From: bill.sloman@ieee.org   
      
   On 6/02/2026 10:41 pm, john larkin wrote:   
   > On Fri, 6 Feb 2026 18:30:13 +1100, Bill Sloman    
   > wrote:   
   >   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > I have talked to some of the people trying to do it. They envision   
   > their source feeding multiple fabs.   
   >   
   >> 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.   
   >   
   > It might be a square mile of gear and cost $100B and make a LOT of   
   > EUV. It would make sense to have one and plop a bunch of fabs around   
   > it. Sell the EUV.   
      
   You haven't got a clue how big it might have to be. It might equally fit   
   on a tabletop.   
      
   > We did several subsystems for the Jlabs CEBAF accelerator. It's a big   
   > deal. Lots of liquid helium.   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_National_Accelerator_Facility   
      
   It's also pretty old, going back to 1984.   
      
   > A tin droplet (we worked on that too) is an incoherent source that   
   > sprays EUV (and tin) in all directions.   
      
   Of course it does. It depends on getting one tin droplet very hot indeed   
   - much hotter than the surface of the sun - so that the thermal emission   
   from that blob pf plasma includes a useful amount of EUV.   
      
   Electron beams and wigglers make a lot more sense, but they don't emit   
   enough photons - or at least not so far.   
      
   --   
   Bill Sloman, Sydney   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)