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Well, for practical purposes the wavelength of light doesn't really have a lower limit. If the wavelength of visible light isn't small enough, you use ultraviolet.

If you need smaller wavelengths still, you could use gamma lasers - though so far these are only possible in theory. There is some speculation that positron annihilation could be used to drive such a laser.

edit: looks I was wrong - while ultraviolet lasers exist, the currently available ones still don't have a small enough wavelength for say a 45 nm process. Other tricks like multiple patterning and immersion are used.




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