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CTS says 270 of the 343 ASML immersion scanners in Chinese fabs can make 7nm-class chips
CTS counts 343 ASML immersion DUV scanners bought by Chinese fabs since 2012 and says 270 of them can be shifted to 7nm-class work without EUV. For supply planning, that puts export-control risk in the DUV installed base and in how long those machines stay serviced.
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What happened
- Dutch licensing for the NXT:2000i and more capable scanners took effect in September 2023, leaving Chinese chipmakers to buy the less capable NXT:1980i.
- CTS estimates Chinese fabs bought about 90 NXT:1980i scanners in 2024 and 89 in 2025, spending more than $13 billion across the two years.
- The Netherlands extended export controls to the NXT:1980i in September 2024, though individual exports of the model can still be approved.
- China's share of ASML's net system sales went from 41% in 2024 and 33% in 2025 to 19% in the first quarter of 2026 and 14% in the second.
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Why it matters
- contradiction Tom's Hardware accepts the 343 total as plausible but doubts some of CTS's other estimates, so the overall count deserves more weight than the per-model and per-year splits.
- constraint If CTS's 2025 figure is right, case-by-case licensing of the NXT:1980i did not stop volume, leaving a full ban or service limits as the levers that would.
- cost Reassigning a scanner to 7nm-class work comes at a cost, CTS says, and the scanner time moved there is taken from the older-node production the tool was bought for.
Overlay is the spec behind the case made by the Washington-based Centre for Technology & Statecraft (CTS) [2]. By its account the NXT:1980i pairs 38nm resolution with 2.5nm matched-machine overlay, a capability CTS calls crucial for multipatterning at 7nm-class nodes [7]. Multipatterning exposes one layer more than once, and each pass has to land on the previous one within that overlay figure. The industry adopted 7nm-class processes in 2018 and 2019 [5]. CTS argues that current export controls leave a gap, because scanners bought for less advanced nodes can be reassigned to that work [4]. It says the installed equipment gives Chinese fabs considerable potential to make sophisticated processors without ASML's EUV systems [2].
A tool count stands in for 7nm-class capacity only if the machines are running and the count is right. Tom's Hardware says it is unclear how many of the 296 advanced immersion scanners shipped to China are operational [9]. CTS's model figures of 270 NXT:1980i, 22 NXT:2050i and six NXT:2000i [7][8] sum to 298, two more than that total [1]. The biggest line is a scanner ASML never built under that name. Tom's Hardware takes it to cover the original NXT:1980Di and the newer, higher-productivity 1980Fi [19]. The report, as Tom's Hardware describes it, does not convert any of these machines into wafer output.
The per-year purchase estimates are harder to test. According to Tom's Hardware, CTS's yearly counts cannot be independently reconstructed from ASML's published financial data, and ASML's disclosures work only as a sanity check [15]. ASML shipped 129 immersion systems worldwide in 2024 and 131 in 2025 [16]. CTS's two-year total of 179 NXT:1980i units would be about 69% of those 260 machines [2], close to the yearly shares of 70% and 68% that Tom's Hardware calculated [17]. CTS's spending estimate works out to more than $72 million per scanner, if all of the money went to those tools [3].
Some supply sits outside the tally. The count leaves out imports to multinational fabs located in China [3]. NXT:1980Di machines are readily available on the secondhand market, according to Tom's Hardware [18]. ASML could also potentially sell older NXT:1965Ci systems to Chinese clients, though the publication is not sure ASML still has all the components those scanners need [13].
I think CTS is right about where the gap sits, and it has aimed its proposal at the right part of the system. A licence governs the next shipment. The scanners in the tally have already shipped [1]. CTS wants to restrict replacement components and maintenance services for machines installed at advanced fabs, on top of a ban on all immersion DUV exports to China [6]. Tom's Hardware describes the package as consistent with the bipartisan MATCH Act introduced in April [6].
What to watch
- Whether the MATCH Act advances with limits on spare parts and maintenance for scanners already installed in Chinese fabs.
- ASML's next quarterly China share, as a check on whether case-by-case NXT:1980i licences are still being granted.
- Any count of how many of the advanced immersion scanners in China are actually operational.