ASML Makes the Machines that Make the Chips

From the outside it looks like an ordinary corporate building, lots of glass and steel, but this factory in the south of the Netherlands belongs to ASML, and the machines made there are anything but ordinary.


In fact, the technology is so advanced and so much in demand, that ASML has become Europe's most valuable technology firm.


So what is made there?


ASML designs and makes the machines which make computer chips - but not any old computer chips.


ASML machines make the most advanced computer chips and it's the only company in the world with that kind of technology.


This effective monopoly means that exactly how ASML's machines work is subject to some of the most stringent corporate security in the world.


Nevertheless, we were given a tour of its plant, and were guided through the basics.

IMAGE SOURCE,ASMLImage caption,  This illustration shows the complex interior of an ASML 

EUV machine - the extreme ultraviolet light is in purple


Microchips are made by building up complex patterns of transistors, or miniature electrical switches, layer by layer, on a silicon wafer.


They are printed using a lithography system, where light is projected through a blueprint of the pattern of those miniature switches.


The light is then shrunk and focussed using advanced optics and the pattern is etched onto a photosensitive silicon wafer.


That pattern forms the circuitry of a silicon chip, that might end up in a computer, phone or any other electrical device you might care to mention.


The crucial aspect of ASML's most advanced machines is that they can work at tiny scales by generating super fine extreme ultraviolet light - just 13.5 nanometres.  READ MORE...