The researchers have come up with a way to focus a beam of light on a scale far smaller than was previously possible, allowing chip makers to etch even tinier circuits onto their chips, said Rajesh Menon, a research engineer at MIT's department of electrical engineering and computer science.

Chip makers depend on light to draw circuit patterns on chips, but most of the techniques used today cannot produce patterns that are smaller than the wavelength of light itself.

The MIT researchers came up with a way to draw extremely narrow lines by combining beams of light at different wavelengths. They used so-called interference patterns, in which different wavelengths of light sometimes reinforce each other, and in other places cancel each other out.

They say the technique, which is still several years away from commercial use, could allow chip makers to build interconnects and transistors as narrow as a single molecule, or just two to three nanometers.

"If you make your transistors smaller, they typically work faster, you get more functionality," and the cost of manufacturing each chip goes down, Menon said.