The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source

Asianometry · 698.1K views · 2021-12-26 · 17:20

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Overview

Asianometry explains the EUV light source inside ASML's lithography machines, where lasers hit falling tin droplets twice to produce 13.5 nm light. It walks through the engineering of the droplet generator, the pre-pulse and main laser, and the plasma that results.

On Hacker News

Commenters repeatedly point to it whenever EUV, ASML or chip manufacturing comes up, as a clear and astonishing explanation of one of the hardest engineering problems in chipmaking.

Recommended by 11 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2022–2025

Topics

Semiconductors & chip manufacturing

What people said

Agathos · 2023-07 · Strong recommendation
Two must watch videos about the whole process: [VIDEO] [LINK] (Typed on a device made by this process, which I still don’t quite believe.)
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pas · 2023-04 · Strong recommendation
Anyone interested in the details should watch this video: [VIDEO] (has the same graphics) without any hyperbole the 2-shot laser thing necessary to emit EUV is just mind bending.
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hajile · 2022-12 · Strong recommendation
EUV lithography is interesting. You drop a microscopic droplet of tin. You then aim and shoot it not once, but twice with a laser so it produces the correct wavelength. Then you do this with 100% reliability thousands of times per second all day, every day for years. The problem doing this with fusion seems to be money. Their "big" grant of 600M wouldn't even buy a handful of those machines and wouldn't come close to the many billions it has cost in the past 30+ years of research to reach the point where they are finally viable (it had been "a few months away" ever since the early 2000s). This video from Asianometry on EUV light sources is well worth the watch. It's pretty incredible. [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by Asianometry, played through YouTube.

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