One of the main factors driving improvements in the cost and complexity of integrated circuits (ics) is improvements in photolithography and the resulting ability to print ever smaller features. moder

One of the main factors driving improvements in the cost and complexity of integrated circuits (ics) is improvements in photolithography and the resulting ability to print ever smaller features. modern circuits are made using a variety of complicated lithography techniques, with the goal to make electronic traces as small and as close to each other as possible (to reduce the overall size, and thus increase the speed). in the end though, all optical techniques are limited by diffraction.