Is it a space craft? Is it a stage set for a science fiction film? No! It’s the ASML’s Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUV) demotool.

I’m interested in it for its revolutionary impact on semiconductor manufacturing. In 2006 the EUV Demo tool retired the lenses that had previously downscaled the circuit designs to fit on the chips and replaced them with controlled “plasma explosions” emitting extreme ultraviolet radiation firing at a series of mirrors in a perfectly sealed vacuum and ultimately exposing entire nano circuit topographies onto smaller and smaller chips.