> "We see a reasonably clear path toward 1,500 watts, and no fundamental reason why we couldn't get to 2,000 watts."
Right now the only way to make "bright" EUV (100-200 watts) is to spray fine drops of a metal in a stream, then target and blast each drop with a laser.
pretty wild way to make light.
> to help retain the Dutch company's edge over emerging U.S. and Chinese rivals
Great news, but what a strange attempt to equate the U.S. and China in this and build a narrative. Cymer was founded in San Diego.
The reality is that it's American technology that is used in ASML machines so I don't know why the article tries to frame it like it's a competition.
So the ASML machines combine technologies developed in various places, not only in USA, even if the UV source is indeed a critical component. While an ASML machine would not work without the UV source, it would also not work without many other critical optical and mechanical components.
If it were so easy to make a lithography machine when you have a UV source, Cymer would have remained an independent company or it would have been bought by a US company. Cymer has been bought by their only customer.
The same happens when you look at a PC, it is likely that it contains something essential that comes from USA, i.e. the CPU logic may be designed by AMD, but the manufacturing technology is designed in Taiwan, the memories may be designed and made in Korea, other chips may be designed and made in Taiwan, other components come from Japan, the PCB may have been designed in Taiwan, but actually made in China, and so on.
So yes, it has some important US technology in it, but there is a very long way from a CPU logic design to a physical computer and most of that rarely has anything to do with USA.
The same happens with an ASML machine.
The primary difference between this machine and its predecessor is the degree to which it has been optimized around the specific EUV light source.
It's crazy that Europeans keep citing ASML as a strong example of European innovation.
LSTC will contribute research (for 1nm) though it isn't clear if it'll be in partnership with ASML or as competition.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/japan-seeks-revitalize-its-sem...
> The company's researchers have found a way to boost the power of the EUV light source to 1,000 watts from 600 watts now.
with more on the horizon:
> We see a reasonably clear path toward 1,500 watts, and no fundamental reason why we couldn't get to 2,000 watts.
They have a code in my country that is pretty simple from 1 to 3. The highest tier is 11 chickens per square meter apparently (I do not eat poultry myself).
It's impressive to see that there still was so much room left to improve EUV, but I can't help but be royally pissed off that it will be a looooong time before we the people see any practical benefit of it.
This delay is presumably caused by both the lack of production capacity at TSMC, which is busy with AI, and by the fear that any launch of a new CPU would be crippled by the impossibility to buy DRAM and SSDs for new computers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2482h_TNwg
https://youtu.be/MXnrzS3aGeM
Or this presentation which came out way long ago.
I’ll note that this video is way out of date…both in content and my skills as a speaker :P
lol
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
So much more fun than LEDs.
But now 100k times a second apparently. Humans are amazing.
Oh and can you build it so it can run hundreds or thousands of hours before being cleaned? Thanks byyyyyyyyeeeeee!
< Why?!
> To make a better laser.
< Yes, of course you are.
> 100,000 times per second.
< [AFK, buying shares.]
We are quickly leaving the realm of dependent variables still looking anything like diversification.
What does that mean?
Asianometry has lots of videos on ASML, this one is specifically about the light sources.
The source in the ASML machine produces something like 300-500W of light. With an Xray tube this would then require an electron beam with 50 MW of power. When focused into a microscopic dot on the target this would not work for any duration of time. Even if it did, the cooling and getting rid of unwanted wavelengths would have been very difficult.
A light bulb does not work because it is not hot enough. I suppose some kind of RF driven plasma could be hot enough, but considering that the source needs to be microscopic in size for focusing reasons, it is not clear how one could focus the RF energy on it without also ruining the hardware.
So, they use a microscopic plasma discharge which is heated by the focused laser. It "only" requires a few hundred kilowatts of electricity to power and cool the source itself.
The primary method is to rely grazing angle reflection, but that per definition only allows you a tiny deflection at a time, nothing like a parabolic mirror or whatnot.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_optics
As I hear it, the decision had large economic component related to Masks and even OPC.
We do actually have functioning processes for XRay litho today, but we'll need that same level (or more) of investment and effort to make it economical.
https://science.gsfc.nasa.gov/662/instruments/mirrorlab/xopt...
(These emission lines are also what is being used in x-ray spectroscopy to identify elements)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
https://yewtu.be/watch?v=MiUHjLxm3V0
PSA: the si (along with pp) parameter is used for tracking purposes:
consider cutting whenever possible.> The key advancements in Monday's disclosure involved doubling the number of tin drops to about 100,000 every second, and shaping them into plasma using two smaller laser bursts, as opposed to today's machines that use a single shaping burst.
This is covered in that video. Did they let him leak their Q1 plans?
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXnrzS3aGeM
This seems like a product with a very very long sales pipeline, so I wonder if they work on pre-orders with existing customers but announce delivery milestones only as they come?
+1 for this video, and the Branch education one. Well done to both teams.