The mind-blowing tech behind microchip manufacturing. Lasers fire 50,000 times per second at tin droplets moving 100 m/s, creating extreme ultraviolet light plasma — and that’s just one step inside ASML’s chip-making machine.

Each ASML extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine contains over 100,000 individual parts, costs around $400 million, and is the most complex device ever built by humans even more intricate than a space shuttle. The mirrors inside (made by Zeiss in Germany) are so smooth that if they were the size of the United States, the tallest bump would be only 1 millimeter high. And that tin-droplet laser trick? It produces light with a wavelength of 13.5 nanometers so short that ordinary glass would absorb it, meaning the entire system must operate in a vacuum with atomic precision alignment. Every microchip in your phone, computer, or AI server ultimately owes its existence to these laser-fired droplets of molten tin.

Source:

Yep, I used to work for them.

I’m convinced this is alien technology. 🤷🏻‍♂️

ASML’s EUV machines use lasers firing 50,000× per second at tin droplets to create plasma that etches nanometer scale circuits each chip involves billions of precise operations, showing just how extreme semiconductor manufacturing really is

The level of precision here is astounding. Also... a single point of failure.

Wow 😳👍🏽

Wow

How they can create 3nm o less with UV light 13nm ? Or there are new lasers from 2nm? @grok

What

Mindblowing

Truly amazing

nuts

ASML, c’est du futur en barre ! Si seulement on pouvait lâcher les sudoku administratifs en France et passer aux lasers 😅🤖.

@elonmusk from first principles should this be this complicated? @grok

@grok Curious who actually came up with the design of EUV machine?

Watch this great documentary if you want to know how ASML works.

wild to think this powers AI