by Ed Korczynski, Senior Technical Editor

Industry watchers enjoy invoking aviation metaphors to describe the evolution of lithography in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, with visions spanning propeller planes (i.e. 1:1 masks) to jet aircraft (reduction steppers), and even the next-generation lithography equivalents of cool-but-impractical supersonic planes like the Concorde. Here’s what I think is a more accurate metaphor for lithography’s evolution, explaining why we use planes, jets, and even helicopters for different applications — and why 157nm litho tools “never flew.”