logoalt Hacker News

htrplast Thursday at 10:20 PM2 repliesview on HN

> even if they use older machines and run longer exposure times

How do longer exposure times and older machines enable 2nm process nodes?


Replies

bgnnyesterday at 8:27 AM

They can do 7nm and 5nm. Multiple patterning basically. I don't know when it doesn't scale anymore. Moat likely 4x patterning is the max you want to do.

CamperBob2last Thursday at 11:15 PM

If you didn't care about exposure time, you could build 2nm chips with brute-force electron beam lithography. But the limited throughput confines EBL to research and very low-volume applications. ASML's EUV-based processes are what permit industrial-level scaling, ultimately because parallel beams of electrons repel each other while parallel beams of photons don't.

I don't personally understand why suitable EUV light sources are so hard to build, but evidently, they are. It sounds like a big deal if China is catching up in that area.