New lithography keeps Moore's law on pace

A new photolithographic technology will create semiconductors with wires thinner than 30 nanometers, one-third the width in today's industry-standard chips, acoording to today's New York Times.

The new technology, known as immersion lithography, replaces the air gap between the optics and the wafer surface with a liquid, increasing resolution and depth of focus. Some of the materials issues have been discussed by scientists at IBM and JSR Micro.