Progress and preliminary results on EB stepper

As Next Generation Lithography (NGL) systems, several systems are proposed. EPL (Electron Beam Projection Lithography) system, which is one of NGL systems using electron beam (EB), is expected to be a most promising candidate, which has a high throughput (>20 wph of a 300 mm wafer) and a high resolution (<70 nm). Many studies on NGL systems have been reported but most of them were limited to basic scientific discussions on the research level. There are few discussions on technical issues on each system. Nikon has developed EPL system (EB Stepper) in collaboration with IBM. The development moves to the system evaluation phase. Discussions on EB Stepper must be technical rather than scientific. In this paper recent progress on EB Stepper will be discussed.