Electrical Engineering

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jippie

09:23

@W5VO No EUV without code. That's one of the reasons these machines cannot be copied.

cannot ... are hard to copy

no one did

yet

4 hours later…

user129412

13:22

I have a silly RF related question. I'm using coax lines to send GHz signals through a microstrip on a PCB. I am, however, getting Hz-kHz noise on the coax lines (the origin is a bit subtle). I was thinking that I could get rid of the noise with a DC block; essentially just a capacitor in series. But there are 3 types of capacitors: inner-only, outer-only, and inner-outer. I definitely need an inner, as the signal is carried on the inner conductor. But would it hurt to have an inner-outer?

Is it relevant that I essentially break the ground of the coax coming into the microstrip? The PCB sits on a metal frame, and that in the end is on the same ground as the enclosure in which the (stainless steel) coax is clamped. Also, I wrote silly because I feel like this should be obvious, but I honestly do not really have an intuition for it.

3 hours later…

The Photon

16:50

@user129412 The basic choice would be inner only.

Inner-outer could (for low frequency signals) break a ground loop.

Whether that helps or hurts in your system depends on details you haven't shared.

@jippie The EUV laser is pretty unique. They had to buy the laser company to make sure they wouldn't go out of business before they got their machine on the market. There's a lot of money and engineering effort tied up in there.

3 hours later…

jippie

19:55

@ThePhoton ah you're typing about Source.

When typing about EUV many think about the entire scanner+source platform.

The scanner (disregarding source) is also a different platform, specific for EUV

The Photon

@jippie Sure, but one doesn't do much good without the other.

jippie

@ThePhoton Source is reused for generating .. what's the word again.

anyways for curing cancer and things

whatever .. something somehting radiation something :-)

The Photon

@jippie That sounds ... unlikely. Maybe there are some other uses for it, but the only reason anybody is bothering to make a $100 million laser is for lithography.

jippie

the beam is used to split particles from a nucleus something along those lines

Let me see if I can find the press release, quite intersting stuff in my opinion

The Photon

I know when I worked on that stuff we provided a software library to go with our stuff. I hope it isn't a big pain in your ass.

Can't blame me for it, though, I didn't touch the software.

jippie

20:06

blog.hightechcampus.com/build-your-business/…

Cant find the press release just yet, but it is mentioned on that blog.

All software is a pain, but that is specific thing for our s/w

I believe the press release was about that isotope thing being split off to keep focus. It was a top secret project for a couple of years.

@ThePhoton did you use to work for the company that builds the source?

whoops made a big typo there, I was trying to say any software probably any industry is a pain or becomes a pain.

The Photon

@jippie The company that makes interferometers for the position feedback in the old machines, and the processing electronics for the position feedback in EUV. So actually, the scanner side, not the source side.

jippie

cool

The Photon

If you have to deal with a component called a "spammer" (actually SPMR), that was us.

jippie

now that does sound vaguely familiar, but we have lots of four letter abbreviations.

The Photon

And when I say "component" actually I mean a whole VME rack with like 10 cards in it.

jippie

20:18

yup just wanted to say that. It is a whole rack

yes it is a head ache :-p

@ThePhoton I've been working on those CPU's

@ThePhoton As a rule of thumb, if a CPU runs an OS, and no-one else knows why it failed, then eventually you talk to me.

Lighthouse project seeks to use accidental discovery for good
We occasionally invent things we don’t need for our own operations, but that can be of value to society. One example of such
serendipity is the Lighthouse project. While researching a possible new light source for our new EUV systems, we discovered
that a high-energy electron beam we were working with could also be used to produce the medical isotope ‘Mo-99’. This
isotope is essential for diagnosing cancer. Currently, it is mainly produced from enriched uranium in nuclear plants that require

The Photon

20:36

@jippie Interesting.

jippie

from the 2017 integrated report on page 18 if you're curious for some context.