General > General Technical Chat
EUV light source - didn't know that :)
filssavi:
--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on November 10, 2020, 12:43:33 pm ---What's stopping them going to Xrays which are even shorter wavelength but relatively easy to generate?
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Designing the optical train and masks for EUV is already extremely difficult ( you can’t use lenses as there is no material transmissive enough to make them with and you need to use only mirrors which is much harder). Doing it for x rays will be nigh on impossible
also x rays have this pesky ability to pass straight through basically almost any material known to man, thus you will need to use mask sets made out of lead(which does not seem he ideal material).
filssavi:
--- Quote from: David Hess on November 10, 2020, 04:09:31 pm ---I wonder why they could not use a synchrotron source. Are they too large to be economical?
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I don’t know for shure, but I suspect the sheer amount of money needed to be sunk into such a project are probably a complete showstopper, not only in term if of building the machine itself, but also into the research of how to run it as a factory while turning a profit
As far as I know most, if not all currently operating synchrotrons are research type facilities, and are operated as such (even if they sell beam time), with running periods alternated with periodic downtime for maintenance that can last for month, this is really incompatible with the requirement to get an ROI in term of few months/years, needed in the foundry business
T3sl4co1l:
--- Quote from: filssavi on November 10, 2020, 10:18:08 pm ---Designing the optical train and masks for EUV is already extremely difficult ( you can’t use lenses as there is no material transmissive enough to make them with and you need to use only mirrors which is much harder). Doing it for x rays will be nigh on impossible
also x rays have this pesky ability to pass straight through basically almost any material known to man, thus you will need to use mask sets made out of lead(which does not seem he ideal material).
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This is all solved problems, if perhaps not on the scale of semiconductor production. Any heavy element will do, tungsten, gold, etc. I suppose gold and platinum would be particularly desirable for their corrosion resistance. The mask is made of a low-Z, rigid material, like silicon carbide. I suppose beryllium would be wonderful, but too difficult to handle (it is still used I think, for certain applications like linear accelerator windows, which are used for food sterilization, medical treatment, etc.).
X-ray optics use grazing incidence and achieve good efficiency. Chandra X-ray Observatory perhaps most famously, but they see use in synchrotron labs and so on as well.
Tim
iteratee:
--- Quote from: T3sl4co1l on November 11, 2020, 07:59:44 am ---X-ray optics use grazing incidence and achieve good efficiency. Chandra X-ray Observatory perhaps most famously, but they see use in synchrotron labs and so on as well.
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I thought they were using the Chandra-like mirrors for EUV. This is the first I've heard of the conventional reflective mirror use. They need dense neutronium mirrors for better smoothness, or a chemical phosphorescence-like effect for dropping the xray energies down to to EUV levels. :)
dmills:
Xray down to EUV is one HELL of a Stokes shift!
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