Electron beam exposure system and an apparatus for carrying out the same

An electron beam exposure system for projecting an image on a material at a plurality of locations with respect to said material, said image being composed of a plurality of patterns of regions to be exposed, said patterns being arranged at predetermined locations with respect to said image and said regions being arranged at predetermined locations with respect to the corresponding pattern, at least one of said patterns appearing more than once within said image so that not all of the patterns forming said image are unique, comprising

• first memory means for storing pattern data for each unique pattern in at least one image, the pattern data for each pattern corresponding to the dimensions of each region forming said pattern and to the position of each region forming said pattern with respect to said pattern;
• second memory means for storing image data for said at least one image, said image data corresponding to the position with respect to said at least one image at which each unique pattern forming said at least one image appears on every occurrence thereof;
• electron beam exposure column means for projecting an electron beam having a rectangular cross-section, said electron beam exposure column means including positioning means for positioning said material for exposure to said electron beam, first deflection means for controlling the dimensions of said electron beam, and second deflection means for controlling the position of said electron beam;
• and control means operatively connected to said first and second memory means and to said electron beam exposure column means for projecting said at least one image, said control means comprising first means for moving said positioning means to allow material supported thereon to achieve said at least one image, second means for combining said pattern data and said image data to derive a position signal corresponding to the position of each region within said at least one image to be exposed, said position signal being communicated to said second deflection means, and third means for deriving from said pattern data a dimension signal corresponding to the rectangular dimensions of each region within said at least one image to be exposed, said dimension signal being communicated to said first deflection means.