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The $150 million machine dominates the global semiconductor industry 3
Inside a clean room in rural Connecticut (USA), engineers are preparing to install an important part in a machine that will help maintain technological progress for at least another 10 years.
Photolithography is the process of printing a circuit diagram onto the photosensitive surface of a silicon wafer by shining light onto the silicon wafer through a glass disc with a circuit diagram pre-drawn.
ASML launched the first mass-produced EUV photolithography machine in 2017, after decades of mastering this technology.
The machine that dominates the global semiconductor industry
Working inside the EUV photolithography machine.
The current generation of EUV machines are the size of buses and cost about $150 million.
Only a few companies can afford to buy ASML’s EUV machines, most of which are in the hands of the world’s three largest semiconductor chip manufacturers: TSMC, Samsung and Intel.
`It is an extraordinary machine, a revolutionary and groundbreaking product, capable of adding vitality to the semiconductor industry for many years to come,` said Jesus del Alamo, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In Connecticut, a large block of aluminum was cut into a frame to hold a glass dish.
Finished components will be shipped to Veldhoven, Netherlands, later this year and are expected to be installed on next-generation EUV machines in early 2022. Intel claims to own the first chips produced by this system
AMSL’s EUV machines uphold Moore’s Law, a concept that has come to symbolize technological progress not only in the chip industry, but also in the technology industry and the economy as a whole.
According to Moore’s Law, the number of transistors in a chip will double every 18-24 months.
Difficulties in miniaturizing transistors have caused chip manufacturers to gradually turn to 3D technology to take advantage of the space above the conventional wafer surface, thereby integrating more transistors onto the chip.
Many people believe that this will end Moore’s Law, but many experts believe that EUV photolithography can help continue to shrink the size of components and maintain this concept.
ASML’s products play a central role in the geopolitical competition between the US and China, as Washington is looking for ways to prevent Beijing from accessing these photolithography machines.
`It would be impossible to build state-of-the-art chips without ASML’s machines. Much of this process is the result of years of technology testing and not having easy access to them. Each component in EUV is extremely complex,` Will Hunt
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Workers assemble an EUV photolithography machine.
Manufacturing microprocessors requires the most advanced techniques in the world.
Component miniaturization is still the surest way to increase the processing power of each chip, because electrons move more efficiently with small components and increasing the number of components on a chip also increases overall computing power.
EUV uses light rays with a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers, compared to the 193 nanometers of previous deep ultraviolet (DUV) technology.
It will take decades to solve the technical challenges with EUV.
Conventional lenses absorb EUV light, forcing the machine to use mirrors coated with special materials with extremely high precision to adjust the direction of the light rays.
`No one really wants to use EUV. It appeared 20 years late and has a price 10 times higher than expected. However, this is the only tool today to fabricate extremely close architectures,`
ASML’s new machine adds to the method of making smaller parts, which is a large numerical aperture, which allows increasing image resolution by allowing light to pass through the lens at many different angles.
ASML’s current generation of EUV machines can create chips with a resolution of 13 nanometers, while the next generation can engrave details as small as 8 nanometers.
ASML’s most prominent customer today is TSMC, a chip supplier to a series of large corporations such as Apple, Nvidia and Intel.
The Dutch company does not expect technological advances based on its photolithography machine to slow down in the near future.