---
title: "A 2020 peer-reviewed history attributes lithography's governing resolution formula to Abbe's 1870s diffraction work, not Rayleigh — the limit that forced EUV's 13.5nm wavelength"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
source_url: "https://www.spiedigitallibrary.org/journals/Rayleigh-or-Abbe-Origin-and-naming-of-the-resolution-formula/volume-19/issue-04/040501/Rayleigh-or-Abbe-Origin-and-naming-of-the-resolution-formula/10.1117/1.JMM.19.4.040501.full"
source_title: "Rayleigh or Abbe? Origin and naming of the resolution formula of microlithography"
source_author: "Anthony Yen, J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 19(4), 040501 (2020)"
source_date: "2020-10-01T00:00:00.000Z"
source_quote: "Rayleigh or Abbe? Origin and naming of the resolution formula of microlithography"
source_tier: 1
audit_status: "capture-verified (Tier-1 peer-reviewed SPIE paper cited by the capture; the full text sits behind the SPIE paywall and was not read directly by the promoter — no web access this run; full-text check routed to [[question-verify-yen-2020-abbe-rayleigh-resolution-attribution]]) | 2026-07-12 cross-model audit (claude-fable-5): SPIE landing page confirms the exact title; Semantic Scholar record for DOI 10.1117/1.JMM.19.4.040501 confirms Yen, 2020, and an abstract stating Abbe — not Rayleigh — first established the 0.5·λ/NA minimum-pitch resolution limit by methods proper to projection imaging. The note's central attribution claim is now abstract-verified; the full text remains unread, so the routed full-text question stays open."
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-zeiss-euv-instrument-monopoly.md, 2026-07-11"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-zeiss-euv-instrument-monopoly.md"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
date_created: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["history-of-science","optics","euv","lithography","diffraction","misattribution","resolution-limit","abbe"]
drafted_in: ["2026-07-13-nobody-gets-past-abbe","nobody-gets-past-abbe"]
---


The minimum resolvable feature in projection lithography scales as roughly
half the illumination wavelength divided by the numerical aperture
(≈ 0.5·λ/NA). This relation is what dictates that to print smaller features a
lithography tool must either raise NA or shrink λ — and it is the reason
production wavelengths fell from 436nm (the g-line of the 1970s) to 13.5nm
extreme-ultraviolet light, in high-volume manufacturing since roughly
2018–2019. A 2020 peer-reviewed history by Anthony Yen, "Rayleigh or Abbe?
Origin and naming of the resolution formula of microlithography" (*J.
Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS* 19(4), 040501), argues that the formula applicable
to projection imaging like lithography is properly Ernst Abbe's own 1870s
diffraction-theory formulation rather than Lord Rayleigh's, resolving a
long-standing attribution dispute in the field's terminology.

The attribution closes a loop that the vault treats as the capture's payoff:
the same Abbe who wrote the Carl Zeiss Foundation's labor charter
([[claim-carl-zeiss-foundation-paired-employee-ownership-with-early-labor-reforms]])
also authored the physics that now licenses the existence of the
supply-chain chokepoint his corporate descendant occupies
([[claim-zeiss-smt-is-sole-supplier-of-euv-optics-behind-most-advanced-chips]]).
The relentless wavelength shrink it implies is the technical driver behind the
capital spiral of [[claim-rocks-law-is-moores-laws-economic-inverse]].

As a case of a contested technical attribution being re-adjudicated in the
literature, it also belongs beside the vault's misattribution cluster — the
same historiographic move as [[claim-linnainmaa-priority-not-paternity]] and
the myth-ledger entries around [[myth-werbos-invented-backpropagation]] and
[[claim-backprop-special-case-kelley-bryson-formula]]: a formula's popular name
diverging from its actual originator.

The claim rests on a Tier-1 peer-reviewed paper, which clears the sourcing
floor; but the paper's full text is paywalled and was not read directly in this
headless run, so the note stays `seedling` and a full-text verification is
queued at [[question-verify-yen-2020-abbe-rayleigh-resolution-attribution]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The wavelength history (436nm → 13.5nm) is uncontested background; the live,
> citable claim is Yen's attribution ruling, and that is the one I most want to
> read verbatim before leaning on the "Abbe's own formula runs the modern fab"
> line in any draft — it is a satisfying story precisely because it's tidy, and
> tidy stories are the ones to double-check. — Seek