[HN Gopher] Japan on edge of EUV lithography chip-making revolution
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Japan on edge of EUV lithography chip-making revolution
        
       Author : ksec
       Score  : 150 points
       Date   : 2024-08-24 08:57 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (asiatimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (asiatimes.com)
        
       | roenxi wrote:
       | Will this attempt work out commercially? Maybe, maybe not. But
       | more interesting here is the strategic situation beyond the
       | currently understood tech.
       | 
       | The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a vector
       | to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China. Democracies
       | are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India, Japan, Korea
       | or anyone really. There is a strategic need here to break the
       | remaining European monopolies on equipment supply. For China the
       | need is urgent but for all the Asian powers the need is real.
       | 
       | Given the manufacturing powerhouse that the collective Asia
       | represents, I expect they'll figure all these details out and
       | become technologically independent at least on paper. They've had
       | more than a century of experience in dealing with the west, the
       | risks of the status quo are too obvious once the US is overtly
       | exploiting it.
        
         | corimaith wrote:
         | >The US has made it clear that it sees semiconductors as a
         | vector to attack power centres in Asia. Today it is China.
         | Democracies are notoriously fickle, tomorrow it could be India,
         | Japan, Korea or anyone really.
         | 
         | Sorry but this sounds more like propaganda. China also sees
         | supply chains "as a vector to attack power centres in Asia",
         | that's applicable to anyone and anywhere. I'm not sure why Asia
         | is a singled out here, sounds like one to trying to construe a
         | racist motive when there is none.
         | 
         | The aformentioned India, Japan & Korea aren't worried about
         | USA, their primary concerns are China and their neighbours.
         | China's explicit objective to control the entire supply chain
         | places them at a direct conflict of interest with those
         | countries. They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan
         | over petty issues like Fukushima water waste. Trying to appeal
         | to some vague "Asian" solidarity as opposed to the existing
         | OECD and actual shared norms sounds more like an attempt to
         | divide allies rather than actually caring about those
         | countries' interests.
        
           | lmz wrote:
           | > They've already tried sanctioning Korea and Japan over
           | petty issues like Fukushima water waste.
           | 
           | Well China wasn't the only one with concerns, but probably
           | the only one with the balls to sanction:
           | https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/world/asia/korea-japan-
           | fu... - and why shouldn't they?
        
             | ethbr1 wrote:
             | Because it's filtered radioactive water, released over 30
             | years?
             | 
             | The main thing that won't be filtered is tritium, which
             | already exists in the ocean, and has an ~12 year half life.
             | 
             | People get irrational where radiation is concerned, though.
        
             | mlyle wrote:
             | The radiation can't be detected even a couple of kilometers
             | away from the discharge. China is >1000km away, so there's
             | 6+ orders of magnitude more dilution by then.
             | 
             | If I pee in the lake you're swimming in, that's kind of
             | gross... but it ends up being an _incomprehensibly_ tiny
             | fraction of the contaminants and gross stuff you 're
             | swimming in.
        
           | roenxi wrote:
           | > I'm not sure why Asia is a singled out here, sounds like
           | one to trying to construe a racist motive when there is none.
           | 
           | How long has Asia been a race? The continent contains 60% of
           | all humans.
        
         | legacynl wrote:
         | > Democracies are notoriously fickle,
         | 
         | are they really though? At least in democracies things require
         | oversight, debates and people are being held responsible.
         | 
         | It's exactly authoritarian regimes that can turn on a dime, if
         | the supreme leader feels like it.
        
           | roenxi wrote:
           | > At least in democracies things require oversight, debates
           | and people are being held responsible.
           | 
           | I'm scratching my head at this one. Why do you think they are
           | doing those things if not because they are constantly re-
           | evaluating their direction? If you're just going to keep
           | doing the same thing over and over again there isn't much
           | need for debate. The oversight and accountability mechanisms
           | are all-weather good ideas, but typically the US is using
           | them to constantly adjust and change policy responses.
           | 
           | Compare that to somewhere more authoritarian where they can't
           | change policies precisely because those 3 aspects are quite
           | weak. They find their groove once and stick to it for
           | decades, and anyone trying to shake things up gets mired in
           | institutional inertia. Sure a supreme leader _could_ force
           | sudden change in theory, but why are they going to do that?
           | He 's got everything set up how he likes it and his view of
           | the world fossilised maybe 10, 20 years ago.
           | 
           | Democracies are absolute monsters. The moment they detect
           | that their interests have changed they'll vote out the old
           | mob, bring in a new one and do things differently. The US
           | went Obama to Trump in one election cycle, which was probably
           | a shock for anyone trying to negotiate with them.
        
             | ineedaj0b wrote:
             | obama and trump are more similar than people realize is the
             | blackpill. 'median voter theorem' and such
        
           | coliveira wrote:
           | Your description of democracy doesn't match with existing
           | capitalism. In capitalism, what matters is the individual
           | capitalist desire to achieve profits. The economic decisions
           | are made by a few oligarchs on top, not by the population.
        
         | zenapollo wrote:
         | Fickle? It's been Russia and China for like 100 years. I'm no
         | expert but it might be due to crushing political oppression and
         | aggressive empire building. Japan, S Korea, and Taiwan are all
         | chip manufacturing power houses, and the only one not happy to
         | see China blockaded is China. Though I'm sure they're working
         | on hacking into and stealing these new designs as we speak.
        
           | roenxi wrote:
           | > It's been Russia and China for like 100 years.
           | 
           | It hasn't been. The US was one of the key players who built
           | China up to what it is today, for a significant chunk of the
           | past century they were strategic partners against Russia.
           | 
           | And it is worth remembering that post WWII the US was busy
           | marginalising the Europeans, making sure Germany was
           | prosperous but didn't execute an independent military
           | resurgence and helpfully euthanising the British empire.
           | There were enemies other than Russia and China over that
           | period. It just happens that the other European powers were
           | broken to the point where their resistance was ineffectual
           | and the process was mostly amicable - if they'd been more
           | competent it'd have been a lot nastier.
        
       | ksec wrote:
       | A few points in terms of context.
       | 
       | 1. The original paper in Japanese claim to use only 4 mirrors to
       | achieve the same results. Although this story only mentions >the
       | EUV equipment's optical system is greatly simplified
       | 
       | 1. Japan isn't new to lithography. Both Canon and Nikon are in
       | the market as well and eventually gave on EUV research and
       | focuses on DUV.
       | 
       | 2. Power consumption is reduced by a factor of ten is extremely
       | important as modern EUV, and future High-NA EUV are insanely
       | power hungry, with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing
       | goes to energy usage alone. And this isn't just TSMC but also
       | NAND and DRAM maker as well.
       | 
       | 3. ASML has something similar in the work as well. Although not
       | to any extreme as factor of 10. But then they also dont need
       | these sort of claim to get funding as the one here does.
        
         | bradleyjg wrote:
         | _with 30%+ of the raw cost of chip manufacturing goes to energy
         | usage alone_
         | 
         | Is the marginal cost of production at all relevant compared to
         | the upfront capital outlay?
        
           | ksec wrote:
           | One is OpeX and the other is CapeX. I would argue they are
           | both important.
        
             | bradleyjg wrote:
             | Don't confuse the map for the territory. Dollars are
             | fungible.
        
               | jiggawatts wrote:
               | I tried to explain this to our finance team, but they
               | just gawked at me with a stunned look of disbelief.
               | 
               | To be fair, I did notice were busy colouring in money
               | with different felt tip pens.
               | 
               | "This is 'blue' money and it can't be mixed with the
               | 'red' or 'green' money. That would be silly!"
        
           | epoxia wrote:
           | You can get a loan to spread out payments, reducing operating
           | costs would be similar to reducing those payments. It also
           | impacts viability and resale in second hand markets.
        
             | bradleyjg wrote:
             | Sure, but the question is the scale. Is debt service 10x
             | operating costs? 2x? 50x? .5x?
             | 
             | Those imply very different sorts of business.
        
         | red_trumpet wrote:
         | Later on the article says
         | 
         | > To eliminate this problem, Professor Shintake aligned two
         | axis-symmetric mirrors in a straight line and used a total of
         | only four mirrors instead of ten.
        
       | mangecoeur wrote:
       | They mention validation in software which suggests a hardware
       | implementation is a way off with a lot of practical issues that
       | might crop up on the way. So best of luck to them but i wouldn't
       | expect to see hit the market for quite a while - saying they are
       | "on the edge of euv chip making" is very optimistic.
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | By far the easiest path for this technology to be used in
         | practice would be to license it to ASML.
         | 
         | The older and cheaper models of the ASML EUV sources would be
         | good enough for this system that needs a much smaller power for
         | the EUV sources.
         | 
         | The European partners of ASML are the only companies that could
         | manufacture at this time the optical system.
         | 
         | Nevertheless, it is likely that the patent owners would prefer
         | to license it to Nikon, to create competition for ASML.
         | 
         | Nikon should be able to make the optical system, but this could
         | need a few years of development, unless Nikon already has a
         | secret internal research project for making EUV mirrors.
         | 
         | The most difficult problem remains the EUV source, even if a
         | much simpler source than the current sources is good enough.
         | 
         | It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell EUV
         | sources separately to Nikon, providing components for competing
         | systems.
         | 
         | The only deal that seems possible would be if ASML accepted to
         | sell some of their older models of EUV sources to Nikon, in
         | exchange for receiving licenses for this new improved kind of
         | EUV optical system, which will then be incorporated in all new
         | EUV systems, regardless if they are made by ASML or Nikon.
         | 
         | This would reduce the dependence on ASML and its partners, but
         | ASML would still completely control the market of EUV sources,
         | even if not also the market of complete lithography systems,
         | like it does now.
        
           | alephnerd wrote:
           | > It seems very unlikely that ASML would be willing to sell
           | EUV sources separately to Nikon
           | 
           | Nikon's out of the EUVL game and doesn't plan on returning.
           | They're reiterated this in just about every quarterly
           | prospectus for years now.
           | 
           | They're migrating to licensing whatever EUVL IP they had to
           | other players.
           | 
           | They've pivoted heavily to FPD Lithography (LCD, OLED, and
           | potentially PV fabrication) - better margins, less political
           | headache.
        
       | cherryteastain wrote:
       | Canon and Nikon are also working on alternatives such as
       | nanoimprint lithography [1]. Chinese universities and companies
       | are working on particle accelerator based EUV sources [2].
       | Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it
       | _before_ ASML manages to get improved versions of their current
       | litho machines out the door? Commercialization of a technology
       | like this can easily take 5-10 years, and ASML aren 't twiddling
       | their thumbs. Once the incumbent has a technology that is, say,
       | 80-90% as good as the challenger, the big players will always
       | choose them to minimize risks.
       | 
       | [1] https://semiengineering.com/nanoimprint-finds-its-footing-
       | in...
       | 
       | [2] https://www.electronicsweekly.com/news/business/china-to-
       | bui...
        
         | alephnerd wrote:
         | > Question is, will they be able to actually commercialize it
         | before ASML manages to get improved versions of their current
         | litho machines out the door
         | 
         | Canon and Nikon don't need to be bleeding edge. Majority of the
         | chip fabrication market is 20nm, 28nm, and 40nm along with
         | analog chips (60nm+).
         | 
         | The sub-20nm chips will become more common as more and more
         | fabs get turned on and EUV eventually gets commoditized, but
         | the RoI isn't there yet for most electronics aside from high
         | margins consumer electronics like GPUs, high end cellphones,
         | etc.
         | 
         | > Chinese universities and companies are working on particle
         | accelerator based EUV sources
         | 
         | Both the Chinese (SMIC) and the Japanese (OIST) attempts don't
         | have great yield rates (the OIST project above is barely 50% of
         | ASML's and SMIC's is reported to be similar).
         | 
         | Both will crack it eventually, but the order book for ASML's
         | High NA EUV (3nm and below) is entirely Intel, Samsung, and the
         | American fabs for TSMC for the next 3-4 years so by the time a
         | competitor is ASML comparable, a significant subset of high end
         | US and SK fabs will have transitioned to 3nm.
        
           | Panzer04 wrote:
           | But how much of the monetary value generation derives from
           | small nodes?
           | 
           | Surely the vast majority of fab income derives from these
           | small nodes, just based on the sheer pricing disparity
           | between complex semiconductors and everything else.
        
             | ethbr1 wrote:
             | Compounded by the availability of the technology.
             | 
             | Few leading node machines = machine manufacturer/fab can
             | charge high margins
             | 
             | Multiple trailing node machines/suppliers = machine
             | manufacturers/fabs begin to compete on price, driving down
             | margins
        
               | alephnerd wrote:
               | ^^^ this.
               | 
               | A good example of this principle is the diffusion of
               | analog chip and memory chip fabrication in the 1990s to
               | early 2010s (US/TW/JP/SK in 1980s-90s to MY/SG/PH in the
               | 90s to CN in the 2000s).
               | 
               | The ongoing diffusion of specialized DUVL processes like
               | 20nm, 28nm, and 40nm is another great example (US in the
               | 2000s to TW/SK in the 2010s to CN in the late 2010s/early
               | 2020s).
               | 
               | Nowadays companies like PSMC are selling the entire end-
               | to-end Fab IP for 28nm/40nm processes to companies in JP,
               | IN, ID, US, etc, further diffusing the know how.
        
           | EvgeniyZh wrote:
           | Canon and Nikon have these already, and yet their market
           | share is pretty small
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | It's interesting that the author's picture is with a linear
         | accelerator. It's quite possible to use a linear accelerator to
         | generate EUV to etch chips. It's been done as a test at
         | SLAC.[1] But that approach was more expensive than AMSL's,
         | since it needed a mile-long accelerator.
         | 
         | There was a startup in Fremont, Lyncean Technologies, that had
         | a 10 watt EUV source based on a small synchrotron.[2][3] They
         | supposedly got to 10 watts. But that was too weak for EUV
         | semiconductor work. They struggled for years to find a market,
         | and went bankrupt in 2022. Here's the video of the equipment
         | auction.[4] If, with this new optical system, only 20 watts are
         | needed, that technology is worth reviving.
         | 
         | Something YC might be interested in.
         | 
         | An accelerator source is much cleaner than the laser tin-
         | zapping thing AMSL uses. It's amazing that works as a
         | commercial product.
         | 
         | [1]
         | https://euvlsymposium.lbl.gov/pdf/2014/39af88b9d637418d86614...
         | 
         | [2]
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20220119174924/https://lynceante...
         | 
         | [3] https://www.euvlitho.com/2017/P17.pdf
         | 
         | [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5eGyeNgCSY
        
         | xbmcuser wrote:
         | If I am not wrong cost is a big factor currently not the tech
         | advantage. It's one of the reasons we got the meme Moore's law
         | is dead. So if someone is able to get even a generation or so
         | older node compared to previous at cheaper price it will be a
         | huge shift in the industry.
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | If you consider that China is unable to get ASML equipment,
         | they have strong incentive to improve on this technology
         | immediately. If Chinese companies start this path, then the
         | issue is not if ASML will have improved, but if they will be
         | able to withstand the competition.
        
           | mensetmanusman wrote:
           | ASML having competition is good for everyone. Seems tariffs
           | are a win/win/win
        
             | coliveira wrote:
             | I haven't seen any success on the Trump/Biden tariffs. They
             | only managed to weaken US companies by cutting access to
             | Asian markets. China is doing just fine.
        
               | oezi wrote:
               | The Hang Seng stock index begs to differ.
        
               | mensetmanusman wrote:
               | Reducing sales of BYD in the US is a realpolitik win if
               | the goal is to slightly increase war machine production
               | capability in the US.
        
               | ineedaj0b wrote:
               | tariffs/sanctions are meant to be long term, 15-30 years
               | before showing effectiveness. they are meant to not stop
               | progress but stop 'compounding' progress. if they show
               | effectiveness sooner even better! but effects are better
               | seen after 10 years.
               | 
               | if A has $500 and B has $500 (and each put money away at
               | the end of the year), tariffs on A are meant to
               | 'eliminate' the compounding interest of the market. so
               | over long horizons B ends up ahead. A still makes
               | progress (but substantially further behind from where it
               | could have been).
               | 
               | my example is more true of sanctions than tariffs. i've
               | noticed many misguided tariffs from countries with less
               | noble aims recently.
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | That's laughable, China will spend 15-30 expanding on all
               | kinds of technologies while cut from the US by design. I
               | cannot see any long term benefit for the US when it lost
               | access to the largest foreign market and suffers from
               | fierce competition across the world. See the debacle of
               | EV, where Chinese companies are already dominating sales
               | on 3rd world countries and inside China.
        
               | mrtksn wrote:
               | It's kind of obvious isn't it? High-tech is human-made
               | and humans are not in short in China and elsewhere. Tech
               | embargoes are a huge favor for the receiving side,
               | enforcing a creation of a market for competitors where
               | your companies can't compete and tariffs make sure that
               | your companies don't have to innovate much when your
               | people are suffering.
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | Yes, tariffs may work for small countries, Cuba being the
               | classical example (even though it only worked in the
               | sense of keeping Cuba poor). But using tariffs against a
               | country the size of China is a complete non-sense that
               | could only come from the minds of stupid US politicians.
               | The fact that it didn't work at all for Russia, which has
               | an economy many times smaller, should be an early
               | warning.
        
           | l5870uoo9y wrote:
           | Regardless of the immediate ban on ASML, China has made a
           | geopolitical and strategic decision to obtain advanced chip
           | manufacturing capabilities be it in 5, 10 or 20 years. Would
           | be timely if Western politicians showed same concern for
           | national manufacturing capabilities instead of continuously
           | relying on outsourcing.
        
             | jolux wrote:
             | > Would be timely if Western politicians showed same
             | concern for national manufacturing capabilities instead of
             | continuously relying on outsourcing.
             | 
             | You mean like this?
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act
        
               | kredd wrote:
               | I'm actually excited to see these projects come into
               | fruition. If USA can pull it off, and become competitive
               | in global markets, it'll a proof that we can still build
               | big projects when we want to. If things go sideways with
               | nothing coming online by the end of 2020s, it won't look
               | good especially knowing how China just keeps outbuilding
               | us.
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | The CHIPS act is a big mistake, they decided to give
               | billions of dollars to companies like Intel that decided
               | to layoff thousands of people a few months later. Like
               | always, the US decided to give more money to
               | unaccountable companies that will put this money into
               | their management and shareholder's pockets.
        
             | osnium123 wrote:
             | Western countries lack the talented and hardworking
             | manufacturing workforce necessary to stay competitive.
        
             | snowpid wrote:
             | You mean , like Asml , Zeiss and Jenoptics aren't national
             | manufacturing capabilities? Or ist just your head national
             | = American, western = American and not German , Dutch,
             | European not Western?
        
               | coliveira wrote:
               | For an American, national means built in the US. Unless
               | you believe that Germany and other Europeans are just
               | colonies of the US.
        
           | talldayo wrote:
           | Eh, we've got time. When NATO allies stopped selling China
           | engines for their fighter jets, it took China more than 15
           | years to bootstrap an aerospace industry that could design
           | engines on-par with Russia. There are a lot of things that
           | China has every incentive to invest in, but _literally
           | cannot_ as a result of sanctions.
           | 
           | On top of that - an underappreciated aspect of lithography is
           | yield. It's likely China can already beat ASML in a lab
           | setting with <5% yield rates, but that's not a competitive
           | process. What makes TSMC so valuable is their relatively high
           | yield on cutting-edge node technology, alongside their fairly
           | large capacity to supply multiple businesses at once. China
           | has to design a scalable EUV alternative, bring it up to
           | acceptable/profitable yield and quality control, and then
           | scale it to replace the demand for most of the domestic chip
           | clients. It's a lot of work, and it would not surprise me if
           | we saw a lot of China's chip efforts echo their confident-
           | but-slowed progress in engine design.
        
             | sangnoir wrote:
             | Competitiveness is an economic concern one can ignore while
             | the government is willing to pour billions on a decade+
             | timeframe
        
               | talldayo wrote:
               | Sure, China said that about their engines too. When
               | Pakistan came to them looking to buy an F-16 replacement
               | under contract, China couldn't provide competitive
               | designs without using Russian powerplants. They would
               | build the JF-17 for export, and that jet (built in 2003)
               | wouldn't receive domestic engines until a 2019 overhaul.
               | By that time they were competing with a ~45 year old
               | USSR-designed engine, the Klimov RD-33.
               | 
               | I full well expect that China is interested in producing
               | silicon at-cost for the defense industry. It remains to
               | be seen if they even have competitive designs though.
               | Their premier domestic ISA, LoongArch, is based on
               | 40-year-old MIPS architecture design. Cut off from
               | international designs, it's not really clear how strong
               | China's engineering chops are.
        
               | sangnoir wrote:
               | > Cut off from international designs, it's not really
               | clear how strong China's engineering chops are.
               | 
               | CATL, DJI, Douyin & engineering post-grad programs all
               | over the US suggest the answer is "very strong."
               | Underestimating China is not good for anyone wishing to
               | remain competitive
        
             | maxglute wrote:
             | Enormous PRC indigenous turbo jet efforts progress exploded
             | in last 10-15 years coincides with results of tertiary
             | education reforms producing roughly OECD STEM talent
             | combined. The problem post sanctions was there was a lot of
             | work with not a lot of talent, it took time to build up
             | talent generation engines, now PRC on trend to becoming the
             | only country with enough semi talent for entire domestic
             | semi supply chain - every other semi player projected to
             | have 10k-100k+ talent shortage in short/medium term in the
             | segments they specialize in. The real competition is
             | whether a fragmented "western" semi ecosystem can
             | ultimately compete with an integrated PRC one.
        
       | alephnerd wrote:
       | The actual paper [0]
       | 
       | The yield rate is unimpressive (100 wafers/hr) compared to
       | existing ASML EUV lithography machines (170-200/hr) or even DUV
       | lithography (300/hr).
       | 
       | [0] - https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.11717
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | The yield rate by itself is not very relevant.
         | 
         | It also matters which are the energy and materials consumption,
         | the occupied floor area and the acquisition and maintenance
         | prices associated with that yield.
         | 
         | When all those are small enough, it may be worthwhile to
         | replace a big and expensive fast machine with many smaller and
         | cheaper slow machines.
        
           | alephnerd wrote:
           | Fair point!
           | 
           | That said, 10% reduction in power is decent along with the
           | reduction in mirrors, but it would still take some effort for
           | an attempt like this to be cost competitive compared to
           | licensing from ASML.
        
             | mlyle wrote:
             | 90% reduction in power.
        
             | adrian_b wrote:
             | As another poster has already said, the power is reduced 10
             | times, not by 10%.
             | 
             | At such a power reduction, it should be possible to use a
             | much smaller and cheaper EUV source, allowing the use of
             | multiple lithography systems, or increase a lot the
             | throughput achievable with the current EUV sources.
             | 
             | I hope that they have modeled correctly the losses in the
             | mirrors. Here the incidence angle of the EUV light on the
             | mirrors is much closer to a right angle than in the ASML
             | system. It is likely that this increases the absorption in
             | the mirror in comparison with a mirror on which the light
             | falls at an angle far from perpendicular, as used by ASML.
             | 
             | EDIT:
             | 
             | Unfortunately this paper might be a hoax.
             | 
             | I have read the 2013 paper that they give as reference [2]
             | and as the basis of the claim for the 10 times reduction in
             | power losses.
             | 
             | There the losses in the mirror are given only for incidence
             | angles no greater than 21 degrees, very far from a
             | perpendicular incidence. Moreover the data imply that at
             | higher incidence angles the losses increase a lot.
             | 
             | Therefore the system with 4 mirrors at high incidence
             | angles will have much higher losses than a system with 10
             | mirrors at low incidence angles, unless better mirror
             | materials were discovered in the future.
             | 
             | So ASML must have analyzed this simple system and dismissed
             | it as impossible to make with the known materials.
        
               | alephnerd wrote:
               | > Unfortunately this paper might be a hoax
               | 
               | Not necessarily. It might just have performed at this
               | peak capacity in ideal lab conditions.
               | 
               | This would need to be reproduced, but like you pointed
               | out ASML and Zeiss most likely tested this configuration
               | out at some point in the last 25 years.
               | 
               | That said, the English is very off on this paper - I did
               | a re-read and it looks like they're proposing that they
               | were able to cut the power down to 20W from 200W
        
               | adrian_b wrote:
               | Their reference numbered [1] is a more recent book from
               | 2020.
               | 
               | In this book it is said even if EUV mirrors have
               | typically very poor reflectance at high incidence angles,
               | it has become possible to make mirrors with a 60% to 70%
               | reflectance even for high incidence angles (without
               | specifying how high).
               | 
               | They have computed their power advantage using the 65%
               | value which is a middle value between those from the
               | book, so it is OK.
               | 
               | However they have used the same value for the ASML
               | mirrors, which use low incidence angles, so they may have
               | a higher reflectance.
               | 
               | So according to the book, their system should be feasible
               | nowadays, but the actual improvement in light losses is
               | unknown, because the losses in each mirror depend heavily
               | on both the mirror construction and the light incidence
               | angle, which are not taken into consideration in the
               | paper.
        
         | coliveira wrote:
         | For a new technology, that is not important. Yield rate will
         | improve as more engineering is applied by these companies.
        
       | codewiz wrote:
       | "This was made possible by carefully rethinking the aberration
       | correction theory of optics."
       | 
       | Can someone explain how they carefully rethought the theory to
       | reduce the number of mirrors from more than 6 to just 2 (or 4)?
        
         | DarkSucker wrote:
         | The new design design uses on axis mirrors to image the
         | photomask onto the wafer, and on axis mirror systems are far
         | easier to design and fabricate compared to zig zag (off axis)
         | systems. I've never designed an EUV system, and I guess that
         | Shintake's team had to solve some materials or optical coating
         | technology issues that allowed them to consider the simpler on
         | axis design. Having worked on zig zag and on axis designs in
         | the IR and VIS range, I can say that Shintake's design will be
         | much (orders of magnitude?) easier to align and assemble.
        
       | edgineer wrote:
       | >7nm and smaller
       | 
       | Ugh. The process naming which has nothing to do with size anymore
       | still confuses people.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Anyone that wants to short ASML out the door on Monday, please
       | reconsider. It will take 10-15 years to make a machine like ASMLs
       | from end to end.
        
         | evrimoztamur wrote:
         | Also consider that this article is from 7 Aug, with Canon in
         | particular showing good post-crisis recovery.
        
       | SMAAART wrote:
       | Ouch! Time to liquidate my ASML position!
        
         | jensC wrote:
         | Maybe it is a good idea to wait and see how the market
         | envolves. I guess ASML has a few more years to be the leader.
        
       | graycat wrote:
       | Recall that early on in such chip making IBM skipped blue, UV,
       | EUV and built a cyclotron to generate X-rays.
        
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