Computer chips power the current AI revolution and the most modern chips have 5 nm or even 3 nm process nodes, currently the only way to produce them is by using lithography machines made by the Dutch company ASML, there is no other source. To make such chips ALML needed an Extreme Ultraviolet Light source (EUV) of at least 250 watts, and it's not easy to do that in a way that makes economic sense. After decades of research they found a way to vaporize tiny droplets of molten Tin which produce light with a wavelength of 13.5 nm (which is really soft X-ray not ultraviolet, but ASML thought that calling it X-rays might scare off customers). The ASML monopoly has put China in a difficult position because sanctions forbid ASML from sending any of their most advanced machines to China, and sanctions also forbid China from importing modern chips from outside the country. But there is another way to make 13.5 nm light and it could make a beam of 1000 watts and maybe even more, a Free Electron Laser (FEL). and there is a report that is exactly what China intends to do.
There are advantages over ASML's method, a FEL is more efficient and so uses less electricity and the beam is much brighter, also you don't have to worry about vaporized Tin contaminating your optics. The trouble is a FEL would be about 4 times as expensive as ASML's entire $150 million machine, and that's just the light source. You need more than just a EUV light, among many other things you need new high tech photoresists made by Tokyo Electron and the American company Applied Materials, and neither Japan nor the US will sell China any. You also need mirrors, ASML uses mirrors made by the German company Zeiss which are the most precisely made objects that human beings have ever machined, and Zeiss is not allowed to sell optics that precise to China. So it will be years before China's plans come to fruition if it ever does, even the Chinese researcher in charge of the project admit that "*There is still a long way to go before our independent development of EUV lithography machines, but EUV light sources give us an alternative to the sanctioned technology*". The following is a good video explaining the potential a Free Electron L aser has for chip manufacturing: EUV Lithography. But With a Free Electron Laser <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0igQuerc3J0> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> nlm -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv25ABwo6sNdawFedyY9%3DpN0kB8NSpXOwXr%2Bo%2BYACSpRbQ%40mail.gmail.com.
