Moore's Law could stay on track with extreme UV progress
Long-awaited improvements in photolithography could pave the way for the continued shrinking and scaling of microprocessors into the second half of this decade and beyond.
Moore's Law—which says that transistor densities double every 18 to 24 months or so—is not some inevitable consequence of physics. Rather, it's an observation of the way the semiconductor industry has evolved: the investment and technological progress that companies like Intel have made results in an approximate doubling of transistor densities on a regular basis.
Rather than causing the doubling, physics is currently threatening to put an end to the progress we've seen over the last four decades. Microchips are made with a process called photolithography. The silicon wafer on which the chip is built is coated with a light-sensitive layer ("photoresist"). Light is then shone through a patterned mask onto the wafer, essentially burning away the photoresist in the exposed areas. This exposes some parts of the wafer, leaving others covered. The exposed parts are then etched away, and the remaining photoresist washed off.
