Comments on: IBM promotes making chips in the bath

An experimental version of immersion lithography could help cut the cost of making chips in the future.

[Peet42]

"...because light bends light rays..."

"The wafers are immersed in water because light bends light rays better than air"

Er... Huh?

[drgreenberg]

Sloppy proofreading

It should read, "...because water bends light rays...." It's a typo. Here's another in the same article:

"Years ago, IBM was one of the principal backers of X-ray lithography. It worked, but was economical."

Should read "but was NOT economical" (obviously).

Someone didn't spend enough time proofreading.

[tech_junky]

Current chips I think are at...

about 90 nanometers, so this would be a helluva improvement, smaller chips = more horsepower (clockspeed) per socket

[oliverthered]

Errors in story

"The wafers are immersed in water because light
bends light rays better than air"

Should read...

because water bends light rays better than air.

" Years ago, IBM was one of the principal
backers of X-ray lithography. It worked, but was
economical."

I assume that's uneconomical no economical.

[oliverthered]

Errors in story

"The wafers are immersed in water because light
bends light rays better than air"

Should read...

because water bends light rays better than air.

" Years ago, IBM was one of the principal
backers of X-ray lithography. It worked, but was
economical."

I assume that's uneconomical not economical.

[Jon Skillings]

Errors fixed

Thanks for pointing them out.

[mess483]

experimental

We have to keep in our mind that this is an experimental one.
http://www.referate10.com

[Blito]

Boring

Ok big deal they can make a chip slightly smaller. They are probably trying to blow smoke away from Nano-chips since the government probably doesn?t want people to have such fast processors.
Nano chips are 1000s of times faster and very easy to make. There is also nano silicon that can be used in current processes because silicon is used.

Right now there are major advances being made in Quantum computing as scientists are now able to control electrons.

With these nano chips we can upload ourselves and live forever but don?t expect the Gov to tell :)

[p_mcnally]

ASML has been doing this for a while...

ASML was shipping it's third generation product last year and just came out with 4th gen, the TWINSCAN XT:1700i

http://asml.com/asmldotcom/show.do?ctx=6732&rid=6730

The wafers are immersed in water because the speed of light is slower

The refractive index of water is about 1.33 in the visible spectrum, but is much higher (>1.5?) in the far ultraviolet. This means features that would have made 65nm in vacuum can be scaled to less than 45nm. It is not all beer and skittles, water is a nasty medium on the hardware and the shear forces on the wafer during motion tear up the surface.