ASML Holding›ASML Holding› offers Laser-Produced Plasma EUV Source

ASML's LPP source operates within the company's established NXE and EXE scanner platforms. The current product catalog connects its 13.5-nanometer illumination to high-volume manufacturing of advanced Logic and Memory chips.

The NXE:3800E shares a higher-power source with the EXE platform, carrying source development across both scanner families. ASML identifies that component as a contributor to increased productivity in the NXE:3800E.

The LPP source depends on precision delivery of molten tin and repeated laser interactions to create EUV illumination. ASML's development history describes difficulty achieving the power and productivity that chipmakers required before the system could be industrialized.

EUV light is absorbed by air and other materials, requiring the source and optical path to operate in high vacuum. ASML also describes the associated challenges of outgassing, material selection, cleaning and handling within its lithography systems.

Cymer delivered its first production-ready laser-produced plasma EUV source to a scanner manufacturer in 2009. ASML's account of EUV development identifies Cymer's solution as the source it selected, establishing the technological continuity of this offering family.

ASML acquired Cymer in 2013 while developing the source for industrial lithography. Its engineers subsequently reached 250 watts in a source vessel and industrialized the system, enabling a scanner throughput of 125 wafers per hour.

ASML's LPP source generates extreme ultraviolet light by directing two laser pulses at each molten tin droplet. The first pulse changes the droplet's shape, and the second creates the plasma that emits light at 13.5 nanometers.

The source supplies illumination inside ASML's NXE and EXE lithography scanners for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. It forms one subsystem of the complete machine, alongside the optics, vacuum chamber, reticle and wafer-handling equipment.