Focus and exposure parameters may be controlled in a lithographic process for manufacturing microelectronics by creating a complementary tone pattern of shapes and spaces in a resist film on a substrate. Corresponding dimensions of the resist shape and space are measured and the adequacy of focus or exposure dose are determined as a function of the measured dimensions. Etching parameters may also be controlled by creating a complementary tone pattern of etched shapes and spaces on a substrate. C...

Blades pivotally attached together linked to push rods and inserted into an illumination field, energy or flux. The blades extend longitudinally along the length of a rectangular illumination field or slit used to image a reticle onto a photosensitive substrate. The blades controllably adjust the width of the rectangular illumination field to modify the illumination intensity or energy provided to a photosensitive substrate. The illumination field is scanned across the photosensitive substrate t...

A print control for flexographic printing, particularly a flexographic printing form comprising a print control element, and a process for producing such a flexographic printing form.

A process for device fabrication is disclosed. In the process, optical lithography is used to introduce an image of a desired pattern into an energy sensitive material. In the process, a filter element is provided. The filter element has at least two regions of different transmittance, each region denominated an aperture. The regions are selected by obtaining information about the desired pattern and an optical lithographic tool that will be used to introduce the image of the desired pattern int...

A method to achieve good stepper focus and exposure over an entire wafer for a particular mask level before the start of a product run is described. This method can also be used to produce a characterization of lens field curvature (i.e., a surface of optimum focus across the lens) and to characterize lens astigmatism, defocus sensitivity, relative resolution, and other characteristics, and to check the stepper for optical column tilt. The process prevents the complexities of resist development ...

Aberrations may be introduced in mirror surfaces used in a lithography system utilizing a reflective mask to compensate for adverse optical effects associated with reflective masks. A spherical aberration may be introduced to compensate for a shift in the location of best focus. A coma aberration may be introduced to compensate for a pattern shift.

A focus measurement method uses a specially designed pattern to measure the best focus of the exposure process. The specially designed pattern is a binary mask layout of the bar-in-bar pattern, which comprises two rectangles having the same center of gravity. When the bar-in-bar pattern is transferred to a photoresist, the centers of gravity of the two rectangles will shift based on focus setting. Then, by fitting the function of the shift for the focus setting to a second order polynomial equat...

Points for calculation are set at uniform intervals on an ideal lattice set over a pattern area on a reticle. An amount of light incident on a slit-shaped illumination area on a lens is measured with an integrator sensor. An amount of heat absorbed by the reticle according to the position in a scanning direction is calculated on the basis of a pattern presence ratio on the reticle, and an amount of thermal expansion at each point for calculation is calculated on the basis of the calculated amoun...

The object of the present invention is to provide a photolithography process for use in the photolithography system compensated based upon the calibrating parameter values which are fresh and not obsolete, by determining whether a predetermined time period expires from the time when the calibrating parameter values are obtained until the time when an actual production lot is processed, and by updating the calibrating parameter values if they are obsolete.

A monitoring method of a developing solution for lithographic printing plates, which comprises, when a large number of lithographic printing plates are processed by use of an automatic developing processor, adding a tracing substance stable under alkaline conditions to light-sensitive layers of the lithographic printing plates, or one or both of the developing solution which has been provided at the beginning of development and a development replenisher, and then measuring the amount of said tra...