Projection electron beam lithography employing the SCALPEL (scattering with angular limitation projection electron beam lithography) technique appears to be a potential successor to optical lithography for linewidths below 0.25 micrometers . An examination of previous projection electron-beam systems reveals that their lack of success was due to a combination of factors. The most significant of these were the lack of a suitable mask, and the use of an architecture mimicking optical tools. SCALPEL lifts the restrictions on operating voltage imposed by the absorbing stencil masks used previously. Consideration of the tool design from the system perspective suggests that a more fruitful approach to the problem is the use of a step-and-scan architecture. This employs dynamically corrected optics, and takes advantage of the ability of charged particles to be manipulated in an effectively inertialess manner. This obviates the need to produce a full-field projection optic, and also allows for correction of the printed image to compensate for chip-site distortions.

Date Published: 3 September 1993
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 2014, Charged-Particle Optics, (3 September 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.155703

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2014:
Charged-Particle Optics
William B. Thompson; Mitsugu Sato; Albert V. Crewe, Editor(s)