You can do lithography small but slow and expensive. But small means you need a stack, which is even more expensive. At small sizes, defectivity/variation are really difficult.
So if you want a paradigmatic shift, you need low cost patterning, and the best way I can see is to use clever chemistry and a much different design style.
Don't you think that a lot more improvement in variability and integration can be achieved with better optics? (for the photolithography, of course. I don't remember what they used for plasma etching and ion implantation.) I don't believe that they have explored a lot on that front yet.
> So if you want a paradigmatic shift, you need low cost patterning, and the best way I can see is to use clever chemistry and a much different design style.
Is that a speculation, or do you have a more concrete idea about what needs improvement and how? I'm especially curious about the 'much different design style' part. Could you elaborate that?
I heard of one intriguing alternative to photo lithography. Microfluidic channels in a plate (injection molded). I saw a couple research papers in 2021.
You can do lithography small but slow and expensive. But small means you need a stack, which is even more expensive. At small sizes, defectivity/variation are really difficult.
So if you want a paradigmatic shift, you need low cost patterning, and the best way I can see is to use clever chemistry and a much different design style.