https://www.eetimes.com/wp-content/uploads/ASML-slide-one.pn...
This is a very fun subsystem diagram.
Simple question, but the article doesn’t define this: what does “NA” mean here, and what do the does increasing NA from 0.33 to 0.55 mean? The gist I got from the article was “bigger number better” but I have no idea what these actually mean.
If I were a G7 leader, the state of global semiconductor production would make me very nervous.
ASML is a Dutch company and is essentially a monopoly now that they first commercialized EUV lithography. They can essentially decide what companies live and die.
TSMC is probably ASML's largest customer because it reportedly produces over half of the world's chips. It is a Taiwanese company (and Taiwan accounts for two-thirds of global chip production). There is Intel too but TSMC have been way more successful in commercial chip fabrication in recent years.
TSMC is of course in Taiwan, which is way more politically precarious than Western Europe. A major disruption to Taiwan's production could be absolutely devastating. This is probably why the US is pursuing domestic chip fabrication (eg in Ohio with the CHIPS Act).
But having two companies with this much potential market influence has to make a lot of people very nervous.
Could if been interesting if the article included price in some manner; as I understand it the total cost pr. transistor is still lower at 28 nm lithography and will be so in the foreseeable future.
“There are new materials which have a higher mobility for electrons,” [than silicium]
Coincidentally, i have been recently watching/reading a bunch of videos/articles on ASML and their technology.
Can some experts/knowledgeable folks here actually explain the technology in ELI5 (and above) terms? As i understand, a laser (what are its characteristics?) is fired at Tin droplets in a vaccuum chamber causing it to emit light in "Extreme UV" wavelength range which is then focused using a set of Zeiss mirrors to do the actual photolithography. Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_ultraviolet_lithograph...) is well over my head. What i am unable to bridge is how this EUV wavelength maps to transistor sizes (in nanometers) via High-NA/Hyper-NA technology.
From https://www.laserfocusworld.com/blogs/article/14039015/how-d...
A major limitation comes from the laws of optics. German physicist Ernst Abbe found that the resolution of a microscope d is (roughly) limited to the wavelength λ of the light used in illumination:
d = λ/(nsin(α)) ...(1)
where n is the refractive index of the medium between the lens and the object and α is the half-angle of the objective's cone of light. For lithography, substituting numerical aperture (NA) for n sin(α) and adding a factor k to the formula (because lithographic resolution can be strongly tweaked with illumination tricks), the minimum feasible structure, or critical dimension (CD), is:
CD = kλ/NA ...(2)
This formula, which governs all lithographic imaging processes, makes obvious why the wavelength is such a crucial parameter. As a result, engineers have been looking for light sources with ever-shorter wavelengths to produce ever-smaller features.
Explain the above?