The drive towards < 0.5 μm design rules in silicon device fabrication has led to the emergence of evaluating lithographic technologies based on the use of x-rays as the exposure source. X-rays (centered @ λ = 1.4 nm) emanating from a pulsed laser point source based system has been used for resist design purposes. Concurrent with the development of this exposure source has been the search for a resist which will provide high sensitivity ( ≤ 20 mJ/cm2) and resolution. The vast majority of resists in which the x-ray induced chemistry is amplified are viewed as the most promising class of materials to meet the high sensitivity requirement. Central to these so-called chemically amplified resists is the exposure induced generation of an acid catalyst. The acid during the subsequent post exposure bake (PEB) processing step removes a functionality in the resist resulting in film loss in the exposed regions and dissolution of those areas in the aqueous base developer. To date, the majority of such resists are multi-component which adds complexity to processing of these materials. Chemically amplified resists based on poly 4- t-butoxycarbonyloxystyrene and sulfur dioxide are shown to minimize this complexityThe novel insitu generation of the catalytic acidic species is presented, and the performance of these resists is improved through the use of model compounds based on arylmethyl sulfones.