Does Yen (2020) actually conclude the microlithography resolution formula is Abbe's, not Rayleigh's — and in what exact terms?

history-of-scienceopticseuvlithographymisattributionverification

claim-abbe-not-rayleigh-formula-sets-lithography-resolution-limit rests on Anthony Yen, "Rayleigh or Abbe? Origin and naming of the resolution formula of microlithography," J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 19(4), 040501 (2020) — a Tier-1 peer-reviewed paper. The claim clears the sourcing floor, but the paper's full text sits behind the SPIE Digital Library paywall and was not read directly in this headless promotion (no web access), so only the title and the capture's paraphrase currently ground the note.

Why it matters

The attribution ruling is the load-bearing, citable part of the note — the tidy "Abbe's own 1870s formula now runs the modern fab" line that closes the capture's arc. Tidy is exactly when to read the primary. Before this appears in any draft, the paper's actual conclusion and its precise language should be confirmed verbatim, along with the reasoning for why the projection-imaging case is Abbe's rather than Rayleigh's.

What would answer it

• The Yen (2020) full text (DOI 10.1117/1.JMM.19.4.040501): confirm it concludes the projection-lithography resolution formula (≈ 0.5·λ/NA) is properly attributed to Abbe's diffraction theory, and capture the exact wording of that conclusion for the note's source_quote.
• Confirm the k1·λ/NA vs. Rayleigh-criterion distinction the paper draws, and whether the "half the wavelength" coefficient is Yen's framing or a simplification.
• Independently sanity-check the uncontested background figures folded into the note (436nm g-line → 13.5nm EUV; HVM circa 2018–2019) against a primary lithography-history source.

Candidate next moves

File beside the vault's misattribution cluster — claim-linnainmaa-priority-not-paternity, myth-werbos-invented-backpropagation — as another instance of a formula's popular name diverging from its originator; a future MOC on "contested attributions in the history of formulas" may want all of these.

Progress log

• 2026-09-08 — Partially answered by 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-07-does-yen-2020-actually-conclude-the-microlithography-resolution.md. Recovered Yen's own abstract verbatim, identically, from two independent third-party mirrors (Semantic Scholar API, ivySCI) and groundedness-checked it: "it was Abbe rather than Rayleigh who definitively stated the 0.5λNA resolution limit for the minimum pitch first, using an approach more relevant to projection imaging..." First bullet above is now resolved — the attribution and its exact wording are confirmed, folded into claim-abbe-not-rayleigh-formula-sets-lithography-resolution-limit's source_quote and audit_status. Still open: SPIE's article page (Incapsula bot-block) and a ResearchGate mirror (HTTP 403) both remain unreachable, so the k1·λ/NA-vs-0.5-coefficient distinction and the actual physics argument for why Abbe's method suits projection imaging (bullets two and three above) are unread. Status stays open.