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Then, in 2017, ASML unveiled its production-ready EUV machine, which uses light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers. “It’s a very difficult technology-in terms of complexity it’s probably in the Manhattan Project category,” says Sam Sivakumar, Intel’s director of lithography. It takes four 747s to ship one to a customer. The final machine, assembled at ASML’s headquarters in the Netherlands, is the size of a small bus and filled with 100,000 tiny, coordinated mechanisms, including a system that generates a specific wavelength of high-energy ultraviolet light by blasting molten drops of tin with a laser 50,000 times a second. That level of precision is crucial if you’re Intel or TSMC and want to manufacture the world’s fastest cutting-edge computer processors. It’s a coveted device, with models costing as much as $180 million, that is used in making microchip features as tiny as 13 nanometers at a rapid clip. I’m in Wilton, Connecticut, in a clean room of the Dutch company ASML, which makes the world’s most sophisticated machine for lithography-a crucial process used to create the transistors, wires, and other essential components of microchips. “I’m not touching! I’m not touching!” Whelan says, laughing.
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“These will be placed together to microns of precision,” Whelan tells me, gesturing at the apparatus.Ī nearby technician worries he’s too close, and yelps: Back up! Over the next 24 hours, as the glue solidifies, workers will neurotically monitor the position of the glass and metal to make sure they fuse together just so. Both metal and glass are eerily smooth, having been polished for weeks to remove minute imperfections. Whelan’s team is gluing it to a large, coffee-table-size piece of aluminum. Patrick Whelan peers through the faceplate of his clean-room bunny suit to see how things are going.īefore him is a gleaming chunk of glass, roughly the size of a toaster oven, that is carved with so many scooped-out sections to reduce its weight that it looks like an alien totem.