AChamarthy

Crimes of the future!

To continue the patterning roadmap, many techniques were considered back in the day, including 157 litho v. NIL v. EUV v. Direct Self Assembly. For NIL, the biggest issue was defect density...why NIL found a niche in disk drive applications (Toshiba early champion) where you have a lot of redundancy built in

Because of EUV's insane cost / complexity, many older litho techniques (NIL, Direct Self Assembly) are making a comeback...NIL is a great option for lower cost patterning applications, like optical/photonic components (Magic Leap etc)

TSMC shares deep history with ASML via Philips (Philips was the first investor in TSMC, and ASML was started off as a Philips spin off).

Most of today's advanced litho (EUV) was actually funded/developed in American labs (Berkeley lab etc). The US was ahead in litho for awhile...but GCA folded and ASML acquired Cymer (based in San Diego, develops light sources for EUV) and SVG.

TSMC has a couple of advantages: 1) Focus exclusively on manufacturing, not design, 2) Large volume customers/products (Apple, AMD, NVIDIA etc), but especially Apple/iPhone. The process technology /manufacturing is tightly coupled to design specs. This provides a faster manufacturing learning curve.

-Intel screwed up by missing mobile / pushing out EUV adoption. Since they also design their own chips, they compete with any potential foundry customers in several markets (ex: data center), which is why they haven't been able to grow their foundry services division that much. TSMC is friendly with everyone and does one thing: manufacture chips in the fab.

Intel is attempting to catch up now by placing several orders for the next version of EUV, High NA EUV. They've also stated that with their planned process innovations ("RibbonFET" and "PowerVIA"), they will have a better process than TSMC at the 18A node (1.8 nm).

-For Samsung, their core business is more memory/displays. Memory lags logic in process technology innovation.

On the logic side, Samsung has made the leap to Gate-all-around transistors (next evolution of transistor, succeeding FinFET) before Intel/TSMC but seems to be facing yield problems.

TSMC is the top dog now, but things are going to get interesting as we go <3, 2 nm...

Will just go in a different direction. Gordon Moore himself alludes to advanced packaging / 3D configurations in his original 1965 paper:

"It may prove economical to build large systems out of smaller functions, which are separately packaged and interconnected."

I'm trying to connect with Don (author) - appreciate an intro if anyone has a good link.

Happy to make an intro. My email is in my profile.

Vs. Carbon Fiber, it depends on the application and intended use case

Re: aerospace, from a recent report, "Graphene can give multifunctional benefits to composites, including increased mechanical properties and conductivity. To protect against lightning strikes, the composite structures of aircraft contain metal meshes or have embedded conduc- tive wires. Graphene-containing composites could provide lightning-strike protection with the advantage of a simplified production process and weight reduction.

This year, a team comprising engineers and scientists from Airbus, Aernnova and Grupo Antolin have developed a prototype aircraft component using a graphene- based composite material. A section of the horizontal tail plane leading edge (HTPLE) of the Airbus A350 XWB was manufactured using industry standard resin transfer moulding of a graphene-based composite. The performance of this prototype compo- nent will be validated through electrical, mechanical and impact testing during the Core 2 phase."