Reading Russia: The Rules of Survival
In an attempt to explain the Russian Revolution to Lady Ottoline Morrell, British philosopher Bertrand Russell once remarked that Bolshevik despotism, appalling though it was, seemed the right sort of government for Russia. “If you ask yourself how Fyodor Dostoevsky’s characters should be governed, you will understand,” was his not-sosubtle point. In explaining the recent resurgence of authoritarianism in Russia, most political theorists have abstained from referring to Dostoevsky’s novels or Russia’s authoritarian political culture. They have a better explanation. It was not “soul,” it was “oil.” The “oil curse” has replaced the “soul curse” as the most popular explanation for Russia’s current state of affairs. High oil prices have been blamed for democracy’s failure and Vladimir Putin’s consolidation of authoritarian rule. The facts fit. During Putin’s time as president from 2000 to 2008, Russian oil and gas companies earned in excess of US$650 billion more from their exports than they had in the previous eight years under Yeltsin. The breakneck pace of economic growth gave Putin a free hand politically, and he used it without compunction to entrench the power of himself and his circle, unhindered by weak and shallowrooted democratic institutions. Thus Putin’s Russia was conceptualized as a classic “petrostate”— strong and weak at the same time, brutally confident yet potentially vulnerable, and hostile to democracy. This picture of Putin’s Russia as an authoritarian oil state attracts many Western analysts because it seems to carry a promise that falling oil prices will bring regime change. What Russian liberals prayed for was economic crisis and cheap oil. Putin’s regime, they reasoned, may remain unchallenged as long as it can hand out petrodollars and improve the material well-being of the people, but
Rus United
As president, Vladimir Putin has set about the rebuilding of Russia's statehood in an effort to replace the weak, feudalistic state inherited by Boris Yeltsin with a mercantilist state-nation.
Adaptive optics for extreme ultraviolet lithography : actuator design and validation for deformable mirror concepts
In the production of integrated circuits (e.g. computer chips), optical lithography is used to transfer a pattern onto a semiconductor substrate (wafer). For lithographic systems using light in the ultraviolet band (EUV) with a 13.5nm nm wavelength, only reflective optics with multi-layers can reflect that light by means of interlayer interference, but these mirrors absorb around 30% of the incident light. Depending on pattern and beam shape, there is a nonuniform light distribution over the surface of the mirrors. This causes temperature gradients and therefore local deformations, due to different thermal expansions. To improve the throughput (wafers per hour), there is a demand to increase the source power, that will increase these deformations even further. Active mirrors are a solution to correct these deformations by reshaping the surface. This thesis addresses the challenges to accurate deform a mirror with high repeatability, meeting the requirements for implementation in a lithographic illumination machine. The main design criteria are vacuum compatibility, actuator stroke and the distance between actuators. Four different experimental mirrors, with increasing complexity, are successfully designed, realized and validated. All mirrors are equipped with thermomechanical actuators to either bend, or axially deform them. These actuators are free from mechanical hysteresis and therefore have a high position resolution with high reproducibility. Extensive finite element analysis is done, to maximize actuator stroke and minimize input power. All mirrors are tested and validated with interferometer surface measurements and thermocouple temperature measurements. The first experimental mirror with one thermo-mechanical bending actuator is successfully built and tested (chapter 2). To obtain a high mirror deflection at a given inserted actuator power, aluminum is chosen as the actuator material. The mirror is made from Zerodur® like the mirrors in the first EUV lithographic demonstration machines. A mirror deformation of 4:7 nm/C is achieved, where the inserted actuator power is 0.044 C/mW, meaning 0:21 nm/mW. The measured characteristic time constant is 10 s, meaning that for a given input, 63% of the steady state stroke is reached within that time scale. All values are close to the predicted ones from the models and also meet the requirements for implementation. To further investigate the concept and to measure the mechanical and thermal actuator coupling, an experimental mirror with four actuators is designed, developed and validated (chapter 3). It is an extension of the mirror with one actuator. In a single actuator step-response, a mirror deflection of 3.4 nm/C is achieved. A design optimization is proposed and successfully tested which reduces the actuator coupling from 30% to 10%, while the mirror deflection at the same input is reduced to 55%. Actuator speed is demonstrated while simultaneously heating all actuators with 3mW, which correspond with a mirror deformation of 33 pm/s. When using an adaptive mirror in an EUV lithography system, actuator strokes of 1 nm/min are required. The demonstrated actuator speed of 33 pm/s = 2 nm/min meets that requirement. The third and fourth mirror have actuators placed perpendicular to the surface (chapter 4). By placing the actuators on a thin back plate, the force loop is localized and therefore a lower actuator coupling is achieved. The results obtained from the third mirror with 7 actuators are close to the predicted values from the static and thermal models. Based on these good results, this actuation principle is implemented in a smaller deformable mirror with 19 actuators inside a 25mm beam diameter. A linear relation between actuator power and temperature of 0.190 C/mW and between power and averaged interactuator stroke of 0.13 nm/mW is achieved. So, the successfully realized mirror deflection is 0:68 nm/ C and no hysteresis is observed. For both mirrors a support frame is developed, that minimizes introduced surface deformations by temperature variations. Thermal step responses are fitted and both heating and cooling characteristic time constants are 2:5 s. The thermal actuator coupling from an energized actuator to its direct neighbor is 6:0, to their neighbors it is 1:3%. The total actuator coupling is approximated around 10%, based on the good agreement between simulated and measured inter-actuator stroke. Finally, chapter 5 summarizes the main findings from the different deformable mirrors and compares them. Also, suggestions for future research are given for implementation into a lithographic machine.