The finest layers of today's chips are printed with light so short that air swallows it. Make that light by blasting tin with a laser, bounce it off mirrors built atom by atom, and print lines 13 nanometers wide. Then meet the machine that does it.
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The mirror, imaging and heat numbers are calculated live from real physics, and every figure is sourced. The inside of the machine is not drawn to scale.
How this page works: the mirror reflectance is calculated live from the optical constants of molybdenum and silicon, with interface roughness, using the standard multilayer reflection method. The printed lines come from an Abbe imaging calculation of equal lines and spaces under dipole lighting, and the overlay drift uses silicon's measured thermal expansion. The droplet game is a simplified, slowed-down model: only its best result (6%, reached in ASML's tests) is a real figure. Inside, the machine is not drawn to scale.
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