>why can't they switch to actual x-rays, which we already seem to be really good at producing? The energy level is unnecessary. The lithography process does a

>why can't they switch to actual x-rays, which we already seem to be really good at producing? The energy level is unnecessary. The lithography process does a "step-down" via electromagnetic lensing which determines the feature size. This becomes exponentially harder to do as you decrease wavelength (i.e. increase energy).