4 ms·

Queue extreme UV lithography. Where the light source costs $100M, took 8,000 engineers 20 years to develop, and consumes 1MW of power to shine a 1kW beam. http

• verandaguys_alt 9y ago
  Progress has to begin somewhere. In another 10 years, this kind of lithography will likely have evolved into something much more viable.
  • Tuna-Fish 9y ago
    The problem is that EUV was originally expected in 2007. It is already more than a decade late, and it still has issues.
• arcanus 9y ago
  At this point isn't this basically a fab attached to a particle accelerator?
  • the8472 9y ago
    This uses tin plasma generated by laser pulses. No particle accelerators involved. One could build an EUV source based on a free electron laser too, which involves a particle accelerator, but I assume that has some limitations that make it less suitable for lithography.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • macawfish 9y ago
    Have you heard of Rayton Solar? They are supposedly slicing nanometer thin silicon with a particle accelerator. I don't know how hard it'd be to extend this to lithography though... Bill Nye the Science Guy is their PR person: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8fKlfcA7E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA8fKlfcA7E
• kitd 9y ago
  From the Ars article a couple of days ago [1], it sounds like EUV improvements are actually at the core of the work announced here. [1] https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-5nm-chip/ https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2017/06/ibm-5nm-chip/
• ZenoArrow 9y ago
  Just FYI: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/cue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/queue https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/queue Same pronunciation, different meaning.
• altcognito 9y ago
  If it is a short burst, perhaps 1MW is not a big deal?
  • irixusr 9y ago
    You can use a bank of capacitors and the power itself is not a huge deal (still not trivial, but it's been done for 60+ years). The problem is also that at 1kW for every 1Mw you still only use 0.1% of the energy you pumped in. And the energy requirements are still large because you are firing this thing repeatedly. Assuming the same amount of energy is required to ablate the atoms as with conventional UV (I'm not in the field, but its probably not a bad assumption), you have to multiply the ratio of the efficiencies of both methods to get at the energy required. Could be several multiples more if not an order of magnitude. Also where does the remaining 999kW go? Eventually heat, so you have to spend 2Mw more to cool it (assuming 50% AC efficiency, I guess you could pump cold water instead). Add in the energy costs of opening and closing a vacuum lock and this is a fun project to be working on :D