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High NA EUV is the next step in smaller transistors. Like NXE systems, it uses EUV light to print tiny features on silicon wafers. And by turning the NA knob, we deliver even better resolution: The new platform, known as EXE, offers chipmakers a CD (critical dimension) of 8 nm. That means they can print transistors 1.7 times smaller – and therefore achieve transistor densities 2.9 times higher – than they can with NXE systems.

Above – High NA EUV mirror testing at ZEISS (Credit: ZEISS SMT)

EUV lithography allowed us to make a big turn of the wavelength knob. It uses 13.5 nm light, compared to 193 nm for the highest-resolution DUV systems. The first pre-production EUV lithography platform, the NXE, shipped in 2010 and delivered a drop in CD (critical dimension) from more than 30 nm in DUV down to 13 nm with EUV.

Scientists have found that the growth patterns of trees in a forest differ significantly from the way branches expand on an individual tree.

Nature is full of surprising repetitions. In trees, the large branches often look like entire trees, while smaller branches and twigs look like the larger branches they grow from. If seen in isolation, each part of the tree could be mistaken for a miniature version of itself.

It has long been assumed that this property, called fractality, also applies to entire forests but researchers from the University of Bristol have found that this is not the case.

Think big. Despite its research topic, this could well be the motto of the Graphene Flagship, which was launched in 2013: With an overall budget of one billion Euros, it was Europe’s largest research initiative to date, alongside the Human Brain Flagship, which was launched at the same time.

The same applies to the review article on the effects of graphene and related materials on health and the environment, which Empa researchers Peter Wick and Tina Bürki just published together with 30 international colleagues in the journal ACS Nano; they summarize the findings on the health and ecological risks of graphene materials, the reference list includes almost 500 original publications.

A wealth of knowledge—which also gives the all-clear. “We have investigated the potential acute effects of various graphene and graphene-like materials on the lungs, in the and in the placenta—and no serious acute cell-damaging effects were observed in any of the studies,” says Wick, summarizing the results.