EUV

This stands for extreme ultraviolet.  EUV lithography is the holy grail of chip manufacturing, allowing for the use of light, initially at 13.5 nm,  in the writing of the circuits.  It was developing by research institutions in America so the US government owned the copyright.  In 2001 they licensed a Dutch company to develop the process and sell the product on the proviso that they would never sell their chips to China.  At that time they thought that Japan was too much in competition with them so Canon and Nikon were denied IP access.

It took the Dutch company ASML until 2022 to have a smooth operating process that produced 200 wafers an hour.  They also targeted 5 nm or less in the light source. In the meantime the Chinese had been working with DUV (deep ultraviolet) technology but researching EUV. In December 2024 a research institution in Harbin announced that they had achieved EUV lithography using a different method from the US one. This is a major breakthrough for them although there is still work to be done to develop other aspects of the production of chips. So the Dutch/US monopoly on the manufacture of these super chips has been broken.