ASML Provides Damage Assessment of Fire Incident, EUV Component Production Affected

Controller Master


ASML, makers of vital semiconductor fabrication machinery powering the world’s leading fabs, including TSMC, provided its first damage-assessment of the fire incident at one of its component plants near Berlin, on January 3. This plant manufactures several mechanical and optical components of semiconductor fabrication machinery, such as wafer tables and clamps, reticle chucks and mirror blocks.

ASML, in a press-release, disclosed that production of components used in DUV (deep-ultraviolet) machines, has been restarted, as that area of the plant is unaffected by the fire. A region of the plant that manufactures wafer clamps for use in its EUV (extreme ultraviolet) machines, however, has been affected by the fire. The company is still in the process of coming up with a recovery plan for this area, and will come up with a tentative date for restart of production only after that. EUV technology is leveraged heavily for 5 nm and upcoming 3 nm silicon fabrication nodes, at TSMC, Samsung, and Intel. TSMC is known to be ASML’s largest customer. ASML stated that it will release its Q4-2021 and full-year 2021 financial results on January 19, and it may provide more updates on the matter.

The press-release follows.

ASML Holding N.V. (ASML) provides an update today on the fire that occurred inside a part of its factory in Berlin, Germany on January 3. During the last few days, ASML conducted a preliminary assessment.

The fire occurred in a part of one production building on the site in Berlin and the smoke partly impacted an adjacent building. We have been able to resume production in parts of these buildings already. The other buildings on the site have not been affected and are fully operational.

Although our impact assessment of the damage is ongoing, our current view is the following:

  • Our Metrology and Inspection output plans are not affected as they do not contain any components made in Berlin
  • The manufacturing of DUV components has been restarted. Although there was some disruption regarding components for DUV, we expect to remediate this in such a way that it will not affect our output and revenue plan for DUV
  • As to EUV, the fire affected part of the production area of the wafer clamp, a module in our EUV systems. We are still in the process of completing the recovery plan for this production area and determining how to minimize any potential impact for our EUV customers, both in our output plan and in our field service.

On January 19, 2022, we will present our Q4 and full-year 2021 results, as well as our initial view on the year 2022 and we expect to then also provide a further update on the incident.