The unholy alliance is all about cracking sub-2nm process technology, a feat that requires the most ludicrously expensive kit money can buy. 

Imec will ensure that engineers from academia and various companies have the latest equipment for their research, while ASML will ensure its tools are incorporated into leading-edge process technologies.

Under the deal, Imec will be rolling out the red carpet for ASML’s Twinscan NXT (DUV), Twinscan NXE (Low-NA EUV with a 0.33 numerical aperture), and the Twinscan EXE (High-NA EUV with a 0.55 numerical aperture) and YieldStar metrology wizardry and some HMI inspection gear.

All this gear will find a new home in Imec’s Belgian pilot line, which the EU and the deep pockets of the Flemish government bankroll. The goal is to push semiconductor production below 2nm, a threshold that demands lithography tools capable of an 8nm resolution in a single pass.

Only ASML’s high-NA EUV machines can pull off that trick, but at a wallet-crushing $350 million apiece finding a startup with that kind of spare change is tricky. 

Until now, Imec boffins had to pop over to ASML’s Veldhoven lab to play with High-NA EUV gear, but this new agreement means they’ll have their own multi-million-dollar toys to tinker with in Leuven. This should dramatically speed up research.

The deal is part of the Next Gen-7A project (IPCEI22201) and has been rubber-stamped by the Dutch government as a vital piece of the EU’s tech sovereignty ambitions. With the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street breathing down the necks of European chipmakers, it’s clear that the continent is keen to stop relying on the whims of Job’s Mob or the White House.