Intel and ASML push High NA EUV toward wider production

What it means for hiring

The interesting word in this is masks. High NA buys resolution and pays for it with a halved exposure field, and larger mask formats with anamorphic optics are how the industry tries to get that field back. Talking about mask formats at SPIE rather than about scanner counts is the sign of a programme moving from installation into production, because it means the constraint has shifted from the machine to what you feed it.

The shortage that follows is not where most people look. Everyone recruits for the scanner side, and mask making has been quietly shrinking for fifteen years while the work got harder: multi-beam writers, curvilinear shapes, inspection and repair at dimensions that no longer behave like drawings. The number of people who can run a leading-edge mask shop is small, they are concentrated in a handful of sites in Europe, the United States, Japan and Taiwan, and almost none of them are on the market. Anyone who expects to need mask, metrology or actinic inspection engineers in 2027 should be making introductions now, because that hire takes two years from first conversation.

Read the original at eeNews Europe .