Charged-particle beam exposure system and method

An exposure system of a multi-beam type in which a stage mounting an object to be exposed is continuously moved in a first direction, and charged-particle beams are controlled so as to form a desired beam shape as a whole, and in which a pattern is formed on the object by deflecting the charged-particle beams by a main deflector and a sub deflector, the charged-particle beams exposing an exposure field including a main field and subfields, said exposure system comprising:

• first means for dividing a subfield into cell stripes corresponding to rectangular areas which can be exposed by once raster-scanning the sub deflector, each cell stripe having a corresponding pattern and being sized for the pattern so that different sized pattern have different sized cell stripes, cell stripes having the same pattern being grouped together so that said same pattern commonly corresponds to each of the grouped cell stripes, patterns being represented by pattern data;
• second means for storing the pattern data obtained for the cell stripes into a memory together with data indicating the correspondence of the patterns to the cell stripes;
• third means for sorting, in an exposure sequence, position data indicative of positions of the cell stripes together with address information concerning the memory in which the pattern data is stored, so that the main deflector deflects the charged-particle beams in a zigzag exposure sequence;
• fourth means for calculating deflection amount data relating to the main deflector and the sub deflector from the position data;
• and
• fifth means for drawing patterns on the object by using the pattern data and the deflection amount data.

An exposure system of a multi-beam type in which a stage mounting an object to be exposed is continuously moved in a first direction, and charged-particle beams are controlled so as to form a desired beam shape as a whole, and in which a pattern is formed on the object by deflecting the charged-particle beams by a main deflector and a sub deflector, the charged-particle beams exposing an exposure field including a main field and subfields, said exposure system comprising:

• an electronic circuit to divide a subfield into cell stripes corresponding to rectangular areas which can be exposed by once raster-scanning the sub deflector, each cell stripe having a corresponding pattern and being sized for the pattern so that different sized patterns have different sized cell stripes, cell strips having the same pattern being grouped together so that said same pattern commonly corresponds to each of the grouped cell stripes, patterns being represented by pattern data;
• a memory to store the pattern data obtained for the cell stripes together with data indicating the correspondence of the patterns to the cell stripes;
• a sorter to sort, in an exposure sequence, position data indicative of positions of the cell stripes together with address information concerning the memory in which the pattern data is stored, so that the main deflector deflects the charged-particle beams in a zigzag exposure sequence;
• a second electronic circuit to calculate deflection amount data relating to the main deflector and the sub deflector from the position data;
• and
• an apparatus to draw patterns on the object by using the pattern data and the deflection amount data.