Silicon lithography has to hit a wall way before single atom sizes. For a start, silicon semiconducting is a probabilistic effect and only happen on populations.
Photons at usable frequencies are much larger than atoms. Just notice that lithography is currently moving into what they call "extreme UV" (and most people call X-rays) because the UV photons are much larger than the features of current top of line chips.
>For a start, silicon semiconducting is a probabilistic effect and only happen on populations
Is that a fundamental theoretical limit like the uncertainty principles or is it a matter of engineering advancements to figure out how these forces work? I can imagine carefully positioning two atoms (maybe moving?) to obtain similar effects.
Photons at usable frequencies are much larger than atoms. Just notice that lithography is currently moving into what they call "extreme UV" (and most people call X-rays) because the UV photons are much larger than the features of current top of line chips.