A concept for maskless digital electrostatically focused e-beam array direct-write lithography (DEAL) has been developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This concept incorporates a digitally addressable field-emission array (DAFEA) integrated into a logic and control circuit implemented as an integrated circuit. The design goal is for 3000000 individually addressable field-emission cathodes with a 4 mum by 8 mum pitch on a single similar to1 cm(2) integrated circuit. The DAFEA design includes built-in electrostatic focusing for each emitter with feedback dose-control circuits to drive each emitter for tightly controlled electron delivery. With the electrostatic focusing, an array of similar to460 of these integrated circuits (up to 30 across by similar to23 rows deep) are suspended on a back plane similar to100 mum above a 300 mm semiconductor wafer. This arrangement could lithographically expose an entire 300 mm wafer, with 30 nm pixels, in less than 45 s, with every wafer pixel redundantly illuminated eight times allowing gray-scale edge placement. Only similar to1.5 cm of wafer motion is required for complete wafer exposure. High-speed data paths are proposed to program the patterns into the DAFEA to be written to the wafer. The DEAL concept thus requires no mask and can be extended to the 10 nm linewidth regime.