Intel Installs First EUV Fabrication Tool Capable Of Emitting Lasers Hotter Than The Sun

Chip major Intel has announced that it has completed the assembly of the world's first commercial high numerical aperture (NA) extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) scanner. The device dramatically improves the resolution and feature scaling of next-generation chips by changing the optical design used to project printed images onto silicon wafers.
The 150-ton lithography equipment, which has been assembled at Intel's D1X research facility in Hillsboro, is currently undergoing calibration steps. It enables chipmakers to etch tiny patterns on silicon wafers to create miniature circuits for computer chips.
Dutch firm ASML is the only company in the world that makes the tool. Intel's model is one of only two in the world.
Workers in Intel's factories are known for their white coloring, and are usually dressed head-to-toe in a "Bunny Suit" (Bunny Suit). The Bunny Suit refers to a "cleanroom suit," which is standard equipment for workers in cleanrooms and prevents particles from skin, hair, or clothing from damaging microscopic features on computer chips.
At Intel's massive research facility in Hillsboro, another accessory has recently become commonplace: helmets.
Workers at the Intel plant spent months assembling a massive manufacturing tool that weighs 150 metric tons. It is the most advanced lithography tool in existence, one of only two in the world, and is made by the Dutch company ASML.
The massive device is called the High Numerical Aperture (NA) EUV Fabrication Tool. It's the size of a double-decker bus in a factory, but what you see is only part of the whole. The tool actually extends above the ceiling and below the floor.
From there, the EUV (Extreme Ultraviolet) tool fires a laser at tiny droplets of tin, 50,000 times per second, in a burst of energy 40 times hotter than the surface of the sun. The resulting collision creates a shadow of ultraviolet light that does not occur naturally on Earth.
This very large production tool thus produces something very small: light with a wavelength of only a few billionths of a meter. These tiny waves of light allow semiconductor manufacturers to etch smaller resolutions than ever before on computer chips, paving the way for generations of more powerful computers.
"We're innovating at the cutting edge of physics," said Jeff Birdsall, an Intel vice president who helps lead the company's technology development.
Intel is known to be tight-lipped about its manufacturing technology. This time it showed off its new toy at a sales event. This month, the company invited journalists - and even a BBC news crew - into its Hillsboro plant to sell the public and potential customers on Intel's transformation story, showing off a manufacturing tool that its competitors don't yet have.
Intel's technology has been seriously off track over the past decade, in part because the company was slow to adopt the first EUV tools in its plants. That allowed competitors in Asia to get far ahead, while Intel had to pay a steep price to catch up.
Intel has now committed to investing $100 billion in state-of-the-art factories around the world. That includes $36 billion to upgrade the Hillsboro complex, where Intel is developing a new generation of chip technology, or what Intel calls new process nodes.
The 10,000 engineers and technicians at Intel's Oregon research facility are putting that money to work, and new lithography tools are at the center of that effort. Each EUV machine costs close to $400 million, and Intel will need many of them to equip its Oregon plant and others spread around the world.
Intel has months of work ahead of it on the new lithography tool, testing its capabilities and learning how to use it. The first commercial chips using the more advanced technology won't be available for at least two years.