I know. It's difficult to comprehend the scope of science that is required to make this system work as a production machine.
For example, the surface they are printing the chip circuits on has layers of material, say, tungsten, that have thicknesses measured in atoms. As in, 'I need a layer of tungsten 100 atoms thick'. At that scale, the surface is 'bumpy' to the point that you must re-focus each time the wafer/lens moves to the next region on the wafer. This is a mechanical adjustment at atomic scale that has to happen very fast, or you'll never get enough wafers through the machine to pay for it. The solution to just this one subsystem of moving and refocusing required a decade of R&D and dozens of scientists and engineers to get fast enough, reliable enough, repeatable enough to be useful in a production setting.
Yes, others can make a system like this, with a similar amount of R&D spend and personnel and time. They would have to move faster than ASML to ever catch them. They'd have to budget 20 years, 100s of staff and a very large capital budget. In 20 years, ASML will be that much further down the road.
For example, the surface they are printing the chip circuits on has layers of material, say, tungsten, that have thicknesses measured in atoms. As in, 'I need a layer of tungsten 100 atoms thick'. At that scale, the surface is 'bumpy' to the point that you must re-focus each time the wafer/lens moves to the next region on the wafer. This is a mechanical adjustment at atomic scale that has to happen very fast, or you'll never get enough wafers through the machine to pay for it. The solution to just this one subsystem of moving and refocusing required a decade of R&D and dozens of scientists and engineers to get fast enough, reliable enough, repeatable enough to be useful in a production setting.
Yes, others can make a system like this, with a similar amount of R&D spend and personnel and time. They would have to move faster than ASML to ever catch them. They'd have to budget 20 years, 100s of staff and a very large capital budget. In 20 years, ASML will be that much further down the road.
Here is a short animation of the optics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skUCP2f4HIM