[ExI] Nanotechnology

[John Clark]

*There are two different paths that I think could bring on the Singularity,
AI and Nanotechnology, it looks like AI will hit first but nevertheless I
want to talk about Nanotechnology, particularly the top down variety used
by the semiconductor chip industry rather than the bottom up path proposed
by Eric Drexler.  Chipmakers use light to edge patterns onto silicon, the
smaller the wavelength of light the smaller the pattern they can etch.
Until recently  the smallest wavelength of light used was 193 nanometers in
the Deep Ultraviolet range made with a Fluorine Argon laser (visible light
ranges from red at 750 nm to violet at 380 nm). Then the Dutch company ASML
started to sell Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography machines to chip makers
that use 13.5 nm light from vaporized Tin. ASML has a complete monopoly on
these super advanced and super complex machines because they were the only
company willing to take the risk of spending vast amounts of money for well
over a decade to develop them, it's so expensive nobody else is even trying
to make something comparable; and the way their machines work is amazing.*

*The first thing you need to do is make a bright point source of Extreme
Ultraviolet light, nobody has been able to make a laser with a wavelength
that short and synchrotron radiation is not a point source, but when Tin is
vaporized it has a bright spectral line at 13.5 nm, so they decided to use
that.  50 thousand times a second a tiny droplet of molten tin is fired
into the machine at 80 meters a second. Each droplet is then hit twice by
two different lasers, the first laser pulse is low power and comes from a
YAG laser of the type used in eye surgery, it reshapes the tin droplet from
a sphere to a concave sheet, to do this the laser must hit it at exactly
the right instant or the droplet will be at the wrong orientation. The
second laser pulse is far more powerful and is in the 10 mm infrared region
and comes from a 25 kW carbon dioxide laser which is 5 times as powerful as
lasers that are commonly used to cut steel,  this vaporizes the Tin droplet
and produces a flash of 250 watts of 13.5 nanometer light. Without that
first laser pulse that reshapes the Tin droplet the EUV output would be
less than 10 watts. *

*One significant problem they had to overcome was that the vaporized Tin
tended to land on the delicate optical surfaces and degrade their
performance, they eventually solved that problem by introducing a very
small amount of hydrogen into the laser reaction chamber instead of having
a hard vacuum.*

*You can't use any lenses if you're dealing with EUV light (they're really
soft x-rays) because glass, sapphire, diamond or any known substance would
just absorb the light, so your only alternative is to use mirrors instead
and even those are not easy to make. Each machine needs 6 mirrors a meter
wide made with an accuracy of less than a 10^-12 meters ( a thousandth of a
billionth of a meter),  they're the most perfect mirrors human beings have
ever made, and they must be coated with 50 layers of molybdenum and silicon
to reflect light with such a small wavelength, even then each of the six
mirrors only reflect about 70% if the light that falls on them, and that
severely reduces the amount of light you can actually use to etch things,
that's why the point source has to be so bright. *


*Until recently the only EUV machine in the world was ASML's NXD360D. It
costs $160 million, is the size of a school bus weighs about 200 tons and
has a Numerical Aperture of 0.33 (a dimension list number that determines
how much light a lens or mirror can bring to a focus) it can produce a 26
nm pitch (the minimum center-to-center distance between lines that connect
circuit elements), it can make about 160 wafers an hour, after manufacture
each wafer is worth about $17,000. A typical chip fabrication plant will
need several dozen of these machines.*

*The resolution a lithography machine can produce is proportional to
 (light wavelength)/ 2* ( Numerical Aperture) so a mirror (or lens) with a
larger numerical aperture will be able to print finer details onto silicon
than a mirror with a smaller NA because it can focus more of the EUV
light.  ASML's next generation machine is the EXE5000, it uses the same
wavelength of light but increases the NA from 0.33 to 0.55 and can write a
line on silicon with 16 nanometer pitch not 26 with the older machine and
process 220 wafers an hour not 160 like the older NXD360D, it even uses 45%
less electricity. The drawbacks to the new machine are it's even larger,
about twice the size of a railroad locomotive, and it costs 380 million
dollars, and yet everybody is desperate to get one. Apparently Intel wants
one more than anybody else because they had dibs on the very first one that
rolled out of ASML's plant.  *

*ASLM is not allowed to sell its EUV Machines to Russia or China, but that
hasn't hurt the company because even without those markets they're selling
their machines as fast as they can make them, and ASML now has a net worth
two and a half times that of one of its much more famous customers, Intel.*

*John K Clark*
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