5-minute read - by Jessica Timings, August 18, 2021
In mid-2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, ASML shipped its first-ever dry NXT system. It was the first lithography system of any kind capable of processing more than 300 wafers per hour. But it’s the history of TWINSCAN – the platform on which these systems were built – that is most fascinating.
ASML came of age as a lithography supplier with the PAS 5500 platform in the early 1990s. Around the same time, precision mechanics and interferometer expert Bert van der Pasch was working on the interferometer systems and wafer handler of the PAS platform. He had started his career at Philips, where his technological knowledge had been fostered.
"Without Philips, ASML wouldn't exist," says Bert. "But what I liked about ASML was working on real products and their problems.
"For example, when I was working on the scanner, at one point there were seven dynamical shortcut issues. Normally, you investigate one and change if required. A normal person would do that, but not ASML. We decided to change all seven at once – and it worked! We never knew which one did the job, but the problems were all gone."
