lone102

From the outside, it looks like an ordinary company building, built with a lot of glass and steel, but this factory in the south of the Netherlands belongs to ASML, and the machines produced here are by no means ordinary. In fact, the technology here is so advanced that it is in such high demand in the international market that Asmore is the most valuable technology company in Europe. What exactly does this factory manufacture? The machines that Ashmore designed and built were used to make computer chips, but the computer chips they produced were no ordinary computer chips. Asmore's machines can produce the most advanced computer chips in the world, and the chip production technology it possesses is unique in the world. This effective monopoly means that Asmore has some of the strictest corporate security in the world, keeping the commercial secrets of how the machines work. Nevertheless, we were given a tour of its factory and learned about its basic production process. Microchips are made by building complex transistors, or tiny electronic switches, layer by layer on a silicon wafer. They are printed using a photolithography system, during which light is projected onto the design pattern of these microswitches. The light is then constricted and focused using advanced optics, and patterns are etched into photosensitive silicon. It's this pattern that forms the circuitry of the silicon chip that may end up in a computer, phone, or any other electronic device you can think of. The key to Asmore's state-of-the-art machines is that they can work on a tiny scale by producing ultra-fine, extreme ultraviolet light of just 13.5 nanometers. Sander Hofman of Ashmore compares this technique to a pen using a different nib. "Because the wavelength is so small, it's like you're drawing the lines of these integrated circuits with very thin lines, rather than using older-generation machines, which is like drawing with a very thick marker pen." The ability to etch silicon with such fine circuitry means that more components can be added to the silicon, which in turn means that electronic devices can have more processing power and more of memory. The machines operate in a vacuum because the entire process of etching wafers can be disrupted by the tiniest of impurities, such as skin particles. When we toured the factory, technician Bram Matthijssen was assembling one of Asmore's latest designs in what is arguably the cleanest environment on earth. "Sometimes we have to put gloves on the gloves to make sure we don't get any fingerprints, make sure we don't bring any extra dust into the machine." "A single finger print can cause significant damage to a machine," he said. The machines themselves are very large and complex. Assembly and delivery of an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machine can take a year. Last year, the company delivered only 50 of the highest-spec model, out of a total of 400 machines delivered. Those sales, plus revenue from managing and upgrading existing machines, earned the company $22.7 billion last year. They have orders worth twice that in the pipeline. Growth in sales means a rise in headcount, and production staff have increased by a third over the past 12 months.

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