Excimer lasers are widely used in lithography, industrial manufacturing, and medical and scientific fields. Particularly, their indexes such as wavelength, linewidth, energy and dose have great advantages in the field of lithography, therefore can help the lithography machine to obtain smaller image resolution and smoother light exposure. Now excimer lasers have already been used in 7 nm node in semiconductor manufacturing, and are still improving to drive for the lower cost-of-ownership and higher productivity and yield, which promote the development of the whole semiconductor manufacturing industry. Firstly, this paper briefly introduces the principle of excimer lasers, reviews the development history of excimer lasers, investigates the application status of excimer laser in lithography and the mainstream models of foreign excimer lithography light sources, and then focuses on some key technologies of excimer lasers used in lithography. The future trend of applications of excimer lasers in lithography and other links of integrated circuit manufacturing is prospected, which provides a useful reference for the independent and controllable development of excimer lasers in China.