EUV Chipmaking Inches Forward 32
szotz writes "You've got falling droplets of molten tin, bright lasers, and fancy evacuated optics. What's not to love about EUV light sources? The fact that we still don't have them in production lines producing chips. Light source maker ASML says it's 'more confident' that the technology's on track now, and that the machines should meet their target brightness by 2015, in time to help pattern the 10nm generation of chips — the next next generation. We'll see. Or then again maybe we won't. The light's outside the visible range."
Re:Outside the visible range?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
Given than EUV is absorbed by pretty much all normal matter, why would it have trouble lighting up our light sensing cells, while at the same time microwaving our brains into mush? I'm pretty sure I could sense that.
Unless re-emitted as visible light, something that high in the UV range would just be absorbed by the cornea, lens, or aqueous or vitreous humors before having a chance to hit the retina.
The potentially-permanent damage would be noticeable; but probably not immediately(allegedly, the sensation is similar to having your eyes full of sand, without any sand you can remove, sometimes followed by cateracts. Zesty!)
If the UV is high energy enough, and there is something even slightly fluorescent in the eye, you might be able to see the visible light produced when the fluorescent material is energized by the UV. That would be a Bad Sign; but at least an immediate one (possibly not as bad as seeing Cherenkov radiation in your eye; but still bad).
Progress (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:ASML (Score:5, Interesting)
With the acquisition of Cymer, ASML is actually a light source maker.
It is true that ASML outsources the manufacturing of most components as far as it involves materials processing (machining, coating, soldering) and off-the-shelf components (pumps, filters, sensors, computers, bolts, cables, etc.). But the actual assembly and tuning of these thousands of components is done by ASML's own employees in ASML's own cleanrooms. As I am typing this, this is happening about 15 meters below my office.
Given the wide variety in technologies used in these scanners, and given how fast the technology changes, it wouldn't make much sense to do all the materials processing in-house. For me as a design engineer it is quite cool that I generally only need to worry whether the design of a component is manufacturable by some supplier in the world, rather than that I have to keep in mind what our own tools, which have to be used because they are not yet written off. That would slow down development tremendously -- it is already hard enough to keep up with Moore's law without such a restriction.
(The above are my own views/opinions yadda yadda)
Re:EUV source (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, you can build CPUs with triple patterning based on the aforementioned parallel lines, but probably not ideal ones.
The trick is to use triple patterning to fabricate the gate substrates and contact wires, and use e-beam direct-writing to remove the connections you don't want. It's not an ideal process, as each cell has to be individually ablated, and you only get one parameter for each gate (gate-length), so things like tri-gate and FINFET are not going to be easily fabable.
One possible advantage is for low-volume production, you can mass-produce partially completed wafers, and then define the final logic according to where you cut the gates and wires (with e-beam direct writing).
Disclosure: I'm a deadbeat, everything I know about photolithography is from the internet and pirated ebooks.
Re:EUV source (Score:4, Interesting)
One could imagine FEL based sources for EUV. At SLAC / LCLS we run reliably at even shorter wavelengths, 4nm is our long wavelength limit, 0.12 at the short end. Average power is low now, but there is a clear path to at least kilowatt average powers (see the LBNL NGLS) and 10s of KW are pretty straightforward.
The sources are very expensive - $100M-$1B, so they might be out of reach for even a large fab.
There has been quite a bit of work on EUV / Xray optics, but again the parts are really expensive (an X-ray mirror runs $1M. )
It probably ends up as an economic issue (not surprising), it it worth building sources like this.