A team from Leuven fabricate a 300mm-compatible silicon spin‑qubit device on an ultra-precise lithography machine, advancing wafer-scale quantum manufacturing prospects.
A research institute in Belgium, Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (imec) announced on 18 May 2026 that it has built what it calls the first quantum-dot qubit device manufactured with High-numerical aperture (High NA) extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography, a development that links cutting-edge chip making tools to quantum hardware development.
The device was produced at its Leuven facility using an ASML EXE:5200 High-NA EUV system installed in March 2026; ASML’s machine is one of fewer than 10 such systems worldwide.
The institute’s work follows years of effort to adapt silicon quantum-dot spin qubits to a 300mm manufacturing flow. Imec noted earlier research, including a Nature paper coauthored with quantum computing company Diraq, that reported two-qubit gate fidelities above 99% and state preparation fidelities better than 99.9% — metrics that researchers say are important for quantum error correction. Moving from electron-beam lithography to EUV patterning has been identified by imec as a key step towards scaling qubit counts across full 300mm wafers.
The announcement comes as ASML’s High-NA technology gathers momentum in the broader semiconductor industry. On 16 May 2026, ASML and Tata Electronics had signed a memorandum of understanding to supply equipment for India’s first front-end fab in Dholera, Gujarat, a project backed by Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation and designed to produce 50,000 wafers per month across 28nm–110nm nodes. While that facility will rely on established deep ultraviolet (DUV) and standard EUV tools rather than High-NA systems, the deals highlight ASML’s growing influence from frontier research to expanding global fabrication capacity).
Imec further stated that its EXE:5200 will be fully qualified by the fourth quarter of 2026. The institute envisions using High-NA EUV for single-exposure patterning at advanced logic nodes — referred to internally as A14 and A10 — which could eliminate the multiple masks required by today’s low-NA EUV tools.
Whether High-NA accuracy can be used to mass-produce both advanced classical processors and scalable quantum hardware remains uncertain, but imec framed its result as a sign the two fields are drawing closer.
