ELECTRON-BEAM CELL PROJECTION LITHOGRAPHY - A NEW HIGH-THROUGHPUT ELECTRON-BEAM DIRECT-WRITING TECHNOLOGY USING A SPECIALLY TAILORED SI APERTURE

Electron-beam cell projection lithography realizes a high throughput capability suitable for ultra-large-scale integration (ULSI) manufacturing. This method makes it possible to drastically reduce the number of electron-beam exposure shots by utilizing a specially shaped beam. This shaped beam is created by an Si aperture which forms various shapes, coinciding with the array of each unit cell of an ULSI pattern. The aperture also forms a rectangular shape for conventional variable-shaped method in order to create random patterns. An aperture made of a single crystal of Si is fabricated using ULSI process techniques. As the reduction ratio of electron optics is larger than that of an optical stepper, pattern size errors caused by aperture inaccuracies can be reduced significantly.