof-steps-it-up-a-notch-and-down-a-few-orders-of-magnitude-with-his-own-ics-cdb0e297bc1a
So EUV level even in the easy case where you have access to employees who have worked on the machines and access to parts of the existing supply chain and likely state level support is still nearly a decade long project.