Everyone wants to take away ASML’s throne. Today ASML has decided that the throne is higher
A team of researchers from ASML They claim to have discovered a way to increase the power of the light source used in their chip production machines. According to their conclusions, this technology would allow chip production to increase by 50% in 2030. Good news for ASML, very bad for its rivals in China and the US. 1,000 watts. Michael Purvis, the ASML engineer who led the research, explained in Reuters that “It’s not a parlor trick or anything like that. We demonstrated for a very short time that it can work. It’s a system that can produce 1000 watts with the same requirements that you might see on a customer.” An almost miraculous process. In its UVE machines ASML needs to create an extremely energetic ultraviolet light. They use a wavelength of only 13.5 nanometers, but to achieve this light the process is exquisitely complex: Microdroplets of molten tin the size of a fraction of a human hair are launched through a vacuum chamber These drops fall one after the other, more than 100,000 times per second A giant carbon dioxide laser shoots at each droplet The impact turns the tin into a very hot gas (plasma) that even exceeds the temperature of the sun. Plasma emits EUV radiation Ultra-precision mirrors manufactured by Zeiss collect that light and direct it toward the chip And it is with that light that the circuits are “drawn” on the silicon wafer with atomic precision Tech drops. What they achieve with the new system is to double the frequency of the tin drops, going to 100,000 per second, which allows more light to be generated. They also use two previous laser pulses instead of one: the first shapes the drop and prepares it. The second converts it into plasma more efficiently. More chips than ever. Currently, the machines UVE photolithography (Extreme UltraViolet) from ASML work with a power of 600 watts. This achievement would allow a 50% increase in the yield or percentage of functional chips obtained from a wafer. It is crucial to turning ASML’s chip production systems into true precision machines. wafers to me. Teun van Gogh, responsible for ASML’s NXE line of EUV machines, indicated in Reuters that the company’s intention is to make it possible for them to use this technology in a much more affordable way. If everything goes as expected, machines that take advantage of this technology will be able to process 330 silicon wafers every hour, instead of the current 220 wafers. The US tries to compete. In the United States, at least two startups, Substrate and xLight, have managed to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to develop machines that compete with those of ASML. Substrate is working in an x-ray based projectwhile xLight —led by Pat Gelsinger and with investment from the US Government— wants to use particle accelerators. And China, of course, too. China takes years trying to create machines like ASML, but so far it doesn’t seem to be succeeding. There is now talk that China has its “Manhattan Project” in this area and it seems to be closer to get your own machine with UVE technology. ASML was already leading. Now it does it even more. In both cases, the reality is clear: today ASML still has no competition. It is the master of the world in this segment, and if you want to manufacture the most advanced chips on the market, you need its machines. This new advance promises to further open the gap with its competitors, who do not have machines that can compete with ASML’s current ones… and who will have even more difficulty having those that can compete with this new advance. The future. Purvis added that this new technique could be improved in the future: “we see a reasonably clear path to 1,500 watts, and there is no fundamental reason why we cannot reach 2,000 watts.” If true, ASML could hold the key to continuing to lead this market for even longer… if rivals fail to turn the tables. And it seems complicated that they do it. Image | ASML In Xataka | Global tension cannot withstand ASML. He is going to build a huge campus equivalent to 50 football fields