user nl
Well-known member
From yesterday on xLight's EUV plans:
As Anastasia concludes, timing is everything. It seems she states at the end some like: sorry xLight, if you are targetting the Western Fabs you may be (way) too late in 10 years from now offering your FEL-EUV light.
EUV is needed NOW, and ASML is currently manufacturing and scaling to 60-100 EUV machines/year. And each tool with say >600 Watt EUV, producing 40-60 kWatt EUV EVERY YEAR, for Semi-Fabs lithography, everywhere in the Western world.
And furthermore, ASML is working hard on the wall-plug efficiency of the laser-produced plasma EUV technology, using different lasers that are much more wall-plug efficient than current CO2 lasers. The new EUV source developments are in solid state 2 micron wavelength lasers for tin-produced plasma generated efficient EUV sources it seems.
And China, of course, is also doing lots of research and development into laser-produced plasma EUV sources using the tin-produced ASML technology. Here some recent simulation work on ps and ns prepulse tin-droplet plasma dynamics:
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/3v34-2f14
And the next big development in the AI chip revolution seems in 3D packaging, and probably not in EUV light sources from xLight.
So, why invest billions in an FEL-accelerator for a 10 kWatt 13.5 nm EUV source, as xLight proposes, to be available in 5-10 years? Why would ASML help to have their EUV tools be adapted to that source?
As Anastasia concludes, timing is everything. It seems she states at the end some like: sorry xLight, if you are targetting the Western Fabs you may be (way) too late in 10 years from now offering your FEL-EUV light.
EUV is needed NOW, and ASML is currently manufacturing and scaling to 60-100 EUV machines/year. And each tool with say >600 Watt EUV, producing 40-60 kWatt EUV EVERY YEAR, for Semi-Fabs lithography, everywhere in the Western world.
And furthermore, ASML is working hard on the wall-plug efficiency of the laser-produced plasma EUV technology, using different lasers that are much more wall-plug efficient than current CO2 lasers. The new EUV source developments are in solid state 2 micron wavelength lasers for tin-produced plasma generated efficient EUV sources it seems.
And China, of course, is also doing lots of research and development into laser-produced plasma EUV sources using the tin-produced ASML technology. Here some recent simulation work on ps and ns prepulse tin-droplet plasma dynamics:
https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/abstract/10.1103/3v34-2f14
And the next big development in the AI chip revolution seems in 3D packaging, and probably not in EUV light sources from xLight.
So, why invest billions in an FEL-accelerator for a 10 kWatt 13.5 nm EUV source, as xLight proposes, to be available in 5-10 years? Why would ASML help to have their EUV tools be adapted to that source?
Last edited: