A state-of-the-art proximity x-ray lithography aligner was developed for the Defense Advanced Lithography Program (DALP) and installed in IBM's Advanced Lithography Facility (ALF) in 1995. This aligner was designed to satisfy the manufacturing requirements for 250 and 180 nm groundrule electronic devices, such as 256 Mbit and 1Gbit DRAMs, while connected to synchrotron beamlines which use scanning beam systems for x-ray flux delivery.