Optical lithography is one of the most crytical and important process step in the manufacturing of Integrated Circuts (IC's). Today's advanced computer chips contain millions of transistors on a surface not even half the size of a postage stamp. In 1965, seven years after the integrated circuit was invented, Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors that semiconductor makers could put on a chip was doubling every year. In 1975 the pace slowed to a doubling of transistors every 18 months. The National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors developed by the Semiconductor Industry Association extrapolates current trends to the year 2010, when 0.07 mm minimum feature size enable 64Gb DRAM chip production.

The question is what technology can provide such resolution?