Is the Future of Moore's Law in a Particle Accelerator?: Wiggling Electrons Could Turbocharge EUV Lithography

As Intel, Samsung, TSMC, and Japan's upcoming advanced foundry Rapidus each make their separate preparations to cram more and more transistors into every square millimeter of silicon, one thing they all have in common is that the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography technology underpinning their efforts is extremely complex, extremely expensive, and extremely costly to operate. A prime reason is that the source of this system's 13.5-nanometer light is the precise and costly process of blasting flying droplets of molten tin with the most powerful commercial lasers on the planet.