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Oh , I forgot to mention the resist. Great work, no putdown intended. Yes it also is an extension since new resists have been required as the exposure wavelengths have decreased over the years. I understand that Grant Wilson has lead this type of development work in prior generations at IBM, so it might be reasonable to believe that he could extend his track record with the fine students at UT. So as many had given up on the next resist in the past, he had not. In that context it is an extension. Fine work nonetheless.
So yes it is a great new milestone, but the implementation into production will be quite sometime since infrastructure will be required such as the Cymer laser you mentioned, steppers, coaters, commercial resist supply etc. This cycle has repeated itself many times over the years. Just 15 years ago, it was expected that xray would be required for 1 micron features.
Normal extensions of optical technology keeps pushing that transition out such as this 193nm strong shifter work.
The comment in my original post was that it was humorous to the group at SPIE the media coverage this news item had. It was good work, important milestone, just amazing how much press it got.
Of the more than 450 papers presented with 3000 in attendance, it was interesting to my friend that 248 nm seems to be well accepted to go below 180 nm and probably 150nm. The need for high quality masks was also prevalent.
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