ASML is arguably the most significant technology company in the world, because every computer chip produced globally relies on its machines.
Major technology firms, including Nvidia, Apple, Intel and Samsung, are unable to manufacture advanced chips without using ASML's equipment.
How the process starts
The manufacturing process begins with an ASML machine firing tiny droplets of molten tin, each roughly 25 microns across, thinner than a human hair.
A laser strikes each individual droplet twice, first flattening it into a disc shape, then vaporising it into plasma.
Hotter than the sun
That plasma reaches temperatures hotter than the surface of the sun, causing it to emit extreme ultraviolet light.
The machine directs this light through a series of hyper-precise mirrors toward a stencil containing the specific design pattern for the chip being manufactured.
Printing a chip with light
The pattern is then projected onto a thin slice of silicon coated in light-reactive chemicals, effectively printing the design directly onto the material.
This light-printing process is repeated thousands of times to stack multiple layers of silicon, eventually building a fully functional computer chip.
A precision problem almost too small to imagine
The resulting chip designs are extraordinarily intricate, packing billions of transistors into spaces only a few atoms apart.
The precision required has been compared to firing a laser from the moon and hitting a penny on Earth.
That single comparison captures why so few companies in the world have ever managed to replicate what ASML builds, and why its machines, each costing hundreds of millions of dollars, remain the choke point through which almost the entire modern chip industry must pass.
