"The technology builds on present industrial optical experience - integrated circuit manufacturers are used to working with optical lithography."

For decades, the microelectronics industry has relied on optical lithography to pattern the increasingly minute features of electronic devices.

Since at least 1998 near field optical lithography was designed to create nanometer-scale features.

These lenses are also commonly used in optical lithography, for forming patterns in semiconductor chips.

The resulting pattern is then etched in place to form the transistors in a process called optical lithography.

The process, known as optical lithography, uses light to shrink a chip-circuitry pattern onto a wafer of silicon.

Still, how advances in optical lithography will affect the competitive picture is not entirely clear.

Moreover, as optical lithography is pushed to make more and more intricate chips, it will become increasingly expensive.

This is a new effect not seen with conventional optical lithography.

As conventional optical lithography reaches its limits, the required photomasks become very expensive.