XLight gets federal boost for EUV source

The US Department of Commerce will take a stake and invest as much as 150 million dollars in XLight, a startup working on alternative laser technology for EUV light generation. The move follows several other investments by the US government in companies deemed of strategic value, including Intel and rare-earth mining firm MP Materials.

In ASML’s laser-produced plasma (LPP) EUV light sources, tiny drops of tin are turned into EUV-emitting plasma by shooting them with powerful lasers. XLight is proposing a fundamentally different approach by having free-electron lasers (FELs) produce the EUV light directly. In this concept, twenty lithography tools or more would be connected to a single light source.

ASML is lending basic support to XLight, but the litho giant is convinced LPP will be able to meet the needs of industry. The LPP roadmap takes source power to 1,000 watts, at which point other factors (such as stage acceleration and resist sensitivity) will be throughput-limiting. “ASML remains confident that our current laser-produced plasma EUV light source remains the preferred current and future solution for the industry, both in terms of cost and performance,” an ASML spokesperson told Bits&Chips.