Projection exposure method and apparatus
AssigneeNikon Corporation
InventorTetsuo Taniguchi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An exposure apparatus comprises an illumination optical system for irradiating an illuminating light onto a mask having a plurality of patterns for which pattern forming conditions differ from one another, and a projection optical system for projecting images of said plurality of patterns onto a photosensitive substrate, a device for compensating imaging errors of pattern images to be projected onto said substrate, and a control system for controlling the operation of said compensating device in accordance with imaging errors of said plurality of pattern images so that said plurality of pattern images may be projected in specified imaging characteristics.
Claims18
A projection exposure apparatus, comprising:
- an illumination optical system for irradiating illuminating light to a mask having a plurality of patterns, of which forming conditions are different from each other;
- a projection optical system for projecting images of said plurality of patterns simultaneously onto a photosensitive substrate;
- a correcting device for simultaneously correcting imaging errors of said pattern images;
- and
- a controller for controlling an operation of the correcting device such that each of the imaging errors is corrected so as not to exceed a predetermined value.
A projection exposure apparatus, comprising:
- a projection optical system for projecting a plurality of pattern images of a mask simultaneously onto a photosensitive substrate, said pattern images having respective distribution states of imaging beams on a pupil plane that are different from each other;
- a device for detecting a correction amount of a single imaging error common to said pattern images, based on the distribution states of the imaging beams;
- and
- an adjusting device for simultaneously changing the imaging conditions of said pattern images in accordance with the detected correction amount.
A projection exposure apparatus, comprising:
- a projection optical system for projecting images of plural patterns of a mask simultaneously onto a substrate, said patterns having imaging light distributions on a pupil plane that are different from each other;
- and
- a device for moving at least one of said mask, an optical element of said projection optical system, and said substrate in accordance with a single correction amount common to said images so as to correct different errors of said images.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.