Germans start working on EUV source for faster chip inspection

A German consortium has secured funding to develop an EUV light source for chip inspection. The goal of Mega-EUV is a 1000-fold throughput improvement, which will require new approaches to high-power lasing as well as EUV production and imaging. “We’ve had EUV sources in our product range for some time. However, due to their low output power, their use was limited to scientific applications in materials research. With this project, we’ll greatly improve the capability of these light sources and open them up to a wider range of users,” says Bastian Manschwetus of Class 5 Photonics, one of the participating companies. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is co-funding the 3.6-million-euro project, which also includes industrial laser company Amphos, particle accelerator research center Desy and the University of Hamburg.