Distributed, multiple variable shaped electron beam column for high throughput maskless lithography

Abstract

Articles you may be interested inMultiaxis and multibeam technology for high throughput maskless E-beam lithography J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 30, 06FC01 (2012); 10.1116/1.4767275 Distributed axis electron beam technology for maskless lithography and defect inspection J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 21, 2834 (2003); 10.1116/1.1629291High-throughput electron-beam lithography with a raster-scanned, variably shaped beam

Use of microfabricated cold field emitters in sub-100 nm maskless lithography

“…As pixel size decreases and wafer size increases, a single beam electron beam lithography tool cannot meet the throughout requirements of chip manufacturers. Some have proposed multibeam systems with multiple columns and a single beam per column: Chang et al 1 and Groves and Kendall, 2 Yasuda et al, 3 Schneider et al, 4 and others propose using multiple beams in a single column. Our approach is to combine these two approaches in a multicolumn and multibeam electron beam lithography system (MϫM™).…”

Review on Micro- and Nanolithography Techniques and their Applications

“…Therefore, these two techniques are normally used for fabricating prototypes of nanoscale structures and devices. To increase the system throughput, multiaxis electron beam lithography [26,27] has been proposed. So far, the deployment of this technique in manufacturing process is still limited due to the difficulty in developing practical electron beam sources [1].…”

“…The forms of masked lithography include photolithography [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], soft lithography [11][12][13], and nanoimprint lithography [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. On the other hand, maskless lithography, such as electron beam lithography [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29], focused ion beam lithography [30][31][32][33], and scanning probe lithography [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44], fabricates arbitrary patterns by a serial writing without the use of masks. These techniques create patterns in a serial manner which allows an ultrahigh-resolution patterning of arbitrary shapes with a minimum feature size as small as a few nanometers.…”

Parallel electron-beam-induced deposition using a multi-beam scanning electron microscope

“…However, in order to enhance the throughput, one could write with many electron beams in parallel. Several authors have proposed and/or built such multibeam lithography systems, [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] which can be divided roughly into four types: (i) multiple optical columns with multiple sources, [10][11][12] (ii) single column with multiple sources, [13][14][15] (iii) single column with single source, [16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and (iv) multiple cold field emitters in close proximity to the wafer. 23 Although the latter system seems attractive, because it does not require any optics, it has not been demonstrated yet.…”