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Vacuum, Thin-Film & Plasma
ASML’s EUV Expansion Runs Through Zeiss
Reported by EE Times on 14 October 2026
What it means for hiring
ASML's plans to expand EUV production depend in part on Zeiss being able to increase its output of qualified precision optics.
It is worth saying plainly what that means: the constraint on the most advanced manufacturing capability in the world is a precision optics shop, and precision optics is a craft discipline. Optical fabrication, polishing, coating and the metrology that qualifies the result are learned over years and taught largely by apprenticeship. The people are concentrated in a small corridor of southern Germany, and the supply of them does not respond quickly to demand. Anyone recruiting optics manufacturing or metrology people in that region is now competing with the EUV supply chain for a pool that cannot be grown at the speed the orders are arriving. It also explains why optics companies elsewhere in Europe have found their own retention getting harder this year without quite knowing why.
Read the original at EE Times .
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