A high speed, high precision electron beam lithography system (system design) J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 3, 94 (1985); 10.1116/1.583299Yaw corrected precision X-Y stage for high-throughput electron-beam lithography systems A high speed electron beam lithography system
A new X-ray mask inspection method using replicated resist patterns is proposed.
It is able to detect fatal opaque defects on the back surface of the mask and at the
bottom of the hole pattern, in addition to those on the front surface. It can also
ignore transparent defects on the mask. This method is useful even for defect detection
on a single-die mask through die-to-die comparison. For the false process defects
occurring during the replication process, a discrimination procedure using a 2-step
die-to-die comparison is proposed. In inspection tests with SEMSpec, we investigate
the relation between the detection sensitivity to small resist defects and the conductive-coating thickness on them.
In order to improve pattern precision and overlay accuracy in synchrotron radiation (SR) X-ray lithography, it is required that a stepper be very stable mechanically and have a high positioning accuracy with regard to both the mask-to-wafer gap and the stage. It is important to clarify the effect of mechanical vibrations on patterning characteristics. We investigated the effect of mechanical vibrations on line-and-space patterns with dimensions of less than 0.2 µ m by carrying out exposure experiments and patterning simulations. Strong vibrations generally increase the line width, thereby reducing the dose margin. The amplitude of the vibrations should be kept at less than a quarter of the minimum feature size in order to prevent reduction of the dose margin. Furthermore, we developed a simple method of calculating resist pattern profiles from the intensity profile, the thickness of the remaining resist, and the electron scattering depth. The change in line width obtained in this way was almost the same as the measured change.
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