From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 6/02/2026 6:36 am, john larkin wrote:   
   > On Thu, 5 Feb 2026 16:50:47 +1100, Bill Sloman    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >> On 5/02/2026 8:21 am, john larkin wrote:   
   >>> On Wed, 4 Feb 2026 21:31:59 +0100, Gerhard Hoffmann    
   >>> wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>>> Am 04.02.26 um 15:35 schrieb Bill Sloman:   
   >>>>>   
   >>>>> Blue LED's were a Japanese invention. American tend to be unaware of   
   this.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> Siemens Silicon Carbide   
   >>>>   
   >>>>>>> You may have heard about ASML:   
   >>>>>>> The Netherlands   
   >>>>>>   
   >>>>>> They bought Cymer, in San Diego, to get the EUV technology. My company   
   >>>>>> designed the first gen tin droplet electronics.   
   >>>>   
   >>>> ... and Carl Zeiss extended UV optics   
   >>>>   
   >>>   
   >>> Trumph makes the gigantic CO2 lasers that nuke the tin droplets.   
   >>>   
   >>> It's a very messy, dirty process. Tin splatters everywhere.   
   >>>   
   >>> Cymer used flowing hydrogen to capture the tin before it trashed all   
   >>> the optics. GigaPhoton tried to use superconductive magnets somehow,   
   >>> but gave up.   
   >>>   
   >>> There must be a better way to do nm lithography. Several people are   
   >>> trying.   
   >>   
   >> People have been working on doing lithography better since we first   
   >> started making integrated circuits. There's not a lot of low-hanging   
   >> fruit left to pluck, but we will keep trying.   
   >   
   > Xlight among others are trying to use FELs to make EUV. It looks   
   > difficult.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-electron_laser   
      
   > I can imagine one such source in the entire world, selling EUV beams   
   > to a bunch of nearby fabs.   
      
   Your imagination isn't backed up by much real-world information. There   
   seem to be quite a few free electron lasers around the world at the   
   moment. So far they are just expensive research tools, so there aren't   
   all that many.   
      
   Once somebody works out how to make one that is good enough to use as a   
   light source for EUV lithography, people will copy it repeatedly.   
      
   Of course, there may be other ways of doing sub-micron lithography - I   
   worked on a shaped beam electron beam microfabricator for a while, until   
   the project got too expensive and got cancelled. Bell labs built such a   
   machine and sold five of them to European Semiconductor Structures in   
   Aix-en-Provence, but they only delivered 10% of the promised writing   
   rate and ESS went bust. I only go to hear about that some 15 years later   
   when I ran into the then director of ESS while my wife was being   
   inducted a fellow of the UK royal society, and I got to gossip with him   
   at the ceremony.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)