Electron-beam microcolumn fabrication and testing

Abstract

In this paper, we report the improvement of a process for full microfabrication of miniaturized electron lenses specially design for low-energy (100 eV) lithography tools. The main advantages of this technique are the following. It is batch processing oriented, meaning that lenses can be easily built in a full wafer fabrication. With this procedure it is possible to develop a completely integrated process for machining arrays of lenses. Lens bores are aligned using an electron lithography process, resulting in highly accurate positioning. Finally, the source lens chip has not only one but several sets of lenses with different aperture sizes, each producing a different beam diameter. A scheme is proposed with which the appropriate lens can be selected by means of a deflection system.