That is a delightful review. I feel like I can follow the description of the EUV and the construction of its procreatory plasma, but I definitely wouldn't have been able to come up with it. I fondly recall in secondary school drawing circuit diagrams onto thin sheets of copper, those lines then being the only parts of the copper to survive the etching in acid. Photo-printed circuit components do feel magical to me - but magical in the way that an ingenious algorithm or marvellous puzzle is, the kind of magic that I can well believe some human somewhere is able to come up with and it brings me joy to observe the results.
If I recall correctly, the masks used in lithography are so precise that they have to account for the significant effects of diffraction—the EUV beams or whatever spread out after passing through the mask and would “blur” a bit, giving you rounded corners instead of right angles, that sort of thing. So the engineers actually have to distort the mask so that its own diffraction and interference patterns yield the desired result. Always thought that was cool.
When I remember the many failures of engineering structures and machinery, I know that the analogy with which this website opened is false. Our humanity is limiting us to achieve only some of our idealistic aims for a better world through good engineering. Engineering is about how to save cost of projects through good design and construction. We have yet to make this a better world through better arranged government, which is a kind of social engineering too. I have a means for showing how this might be done. chesterdh@hotmail.com
That is a delightful review. I feel like I can follow the description of the EUV and the construction of its procreatory plasma, but I definitely wouldn't have been able to come up with it. I fondly recall in secondary school drawing circuit diagrams onto thin sheets of copper, those lines then being the only parts of the copper to survive the etching in acid. Photo-printed circuit components do feel magical to me - but magical in the way that an ingenious algorithm or marvellous puzzle is, the kind of magic that I can well believe some human somewhere is able to come up with and it brings me joy to observe the results.
Loved this book
If I recall correctly, the masks used in lithography are so precise that they have to account for the significant effects of diffraction—the EUV beams or whatever spread out after passing through the mask and would “blur” a bit, giving you rounded corners instead of right angles, that sort of thing. So the engineers actually have to distort the mask so that its own diffraction and interference patterns yield the desired result. Always thought that was cool.
When I remember the many failures of engineering structures and machinery, I know that the analogy with which this website opened is false. Our humanity is limiting us to achieve only some of our idealistic aims for a better world through good engineering. Engineering is about how to save cost of projects through good design and construction. We have yet to make this a better world through better arranged government, which is a kind of social engineering too. I have a means for showing how this might be done. chesterdh@hotmail.com