The EXTREME science of making microchips

Thanks to Merck for sponsoring this video as part of their #alwayscurious initiative!

*Chapters*

00:00 Introduction
01:20 How microchips are made
04:13 Moore’s law
06:51 We gonna need a smaller light!
08:26 How to make extreme ultraviolet
11:07 What can we do now?!
14:34 Chips that build themselves

*Sources and further reading*

*Credits*

EUV lithography machine animations copyright ASML
Chip manufacture images copyright Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
Thanks to Tran Nguyen for her help with this video

*And finally…*

[TheKdcool]

This is the greatest explanation of EUV i've ever seen. You did really great 🎉

[ruairihair]

It's not often I watch a channels entire back catalogue of videos but these are so great :)

[sapperlott]

You skipped over the part where they used interference patterns to create structures smaller than the wavelength of light used

[georgehornsby]

Great explainer graphics as always, now I feel more sympathetic after being stuck on 14nm with ever increasing TDPs for half a decade! Didn't realise how much of a problem the UV light wavelength was during fabrication as most of the tech coverage for laypeople like me emphasises the issues with transistor size and electrons.

[michaelkalin]

wow, fantastic content here! just found you from rohin's podcast. your videos are very comprehensive and engaging, keep up the great work!

[MobMentality]

Amazing video! Thanks for all the hard work you’re doing 😃

[avt_astro]

Brilliant video Andrew! Very Fascinating explanation!

[riverbender]

Thank you for a wonderfully-explained report.

[RaphaelChaleil]

I think in the early nineties, there were attempt to combine rhodopsin and lasers as logic gates to replace semi-conductors, I don't know whether the idea went further than scribbles on the back of an envelope.

[ayenpatel]

please make videos on quantum mechanics, how to approach, your expereince and etc

[GreenKillafish]

Great Video! Very interesting.
Also great sponsor. I loved working at Merck in Darmstadt. First time I have seen them sponsoring a YouTube video.

[lonwaslien]

Any possibility subatomic particle chips? Your presentation was fascinating Andrew.

[leftysheppey]

Hedgehog stickers. You definitely got them from school in a Stop, Look, Listen assembly 😂

[thesoundofbandinstrumental]

The whole self assembly idea makes me wonder: solids don’t usually mix with each other, so I assume they will be liquids, or solid + liquids and that just feels like growing something, with extra steps. What a time to be alive, needing to “grow” microchips to make them smaller.

[airb]

Best EUV machines are from asml, powered by special optics from ZEISS

[jdoggforever]

Slightly jealous you got a computer as early as 1993… I had to wait another four years! But remember the 486 fondly from a friend’s house (well, remember Doom on it fondly)

[betzib]

Are you sure this isn't a Dean Koontz novel?

[scaredyfish]

Why so many mirrors if they’re that bad for the power?

[AidanRatnage]

I thought videos were 24FPS and only video games were 60FPS (or more commonly 30, these days).
Why is it so important to keep Moore's Law going?

[tarik]

fastest ever running cpu was an Intel i9 13900k 9008.82 MHz
before that it was AMD FX‑8370 @ 8722.8MHz
and today they even run at 5ghz easily