Project Brief
General Competition (March 1991)Fabrication and Testing of Precision Optics for Soft X-Ray Projection LithographyAttacking a key problem limiting projection x-ray lithography (needed for future generations of very compact integrated circuits): the manufacture, testing, and assembly of relatively large-scale x-ray optics. An estimated 75 percent of the ATP funds will go to small-business subcontractors. Sponsor: Lucent Technologies, Inc. (formerly AT&T Bell Laboratories)Crawfords Corner RoadHolmdel, NJ 07733
Projection x-ray lithography is a key enabling technology for future generations of extremely dense, compact microelectronic circuits. Producing ICs with critical dimensions six times smaller than today's state-of-the-art, it will lead to significant improvements in a vast range of commercial products. X-ray mirrors, used to image patterns from mask to wafer, are the most important optical elements in such a system. At present, the technology is severely limited by our inability to measure directly and hence control the surface quality of these mirrors. A practical projection x-ray lithography system would require relatively large (~300 sq. cm) mirrors, both spherical and aspherical, with rms ("average") surface errors of less than 0.5 nanometers over the entire surface -- about six times better than the state-of-the-art. This proposal is to develop the technology necessary to test, fabricate, assemble, and align aspherical x-ray mirrors in an imaging system with resolution limited only by the diffraction of the x-rays. In addition to benefiting the electronics and semiconductor industries, the technology would have important applications in high-density plasma research, x-ray lasers and microscopy, space optics, and perhaps xuv- and x-ray free-electron lasers.
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