Photolithography machines play a central role in the production of ever smaller and faster microchips and represent high-precision systems of enormous complexity. Water conditioning is often required in sensitive modules of these machines to maintain strict thermal requirements. However, a negative consequence of this is that pressure disturbances in these water circuits can generate undesirable forces on the structure. These pressure disturbances may be flow induced, from circuit components and pumps, for example, but may also arise from vibrations of the structure leading to acoustic cross-talk between locations of differing dynamic sensitivity.

Current mitigation measures to limit the impact of pressure disturbances mainly involve passive mechanical devices, such as Helmholtz resonators, which can be used to achieve a certain level of suppression. It is the goal of this project to investigate whether an active control approach might offer advantages with respect to performance, volume requirements and flexibility. Such an active control system would use some combination of sensors, actuators and control algorithms, to be defined in the course of the study. The work will be carried out both at TU/e and ASML premises.

A general outline of the project can be envisaged as follows:

• Review relevant concepts and literature
• Propose several active silencer mechatronics concepts and select the most promising
• Select sensors and actuators and control platform
• Define representative flow circuits on which to assess performance
• Investigate suppression performance in simulation model
• Build test setup and investigate practical results