The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source

EUV lithography is interesting. You drop a microscopic droplet of tin. You then aim and shoot it not once, but twice with a laser so it produces the correct wavelength. Then you do this with 100% reliability thousands of times per second all day, every day for years. The problem doing this with fusion seems to be money. Their "big" grant of 600M wouldn't even buy a handful of those machines and wouldn't come close to the many billions it has cost in the past 30+ years of research to reach the point where they are finally viable (it had been "a few months away" ever since the early 2000s). This video from Asianometry on EUV light sources is well worth the watch. It's pretty incredible. [this video]

Cant answer the question and my knowledge is only from 'one interested' but from how long (~20 years) it took to build the current EUV source and how complicated the alternatives look this is for sure no easy feat. Can recommend [1] as the title say about the light source. Very interesting even for a non professional (and [2] as on high level overview of the machine and [3] as longer documentation inside ASML). [1] [this video] "The Extreme Engineering of ASML’s EUV Light Source" [2] [link] "The Extreme Physics Pushing Moore’s Law to the Next Level" [3] [link] "ASML's Secret: An exclusive view from inside the global semiconductor giant"

The machines are made by other companies. Lithography is the most expensive now and its made by ASML in Netherlands is the only solution for EUV lithography. But there are many steps in manufacturing and a machine for each. The major equipment manufactures are spread across US, Europe and Japan. In the US the three big equipment manufacturers are Applied Materials and Lam Research and KLA. The costs are probably driven by extreme engineering requirements (temperature, pressure, corrosive chemicals, low contamination) and R&D costs to meet these requirements. The production volumes are not high either. Its not like they are building millions of these machines. Asianometry on YouTube is a good source for this kind of topic. [this video]

There's a lot of expertise with lithography around the world too (companies like Canon build lithography machines), but we're not talking the usual levels of it. The EUV lasers ASML/TRUMPF builds don't even work the same way other "conventional" lasers would[1]. You physically can't get there by incrementally improving some existing process. Now I don't know how ZEISS makes mirrors that blown up to the size of a country would have imperfections smaller than a human hair, but I'm pretty sure it's no small feat either. These companies invested decades and untold sums into this when few other companies even had incentive to attempt it themselves. Sure, other companies could eventually replace them, but you're not closing a 2-decade technology gap in an afternoon. [1] It's a bit insane, really. Vaporizing falling droplets of tin with two laser pulses 100,000 times a second to get just the right wavelength? Here's a good video: [this video]

Link seemingly should be to gwern's comment? [link] > TSMC fabbing only the start (!), now all ASML customer support† is gone (!!) not just EUV machines, on top of which all the American-citizen employees (a nontrivial fraction due to education/birth abroad) have halted work literally overnight (!!!), and overall what sounds like the collapse of Chinese semiconductors amidst a Chinese economy already showing serious signs of distress and little capacity to keep an industry on life-support indefinitely as they scramble to survive - It keeps going & going ... !!!! I am not so doom & gloom, largely because I see China as literally the only nation in the world that has the willpower, top down comprehension/drive, and scale to sometimes buckle down & drive huge vast tasks that are necessary, and computing is obviously a top necessity. They have very nearby friends(-ish) facing very new sanctions who are having lots of problems having been cut off already, which is a very modern development & hugely emphasizes the criticalness. But they are not stupid and already understand this existential risk enormously. (And they understand that their political honor-spat for geo-control of nearby areas will probably not ever secure this asset- close though it may be- but only destabilize their access, necessitating internal development.) It's a huge challenge for China: the challenges are huge, there's so few friends, there's tons of other economic peril afoot already. It's hard enough. And co

ASML is so interesting. Its like sci-fi that one firm in the Netherlands knows how to make the most complicated machine ever made, and no one else can do it. And it is arguably the most complicated machine ever made. 50,000 times a second, the EUV lithography machine hits a 25 micron drop of molten tin that is moving at 70 meters per second with two co-ordinated lasers, the first hit to change the shape of the drop of tin in exactly the right way, the second hit to vaporise it, creating Extreme Ultraviolet Light at the right wavelength to etch chip designs onto silicon at "5nm process" sizes. Some labs can cobble together something similar as a proof of concept, but not well enough to make it feasible for mass production of chips. Video about the light souce - [this video] No one else in the world is able to make these machines. If you buy one it costs $150m and gets shipped to you in forty containers on specially adapted planes. Very few firms have the resources/know how to even run the machines - which is what makes TSMC so important.