Re:ASML looking to finally get ahead of Moore’s Law
by sllabres on Friday November 18, 2022 @04:41AM
(#33652448)
Cant answer the question and my knowledge is only from 'one interested' but from how long (~20 years) it took to build the current EUV source and how complicated the alternatives look this is for sure no easy feat.
Can recommend [1] as the title say about the light source. Very interesting even for a non professional (and [2] as on high level overview of the machine and [3] as longer documentation inside ASML).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw "The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source"
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0gMdGrVteI "The Extreme Physics Pushing Moore’s Law to the Next Level"
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQu_TMgHO98 "ASML's Secret: An exclusive view from inside the global semiconductor giant"
You can use a big accelerator as a EUV light source. The SLAC beamline was once used to test the concept. Medium sized (160m circumference) synchrotrons have been suggested.[2] One appears to be under construction in China.
A plasma wakefield accelerator is a proposed way to shrink a powerful accelerator down to a more manageable size. Maybe. There's a project underway to use about a third of the 2-mile long SLAC beamline in this mode.
ASML made zapping a droplet of molten tin with lasers work as an EUV source. That's a nightmare. This approach may or may not be better. It involves zapping a high-pressure gas with lasers.
All the known ways to do this are insanely expensive and look more like physics experiments than production equipment.
A clean light source, where you put electricity in and get EUV out, would be easier to work with. There was talk of "table top synchrotrons" a few years back. One startup built one, although it was more like garage-sized.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/high-power-laser-sci...
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35228673/
[3] https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2020-10-12-slac-starts-n...