Hacker News Reader

>EUV Lithography Finally Ready for Chip Manufacturing

I have heard it every year, for the past 10 years

This is the first time I've heard of a 250W 19nm laser. That's a huge step forward.

The article mentions 13.5nm. Is 19nm the wavelength used to blast the tin that re-emits as the the 13.5nm EUV source? Is that where the power is going to result in a few watts at the printing surface?

First question, no, they use CO2 lasers which emit in the um range, not nm. Probably a typo.

Second question, the loss of power is due to two factors: 1) Conversion efficiency of CO2 laser pulse to EUV light pulse. This is in the single digit range as a percentage. 2) Transmission loss of EUV from light source to wafer. EUV mirrors reflect in the ballpark of 50% of the light, and there are many of them inside the scanner, so you have .5 * .5 * .5...

Very true, but according to the article chip makers are actually planning to use it in production this year. And they've actually started ordering more EUV systems, which is another sign it might be for real this time: http://www.electronicdesign.com/embedded-revolution/asml-ord...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com