What happened
- On October 23, 2026, Nature Communications published work by seven authors from the Department of Integrated Circuits at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Zhangjiang Laboratory.
- They propose a “momentum relay” architecture that splits large deflections of light across two cascaded flat optical elements.
- On a platform using 532-nanometre light they reached an effective numerical aperture of 0.80 and resolved features of about 555 nanometres across a 100-micrometre field.
- They then took the idea to 13.24 nanometres, in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) band, with a xenon plasma source: two Fresnel zone plates with an aperture of 0.33 each synthesised an effective aperture of about 0.53.
Why it matters
- Numerical aperture sets how fine the lines a lithography system can print on a chip are. Raising it with compact flat optics is a different route from conventional optics.
- The technical contribution is to relax the feature-size and sampling requirements each element must meet, which is what held flat optics back at high aperture.
- It is a lab experiment with a compact source, not a production tool. Moving to a fab requires power, throughput and precision the work does not address.
The number
0.53. Effective numerical aperture reached at 13.24 nanometres by combining two plates of 0.33.
Context
According to the authors, high-aperture EUV flat optics struggle because the phase gradients at their edges are so steep that sampling falls short. That lowers phase fidelity and efficiency at high angles. The two-stage relay shares out that load.
What’s next
- The authors present it as a compact route to high-aperture EUV projection; they announce no industrial prototype.
- No deadlines announced.
Bottom line
Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 chip and committed 20 GW of compute by 2032. And quantum-dot photodiodes matched InGaAs ones with cheap ink: chipmaking is also being explored off the established routes.
Sources
- Nature Communications — High-numerical-aperture extreme ultraviolet flat optics via a cascaded momentum relay (DOI 10.1038/s41467-026-78214-4; October 23, 2026)
- Cover image: DrHughManning, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Edited by Rodrigo Cornejo. How we select and verify: who writes these notes.
