EUV’s Most Difficult Challenge

ASML and its partners had to overcome many challenges in order to make EUV lithography a reality.

For instance, in a previous video I talked about the EUV light source and its double-shot technique. But while challenging, that had not been considered one of EUV's dealbreaking issues.

A greater struggle was how to achieve a zero defect rate for the EUV photomask, or reticle. I will use the two terms interchangeably here.

The EUV reticle contains the chip design. Any defects on the reticle larger than a certain size will show up on the printed wafers themselves. So in order for it to work, it must be truly perfect.

In this video, we look at how ASML managed to overcome this ultra-critical aspect of the technology.

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[herobrineharry]

11:22 “Graphene, a carbon-based nanomaterial that can do everything except leave the laboratory.” Nature and Science should put that up on their paper submitting system

[claysweetser]

Mirror, mirror in the machine, which of you is perfect and clean?

[poilkjmnb]

1st time hearing 'ma fan' mentioned in an actual technical context

[synergy]

Love these educational presentations that are so straight forward and all the visuals are relevant. Not some guy in the camera half the time just waving their hands around pointlessly while reading a teleprompter with occasional graphics in the background.

[caiocc]

"Graphene, a material that can do everything except leave the laboratory"
Oof

[simontemplar]

I used to work in a semiconductor FAB. The technology now is considerably more advanced than rocket science and has been for decades. But as pointed out here it has become a trudge from one generation to the next involving huge teams of scientists and engineers. If you want to be involved in some real breakthrough that changes the world and still use the most advanced technology possible I would go into the bio sciences. The last century was the one of the semiconductor chip and the computer, this century will be about modified biology.

[davidgunther]

It's awesome that the pelicle is made from CNTs. That feels like a good use of their properties.

[punditgi]

Another excellent video as always.
Side note: Still better to use micrometre than the obsolete micron. Glad to see you switched later in the video. Thanks! 😃

[brianfong]

12:13 Mafun (cantonese) = slang term for troublesome, hard, difficult
So the equivalent english slang = pain in the ass
Note: I do not speak mandarin, only a rare old dialect of cantonese that no hong konger would understand.
I can't read or write in Chinese.

[geoemm]

Bruker also makes a femto pulse laser based photo mask repair tool. It's very fast.

[anonymous.youtuber]

The perseverance in itself is extremely fascinating. Let alone the technology of course. What a beautiful story. ❤️

[PetsoKamagaya]

Lasertec stock has gone through the roof since 2008. Dang it I missed it. Anyway, I can tell you that shipping the blanks and masks without a pellicle was a total ma fa. I was at Entegris when ASML was doing all that testing at SEMATECH and Selete. But, it was a lot of fun.

[TheZeeray]

i love your videos so much, i look forward to each upload

[I.B._Pickins]

Could you do a video on the filtration systems for the clean rooms, with info on the bunny suits (fabric materials, laundering protocols?) and the De-ionized pure water filtration, including the infrastructure within the Fab buildings, and the prerequisites to enter into clean rooms, etc... Some extra info on the mobile filtration systems during the transport of the EUV machines and reticles, and maybe even how and where the reticles are stored once they reach their destination and are not in use

[nocomment]

watching this i am reminded how fragile our advanced soceities are. How many people have the working knowledge to build and use the machines our technology is based on.
A large disruption might be enought to throw us back decades.

[wmopp]

10:10 for the math to make sense, it has to be 81% of the radiation that is reflected (loosing 10% per pass-through)
otherwise we would loose 90% on the first pass-through and another 9% on the second (making the output 1% of the incoming radiation)

[barnmaddo]

I think 10:10 is a typo. Should be a 10% reduction in power each time, for a combined 1-0.9*0.9 = 19% reduction in power, or 81% efficiency.

[MostlyPennyCat]

That is a "princess and the pea" defect!

[Redsson]

ASML’s achievements have been remarkable. But they did not do it alone. Many companies contributed. This includes Billions of $ that some of their eventual customers such as Intel invested in ASML.

[EarthB]

KLA's Teron 6xx tools are worth a mention here.