Hacker News Reader

Is EUV the only way? Isn't there a much slower technique with laser engraving, but which they may scale in some other way?

https://www.asianometry.com/p/euv-lithography-but-with-a-fre...

View on HN

EUV is all about the laser. To create the small transistors of 4nm for example, either lithography or some other laser tech, you need to be able to shine a pure light on them of small enough wavelength. EUV is the smallest we can create thus far.

I suppose that the real issue is that EUV is the smallest we can focus thus far. Otherwise we'd be using harder X-rays from things like synchrotron light sources, no?

You want to impact the surface, not deep into the material like X-rays would penetrate, so you can't actually go too low in wavelength either.

Isn't that a significant research field? New semi-conducting crystals and materials which would be friendly to x-rays?

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoimprint-lithography

Reply on news.ycombinator.com