To meet the requirement of the current integrated circuit industry, atomic layer etching (ALE) technology has been broadly studied and developed. By dividing the whole etching process into several independent and self-limiting sub-process, ALE can achieve etching in atomic-level precision and better control in the etching process than traditional continuous etching technology, such as reactive ion etching. In this review, the characteristics of ALE are briefly summarized and five ways to improve the performance of ALE are introduced in detail. Attentionally, the main problem of the industrial application of ALE is how to make the trade-off between the time-consuming and the quality of etching. An improved ALE method with multiple temperature windows is proposed in this paper, which can theoretically shorten the time of each etching cycle in ALE.