Computing · 1982

Excimer laser lithography

Deep-ultraviolet laser light for sharper chip patterns.

Kanti Jain at IBM demonstrated excimer laser lithography, and KrF (248 nm) and ArF (193 nm) lasers became production light sources. They carried chipmaking from micron to tens-of-nanometer features.

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Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Laser 1960
Photolithography 1957

What it led to 1

Immersion lithography 2006

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data

Cost of memory and storage Latest: Memory: 1.09k $/TB (2023) Source: Our World in Data