the liquid is expelled from the housing 103 towards the wafer 101 achieving a similar effect as that of the meniscus and then flows in the catch basins for recycling the present invention results in a number of benefits to a liquid immersion photolithographic system confinement of the liquid is simplified spillage is reduced or eliminated entirely the system may be used both as a wet exposure system with the liquid and as a dry exposure system without the liquid with optics adjustes as appropriate all of these benefits allow the use of existing photolithographic tools and familiar wavelengths to define much smaller features on a semiconductor surface while various embodiments of the present invention have been described above it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example and not limitation it will be apparent to persons skilled in the relevant art that various changes in form and detail can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention the present invention has been described above with the aid of functional building blocks and method steps illustrating the performance of specified functions and relationships thereof the boundaries of these functional building blocks and method steps have been arbitrarily defined herein for the convenience of the description alternate boundaries can be defined so long as the specified functions and relationships thereof are appropriately performed also the order of method steps may be rearranged any such alternate boundaries are thus within the scope and spirit of the claimed invention one skilled in the art will recognize that these functional building blocks can be implemented by discrete components application specific integrated circuits processors executing appropriate software and the like or any combination thereof thus the breadth and scope of the present invention should.