Every chip is printed by light from plasma 40 times hotter than the Sun.

A tin droplet enters the chamber and is flattened by a weak laser pulse, then a stronger pulse vaporizes it into a plasma flash hotter than 220,000 C, about 40 times the Sun's surface. That flash is the 13.5 nm light, and it is what prints the chip.: tin droplet · 1st pulse: flatten · 2nd pulse: vaporize · ~220,000 C · 40x the Sun · prints the chip

A microchip's circuitry is etched with light, and the finest chips need an absurdly short wavelength: 13.5 nanometers. Nothing emits it cleanly, so ASML's machines manufacture it. They fire tin droplets, hit each one twice with a CO₂ laser, and the second pulse vaporizes it into a plasma hotter than 200,000°C. That flash of plasma is the light source. It happens about 50,000 times a second.

The light that prints your chip is born from a tin droplet, flash-burned hotter than a star.