Within weeks of Roentgen's publication in December 1895, his discovery was reported in newspapers and quickly reproduced in laboratories around the world. Within a month, x-rays were used in medical operations, and their role in that field has transformed it. In hindsight, the discovery of x-rays can be seen as the beginning of modern physics; within a decade, man's understanding of the physical world had been almost totally revised. The discovery in 1912 that x-rays are diffracted by crystals began a new era in materials science. X-ray-based analytical techniques have proven crucial to our understanding of materials and interfaces. X-ray microradiography, a direct extension of medical x-ray analysis, was the forerunner of x-ray lithography and x-ray microscopy. In recent years, x-ray astronomy has uncovered some of the most exotic phenomena in the universe.
The property of x-rays that gives them their special role in lithography is a near absence of impedance mismatch at interfaces (i.e., an index of refraction close to unity). This property should ultimately lead to the utilization of x-ray lithography in deep-submicron silicon ULSI, optoelectronics, flat-panel displays, and magnetic data storage.
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Modified: Jun 25, 1997|
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