More Powerful Computer Chips

A University of Central Florida research team has made a substantial inroad toward establishing extreme ultraviolet light (EUV) as a primary power source for manufacturing the next generation of computer chips.The team, led by Martin Richardson, university trustee chair and UCF's Northrop Grumman professor of X-Ray optics, successfully shown for the first time an EUV light source with 30 times the power of prior recorded attempts enough to power the stepper machines used to reproduce detailed circuitry images onto computer chips.The successful use of EUV light for this purpose marks a milestone in an industry-wide effort to create the most efficient and cost-effective power source for the next generation of chip production. Chips are now manufactured using longer-wavelength ultraviolet light sources.The UCF breakthrough came as a result of a collaboration between Richardson and Powerlase Ltd., a company based in England. The company provided UCF with a powerful Starlase laser to combine with the specialized laser plasma source technology that the UCF team has developed. The unique technology combines the high conversion of laser light to EUV and effectively eliminates the neutral and charged particles that are linked to existing EUV plasma sources. If allowed to stream freely away from the source, those particles can harm the expensive optics used in EUV steppers.........