When you get to a certain point, the lasers can't be focused any smaller. The current state of the art is 200 nanometers. Incidentally, a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Each beam spot would fill about 20 to 40 nanometers. The key to the technology is the amorphous diamond emitter, which is what Thomas calls an electromagnetic cathode coated with amorphous diamond.
Amorphous diamond lacks hydrogen, which makes it harder.
With a successful AFEA process, Thomas says the chip manufacturers could realize incredible yields of chip density. You could fire six million or so programmed emissions at once at a chip. That's why we say it's like going from an analog to digital technology. In less than one second, you could write a square centimeter with 100-nanometer features. A chip wafer would have 300 one-centimeter squares on it.