7.4: Dose control circuits for digitally addressable VACNF based maskless lithography

Abstract

This paper presents dose control electronics and a digital addressing method for the vertically aligned carbon nanofiber (VACNF) based massively parallel maskless e-beam lithography system. The Digital Electrostatically focused e-beam Array direct-write Lithography (DEAL) developed by our research group in Oak Ridge National Laboratory [1] incorporates digitally addressable field emission arrays (DAFEAs) of the VACNFs which function as the lithography heads during the exposure of the resist. A logic and memory control circuit (LMC) and a dose control circuit (DCC) have been designed to write a desired pattern and control the dose of electrons, respectively. This paper summarizes our previous works on different versions of the DCCs [2-4] designed and optimized in the effort of obtaining a fixed and optimum dosage with the smaller circuit area.