WORLD’S MOST COMPLEX MACHINE

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 WORLD’S MOST COMPLEX MACHINE

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• Denying China the machine: In the global technology war between America and China, a particular machine (made by a third country) has suddenly become the focus of attention. The US has successfully blocked sale of that to China!
• What machine: The machine is made by ASML Holding, based in Veldhoven, Holland. Its system uses a different kind of light to define ultrasmall circuitry on chips, packing more performance into the small slices of silicon. The tool, which took decades to develop and was introduced for high-volume manufacturing in 2017, costs more than $150 million. Shipping it to customers requires 40 shipping containers, 20 trucks and three Boeing 747s. The machine is acknowledged as necessary for making the most advanced chips, an ability with geopolitical implications. The Trump administration successfully lobbied the Dutch government to block shipments of such a machine to China in 2019, and Biden too has shown no signs of reversing that stance!
• Bottleneck: ASML’s machine has effectively turned into a chokepoint in the supply chain for chips, which act as the brains of computers and other digital devices. The tool’s three-continent development and production — using expertise and parts from Japan, the United States and Germany — is also a reminder of just how global that supply chain is, providing a reality check for any country that wants to leap ahead in semiconductors by itself. (That includes not only China but the United States, where Congress is debating plans to spend more than $50 billion to reduce reliance on foreign chip manufacturers).
• What if someone wants self-sufficiency: Experts say creating a self-sufficient chip-supply chain would take at least $1 trillion and sharply increase prices for chips and products made with them. It is a wrong and unrealistic goal for any country.
• Amazing story of ASML: A once-obscure company whose market value now exceeds $285 billion, it is “the most important company people have never heard of.” Created in 1984 by electronics giant Philips and another toolmaker, Advanced Semiconductor Materials International, ASML became an independent company and by far the biggest supplier of chip-manufacturing equipment that involves a process called lithography. 

1. Using lithography, manufacturers repeatedly project patterns of chip circuitry onto silicon wafers. The more tiny transistors and other components that can be added to an individual chip, the more powerful it becomes and the more data it can store. The pace of that miniaturization is known as Moore’s Law, named after Gordon Moore, a co-founder of chip giant Intel.
2. In 1997, ASML began studying a shift to using extreme ultraviolet, or EUV, light. Such light has ultrasmall wavelengths that can create much tinier circuitry than is possible with conventional lithography. The company later decided to make machines based on the technology, an effort that has cost $8 billion since the late 1990s.

• Avoid being outdoors: The development process quickly went global. ASML now assembles the advanced machines using mirrors from Germany and hardware developed in San Diego that generates light by blasting tin droplets with a laser. Key chemicals and components come from Japan. 

1. ASML CEO Peter Wennink said a lack of money in the company’s early years had led it to integrate inventions from specialty suppliers, creating what he calls a “collaborative knowledge network” that innovates quickly. 
2. ASML built on other international cooperation. In the early 1980s, researchers in the United States, Japan and Europe began considering the radical shift in light sources. The concept was taken up by a consortium that included Intel and two other U.S. chipmakers, as well as Department of Energy labs.
3. ASML joined in 1999 after more than a year of negotiations, said Martin van den Brink, ASML’s president and chief technology officer. Other partners of the company included the Imec research center in Belgium and another U.S. consortium, Sematech. ASML later attracted big investments from Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to help fund development.

• EUV light: That was made trickier by the quirks of EUV light. Lithography machines usually focus light through lenses to project circuit patterns on wafers. But the small EUV wavelengths are absorbed by glass, so lenses won’t work. Mirrors, another common tool to direct light, have the same problem. That meant the new lithography required mirrors with complex coatings that combined to better reflect the small wavelengths. 

1. So, ASML turned to Zeiss Group, a 175-year-old German optics company and longtime partner. Its contributions included a 2-ton projection system to handle EUV light, with six specially shaped mirrors that are ground, polished and coated over several months in an elaborate robotic process that uses ion beams to remove defects.
2. Generating sufficient light to project images quickly also caused delays. A San Diego company that ASML bought in 2013, eventually improved a system that directs pulses from a high-powered laser to hit droplets of tin 50,000 times a second — once to flatten them and a second time to vaporize them — to create intense light.

• Chip fabrication is an iterative process of material deposition, etching, lithography and other steps
• 193 nm: Wavelength in the far UV range. Currently in standard use for the production of the most advanced chips. See also: DUV, excimer laser and immersion.
• Alignment: Lining up the wafer and the lens in order to make the overlay (see the definition) as small as possible. ASML made a name for itself in the 1980s with an alignment system based on a reference mark, a symbol still visible in the company’s logo.
• Brion: American specialist in optical modelling, acquired by ASML in 2007.
• CD: Critical dimension, the smallest details in an image. One of the key parameters used in describing a lithographic image and its quality.
• Computational lithography: Umbrella term for computer-assisted techniques to improve lithographic performance.
• Double patterning: Also known as DP/MP. A lithographic technique in which a chip layer is built up in two steps because the resolution of the scanner is not sufficient to produce the layer in a single exposure. Economically not the most attractive option for chip makers, but made unavoidable by delays in the development of EUV lithography.
• DUV: Deep ultraviolet, a wavelength range in the far ultraviolet. Chip production uses 248 and 193 nanometres.
• EUV: Extreme ultraviolet, the wavelength range between roughly 100 and 10 nanometres. In chip manufacture, used as an abbreviation for EUV lithography (also abbreviated EUVL), that is, lithography with light at a wavelength of 13.5 nanometres. EUV is expected to be used in production before 2020.
• Excimer laser: Light source for DUV scanners.
• Half-pitch: Half the distance (in nm) between two identical structures on a chip. A measurement of the size of the chip structures imaged onto a chip. See also: node.
• Holistic lithography: A term coined by ASML for an approach in which the design of the chip, the mask, the lithography and the metrology are coordinated to achieve the optimal chip manufacturing process.
• Immersion: Lithography ‘under water’, that is, the introduction of water between the lens and the wafer. Because water has a higher refractive index than air, the resolution is increased. Currently in standard use for the production of the most advanced chips, in combination with 193-nm light.
• LER: Line edge roughness, the jagged structure of the imaged chip structures. Too rough is not good.
• Mask: Also known as photomask. Plate with translucent areas that define the chip pattern. A reticle is a mask that effects a scale reduction.
• Metrology: Umbrella term for various measurement techniques to monitor the lithographic process. The results can be used to make adjustments without having to take the machine offline.
• Moore’s Law: Observation that the number of transistors per integrated circuit on the market doubles about every two years (you can Google more precise formulations). Chips with smaller structures are faster and, because more of them can be placed on a wafer, more economical. The latest generations of chips took longer than two years to develop, though the arrival of EUV may undo this delay.
• NA: Numeric aperture, or lens opening. In part a measure of the quality of the lens. The higher the NA, the more light that contributes to the image, and the sharper the image.
• Node: Designation for a chip’s generation, expressed as a round number. Used to be related to the half-pitch (see above), but currently a marketing term that every chip maker defines differently.
• OPC: Optical proximity correction, a computational lithographic correction technique.
• Overlay: Extent to which successive layers in a chip are displaced relative to one another. Currently on the order of a few nanometres. If the layers don’t fit together properly, the chip won’t work. For obvious reasons, very important in double patterning.
• Pellicle: Membrane that protects the mask. Any nanoscopic debris that lands on this film is far enough away that it won’t be imaged.
• Photo lacquer: Also known as photoresist (or just resist). Photosensitive material onto which the mask pattern is projected.
• Resist: See photo lacquer.
• Reticle: A mask that effects a scale reduction.
• Scanner: Latest generation of exposure equipment, in which the wafer moves under the lens. In the previous generation of equipment, the steppers, the wafers were held in place and the lens column exposed areas of the wafer one step at a time.
• Twinscan: A principle introduced by ASML in which two wafers are constantly being acted on by the scanner: while one is being exposed, the other is being measured.
• Uptime: How long an exposure device can operate continuously without requiring maintenance or breaking down. Very important for ASML’s customers.
• Yieldstar: Standalone metrology tool made by ASML. Measures overlay and focus. Is part of ASML’s holistic lithography suite.
• Wafer: Round disk of very pure crystalline silicon on which chips are made.
• More technicals: The new system also required redesigned components called photomasks, which act like stencils in projecting circuit designs, as well as new chemicals deposited on wafers that generate those images when exposed to light. Japanese companies now supply most of those products. Since ASML introduced its commercial EUV model in 2017, customers have bought about 100 of them. Buyers include Samsung and TSMC, the biggest service producing chips designed by other companies. TSMC uses the tool to make the processors designed by Apple for its latest iPhones. Intel and IBM have said EUV is crucial to their plans. 
• Making money: Dutch restrictions on exporting such machines to China, which have been enforced since 2019, haven’t had much financial impact on ASML since it has a backlog of orders from other countries. But about 15% of the company’s sales come from selling older systems in China. In a final report to Congress and Biden in March, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence proposed extending export controls to some other advanced ASML machines as well. 
• Summary: The group, funded by Congress, seeks to limit artificial intelligence advances with military applications. Many experts argued that since China was already using those machines, blocking additional sales would hurt ASML without much strategic benefit. So does the company.

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