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That’s it in a nutshell. The current cost of a Synchrotron is more then the cost of the equivalent capability using non-synchrotron technologies. It might seem
by techdragon 3y ago
That’s it in a nutshell. The current cost of a Synchrotron is more then the cost of the equivalent capability using non-synchrotron technologies.
It might seem crazy but it turns out Synchrotrons are pretty rare machines too… and they are less “operationalised” in an industrial sense than the crazy tech inside the EUV machines… between the vacuum levels needed and the various linear or circular accelerator technologies available, at the end of the day it’s just way more of a pain in the ass to maintain a large industrially pure vacuum machine operating at continuous round the clock fashion. which might seem nuts but talk to anyone who’s works with high vacuum systems about vacuum purity, out gassing and contamination and yeah… it will make sense pretty quickly.
- exmadscientist 3y agoI don't think high vacuum is the main problem. I used to work closely with people who did serious high vacuum heavy lifting (with RHIC at Brookhaven) and they always gave off the impression that it's plenty difficult, but it's engineering-project difficult, not research-project difficult. There are solutions, they are understood, and they work at scale. Though they might not be pretty. No, I'm guessing it's something else. I can't imagine complexity is the issue, given the nightmare that is the ASML scanner, so I can only guess that some property of the light generated by synchrotrons is troublesome and not easily correctable. If that's not the case... perhaps there really might be a business opportunity here?