ASML is bringing lithography-grade precision to hybrid bonding.

“BESI, ASMPT and others come from a pick-and-place background. They’re very good at overlaying each die onto the base wafer and placing it down. The bond itself forms later, during the anneal.”

“ASML is coming at it from the front end. Its tools already do sub-nanometer overlay for lithography, easily an order of magnitude more precise. And as hybrid bond pitches get finer, how many signals you can fit per square millimeter between two dies matters more and more.”

“Overlay isn’t ASML’s problem. The challenge is building a system that brings the dies to the wafer, or in this case, the wafer to the die.”