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I don't think you have any idea of how hard EUV was to pull off. They toiled for 20 years without guarantee of success. They managed to pull it off and now the
by dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
I don't think you have any idea of how hard EUV was to pull off.
They toiled for 20 years without guarantee of success. They managed to pull it off and now they own the bleeding edge process and will do for the foreseeable future. If someone wants to do the same, they can become competitors.
It's not just a question of patents, they keep almost everything about these machines secret.
- smueller1234 3y agoBack in 2005 the researchers who worked on EUV lensing (mirrors, really) were very cynical and thought that it would never pan out. Coffee breaks were hilarious. It ultimately took a whole lot of time indeed.
- ahartmetz 3y agoIt's kind of a miracle that no one at ASML made "the hard but necessary decision" to give up on EUV.
- tonyhb 3y agoThe research wasn't done by them — it was paid for by the US gov't and developed at US labs. ASML were given the research knowing that it could work.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y agoThat is a bit of an oversimplification of what happened. A lot of basic research was done by US labs. But it took ASML almost 20 years to convert this research into a production ready system and nobody else succeeded. And they also got some big research grants from the EU[1] [1]https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/28160 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/28160
- janc_ 3y agoIIRC there is also some IMEC research in those ASML machines (which might also have been partially EU funded)?
- ahartmetz 3y agoThe US had an EUV project that ran like 2-3 years and cost a few millions. ASML spent two decades and billions on it. That's like saying that the Manhattan project was given to the US by Lise Meitner and Otto Hahn.