Musk May Adopt FEL Technology to Challenge EUV Lithography Machine

August 10th, SpaceX recently announced a partnership with Tesla, with an initial investment of $16.8 billion to build the Terafab chip facility in Texas, USA. A blog post suggested that based on information from Terafab, Musk seems to be adopting the "Free Electron Laser" (FEL) technology route to challenge ASML's LPP EUV source and disrupt the monopoly of traditional EUV chip production technology. Musk's subsequent response seemed to confirm this speculation, as he posted "FEL FTW" (FEL For The Win).

From the elongated design of the Terafab plant and Musk's response, it is likely that Terafab will indeed adopt FEL technology. Although Musk's FEL endeavor is purely speculative, it has sparked intense discussions in the industry. FEL has advantages such as high power, high coherence, wavelength tunability, and higher energy efficiency, theoretically allowing the lithography light source to advance from 13.5nm to 6nm or even shorter wavelengths. However, the challenges of a large accelerator system, cost, and production stability remain the biggest hurdles to industrialization. (Telegram)