The Intricacy of ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography Machines
Fascinating piece by Ben Cohen for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):
And there are two things I learned about the EUV tool I saw that I
can’t get out of my head:
ASML teamed up with a German optical company to develop mirrors
so flat that if they were scaled up to the size of Germany
itself, their largest imperfection would be less than a
millimeter.
The precision of EUV machines is comparable to directing a
laser beam from your house and hitting a ping-pong ball on the
moon.
It took decades for these absurdly sophisticated machines to make
their way from labs to fabs. And until recently, it wasn’t clear
if the company’s audacious bet on EUV lithography would ever pay
off. In 2012, ASML was strapped for cash and sold a 23% equity
stake to Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing, which meant its biggest customers were literally
invested in the company’s success.
ASML soon ramped up production — very, very slowly. The company
delivered the first EUV system in 2010. Not until 2020 did it
deliver the 100th. And last year was a busy one: ASML shipped a
total of 42 EUV machines.
The piece is also a profile of one ASML engineer, Brienna Hall, who is one of a small cadre of frontline support engineers who keep these machines operating perfectly. The article’s headline, though, is bizarrely framed to suggest that she’s the only such support engineer in the world. The weird headline distracts from an otherwise fascinating story.
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Fascinating piece by Ben Cohen for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):
And there are two things I learned about the EUV tool I saw that I
can’t get out of my head:
ASML teamed up with a German optical company to develop mirrors
so flat that if they were scaled up to the size of Germany
itself, their largest imperfection would be less than a
millimeter.
The precision of EUV machines is comparable to directing a
laser beam from your house and hitting a ping-pong ball on the
moon.
It took decades for these absurdly sophisticated machines to make
their way from labs to fabs. And until recently, it wasn’t clear
if the company’s audacious bet on EUV lithography would ever pay
off. In 2012, ASML was strapped for cash and sold a 23% equity
stake to Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing, which meant its biggest customers were literally
invested in the company’s success.
ASML soon ramped up production — very, very slowly. The company
delivered the first EUV system in 2010. Not until 2020 did it
deliver the 100th. And last year was a busy one: ASML shipped a
total of 42 EUV machines.
The piece is also a profile of one ASML engineer, Brienna Hall, who is one of a small cadre of frontline support engineers who keep these machines operating perfectly. The article’s headline, though, is bizarrely framed to suggest that she’s the only such support engineer in the world. The weird headline distracts from an otherwise fascinating story.