Ultraviolet Chip Making

Industry and government officials have completed a full scale prototype machine for making computer chips using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light.

This will lead to microprocessors that are tens of times faster than today's most powerful chips and create memory chips with similar increases in storage capacity.

EUV lithography was developed because the current chip-printing technology is expected to reach its physical limits in the next few years.

Current lithography technology is expected to allow manufacturers to eventually print circuits as small as 0.1 micron in width, or 1/1000th the width of a human hair.

EUV lithography technology is being developed to allow semiconductor manufacturers to print circuit lines well below 0.1 micron - down to at least 0.03 µ, extending the current pace of semiconductor innovation at least to the end of this decade.

Processors built using EUV technology are expected to reach speeds of up to 10 GHz in 2005-2006. By comparison, the fastest Pentium 4 processor today is 1.5 GHz.

The prototype machine, called the engineering test stand (ETS), was developed by industry-government collaboration among three US Department of Energy national laboratories and a consortium of semiconductor companies called the EUV LLC. It will be used by LLC partners and lithography tool suppliers during the next year to refine the technology and get it ready to create a prototype commercial machine that meets industry requirements.