The semiconductor industry is driven by the race to produce computer chips with ever-smaller transistors, leading to exponentially faster and more powerful processors. Beginning approximately in the year 2009, chip-making "photolithography" technology will use extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light to print circuit patterns with fine features below 32 nm, less than 1000-th the width of a human hair, and half as wide as the circuits mass-produced in 2003. Through a decade of prototypes and proof-of-principle research, and now commercialization, the development of EUV lithography technologies has taken a worldwide effort.

Researchers from LBNL's Center for X-Ray Optics, working in close collaboration with industry and other US national laboratory partners, have developed a unique set of synchrotron-based metrology tools with unprecedented high accuracy. A sampling of the ongoing research is described here. This research is funded by: the EUV LLC (an industry consortium comprised of Intel, AMD, Motorola, IBM, and Infineon), International SEMATECH, DARPA, DOE, and the SRC.