Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
economist.com
Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
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Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#2Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#3So they basically want to use synchrotron?
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#4I was hoping to see table top particle accelerators like those at UCLA were progressing into something usable for lithography. Which makes me wonder, why not use electrons instead of light?
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#5I was hoping to see table top particle accelerators like those at UCLA were progressing into something usable for lithography. Which makes me wonder, why not use electrons instead of light?
From my non expert understanding, we already do kinda. The masks used for photolithography are made using an electron beam, allowing for a much greater resolution than what the underlying photolithography allows. But this is far too slow for large scale production.
Scanning an electron beam, repeatedly over an entire waffer would take forever. So instead we do it once, to make the mask, and that mask is then used over and over to expose the waffer.
This is a bit little injection molding: the mold is very expensive and made with a far better manufacturing process than the plastic pieces that it will eventually produce, but this is the price to pay for high volumes and low costs.
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#6I was hoping to see table top particle accelerators like those at UCLA were progressing into something usable for lithography. Which makes me wonder, why not use electrons instead of light?
It might be as simple as the fact that anything the electrons hit will pick up a huge electric charge. Now you've got ESD problems from hell, not to mention unwanted X-ray generation.
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#7So they basically want to use synchrotron?
Hooked up to a free electron laser
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-electron_laser
or some similar kind of device that turns the momentum of electrons into light. I'm a little surprised that they didn't try something like a FEL first instead of that terribly problematic device that uses highly inefficient lasers to blow up tin droplets, itself a high-loss process that produces contamination and resulted in years of delay developing materials for
https://www.asml.com/en/news/stories/2022/the-euv-pellicle-i...
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#8[flagged]
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#9I was hoping to see table top particle accelerators like those at UCLA were progressing into something usable for lithography. Which makes me wonder, why not use electrons instead of light?
From my non expert understanding, we already do kinda. The masks used for photolithography are made using an electron beam, allowing for a much greater resolution than what the underlying photolithography allows. But this is far too slow for large scale production. Scanning an electron beam, repeatedly over an entire waffer would take forever. So instead we do it once, to make the mask, and that mask is then used ove…
Adding to this, from what I’ve read electron beam is too slow for the required throughput. The ASML EUV machine can etch something like 170 wafers per hour. Using an electron beam would be far too slow for 2-3 wafers per minute.
Re: Want even tinier chips? Use a particle accelerator
#10I was hoping to see table top particle accelerators like those at UCLA were progressing into something usable for lithography. Which makes me wonder, why not use electrons instead of light?
It might be as simple as the fact that anything the electrons hit will pick up a huge electric charge. Now you've got ESD problems from hell, not to mention unwanted X-ray generation.
you can use an anti-charging layer for e-beam litho, that's not such a big deal. E-beam litho is just very slow. There are lithography techniques that use synchrotron sources like LIGA.