Lithography (from Greek ????? - lithos, "stone" + ????? - graph?, "to write") is a method for printing using a plate or stone with a completely smooth surface. By contrast, in intaglio printing plate is engraved, etched or stippled to make cavities to contain the printing ink, and in woodblock printing and letterpress ink is applied to the raised surfaces of letters or images. Lithography uses oil or fat and gum arabic to divide the smooth surface into hydrophobic regions which accept the ink, and hydrophilic regions which reject it and thus become the background. Invented by Bavarian author Alois Senefelder in 1796,[1][2] it can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or another suitable material. Most books, indeed all types of high-volume text, are now printed using offset lithography, the most common form of printing production. The word "lithography" also refers to photolithography, a microfabrication technique used to make integrated circuits and microelectromechanical systems, although those techniques have more in common with etching than with lithography.

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The process of imprinting patterns on materials. Derived from Greek, the term lithography means literally "writing on stone." Nanolithography refers to etching, writing, or printing at the microscopic level, where the dimensions of characters are on the order of nanometers (units of 10 -9 meter, or millionths of a millimeter).

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A general top down method to write structures on a surface with a certain probe. This probe can be light in the case of the common photolithography or electrons when using electron-beam lithography for example. Literally, it means stone writing (Greek).

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A process for creating chemical patterns on a surface.

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Literally, "writing on small rocks;" the process of copying a pattern onto a surface using light, electron beams, or X-rays.

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