Semiconductor technology is paving the way to a networked future

Some microchips are only a few millimeters in size – and yet they are everywhere. "They are in pretty much every electrical household appliance," says Zaczek – in vacuum cleaners, in dishwashers and in coffee machines. Devices such as smartphones, computers or tablets would not work without these small microprocessors. And technological innovations such as automation, AI or autonomous driving would be inconceivable without them.

So the world is need of more and more processing power. The chip industry has to supply them. And they have already been doing so for decades. Gordon Moore once wrote that the number of transistors per area on a wafer – and therefore the processing power of the chip – doubles approximately every two years. This was in 1965 and went down in history as Moore's Law. At the time, the engineer and entrepreneur would never have thought it possible that this would still be the case. Yet ZEISS, and especially its strategic partner ASML, have made it possible thanks to their solutions. 

The mirror used for the heart of the latest EUV generations has a diameter of over one meter and weighs several hundred kilograms. It is also polished so smoothly that the largest unevenness is smaller than an atom. If the mirror were Germany, the highest peak or "Zugspitze", would not be 2,962 meters high, but only a tenth of a millimeter. The sensors and actuators of the projection optics work so precisely that a reflected laser could hit a golf ball on the moon.

Such orders of magnitude in production create the computing power that makes innovations such as AI possible in the first place. Especially if these technologies are to be accessible and usable for everyone, as is already the case with AI. In this sense, microchips are paving the way for AI, which is currently changing the world. But what opportunities does this open up? "It's difficult to predict," says Christoph Zaczek, "but at least it's already foreseeable." He cites autonomous driving as an example, "I told my car this morning where I wanted to go – and it navigated me to Stuttgart. It won't be long before it will be driving me to my destination in Germany on its own. This is already possible in some places in the world."

The next major steps are already on the horizon: photonic circuits in chip assembly can increase performance while simultaneously reducing energy requirements. "This is also important in terms of sustainability," says the 57-year-old. After all, a lot of processing power has so far also required a huge amount of energy.

In order to keep up with the pace, ZEISS is taking a systematic approach to development. "We are already thinking about products that could be relevant in ten or 20 years' time. This long-term approach is made possible by the ZEISS foundation concept," explains Christoph Zaczek. This also means that ZEISScan invest around 15 percent of its turnover in research and development. In terms of implementation, he refers to this as roadmapping: "We observe the dynamic semiconductor market, talk to customers and our strategic partners and evaluate their requirements. We derive our product roadmaps from this," says the scientist.