The most widespread industrial application of ArF excimer lasers has been in deep-ultraviolet photolithography[2][3] for the manufacturing of microelectronic devices (i.e., semiconductor integrated circuits or "chips").
[2][3][10] With advances made in equipment technology in the following two decades, semiconductor electronic devices fabricated using excimer laser lithography reached $400 billion in annual production.
[11] Recently, through the use of a novel diffractive diffuse system composed of two microlens arrays, surface micromachining by ArF laser on fused silica has been performed with submicrometer accuracy.
As of 2024, their focus was on building an implosion facility to design and test lasers capable of sufficiently rapid firing rates, using solid state pulse power.
[14] The light emitted by the ArF is invisible to the human eye, so additional safety precautions are necessary when working with this laser to avoid stray beams.