• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.86-93
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• 2008

This paper presents a design of the reticle stage for lithography using VCM(Voice Coil Motor) and kinematic analysis. The stage has three axes for X,Y,${\theta}_z$, those actuated by three VCM's individually. The reticle stage has cross coupled relations between X,Y,${\theta}_z$ axes, and the closed solution of the forward/inverse kinematics were solved to get an accurate reference position. The reticle stage for lithography was designed for reaching both high accuracy and long stroke, which was $0.1{\mu}m$ (X,Y)/ $1{\mu}rad({\theta}_z)$ accuracies and relatively long strokes about 2mm (X,Y) and 2 degrees(${\theta}_z$). Also this research presents a rotational compensation algorithm for the precision gap sensor for the stage. Simulation results show the overall performance of the whole algorithm and the improvement quantity of the rotational compensation algorithm.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Machine Tool Engineers
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.51-58
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• 2008

This paper presents a new design of the precision stage for the reticle in lithography process and a low hunting control method for the stage. The stage has three axes for X, Y, ${\theta}_z$ those actuated by three voice coil motors individually. The designed reticle stage system has three gap sensors and voice coil motors, and supported by four air bearings and the forward/inverse kinematics of the stage were solved to get an accurate reference position. When a stage is in regulating control mode, there always exist small fluctuations(stage hunting) in the stage movement. Because the low stage hunting characteristic is very important in recent lithography and nano-level applications, a special regulating controller for ultra low hunting is proposed in this paper. Also this research proposed the 2-step transmission system for preventing the noise infection from environmental devices. The experimental results showed the proposed regulating control system reduced hunting noise as 35nm(rms) when a conventional PID generates 77nm(rms) in the same mechanical system. Besides the reticle stage has 100nm linear accuracy and $1{\mu}rad$ rotation accuracy at the control frequency of 8kHz.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1993.10a
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• pp.243-248
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• 1993

New methodology for fiducial alignment is proposed to improve the alignment accuracy in wafer steppers. The positioning error is detected by PSD(Position Sensitive Detector)when 2-dimensional vernier patterns on a reticle on a reticle are projected on the fiducial marks of wafer stage. The width and period of vernier patterns are deter mined to get the highest S/N ratio for the exposure wavelength 248.4nm of KrF excimer laser. This new method has an advantage of higher accuracy and faster alignment over the conventional one.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.15-21
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• 1993

This paper describes the design and development of a KrF excimer laser stepper and discusses the detailed system parameters and characterization data obtained from the performance test. We have developed a deep UV step-and-repeat system, operating at 248 nm, by retrofitting a commercial modules such as KrF excimer laser, precision wafer stage and fused silica illumination and 5X projection optics of numerical aperture 0.42. What we have developed, to the basic structure, are wafer alignment optics, reticle alignment system, autofocusing/leveling mechanisms and environment chamber. Finally, all these subsystem were integrated under the control of microprocessor-based controllers and computer. The wafer alignment system comprises the OFF-AXIS and the TTL alignment. The OFF-AXIS alignment system was realized with two kinds of optics. One is the magnification system with the image processing technique and the other is He-Ne laser diffraction type system using the alignment grating on the wafer. 'The TTL alignment system employs a dual beam inteferometric method, which takes advantages of higher diffraction efficiency compared with other TTL type alignment systems. As the results, alignment accuracy for OFF-AXIS and TTL alignment system were obtained within 0.1 $\mu\textrm{m}$/ 3 $\sigma$ for the various substrate on the wafers. The wafer focusing and leveling system is modified version of the conventional systems using position sensitive detectors (PSD). This type of detection method showed focusing and leveling accuracies of about $\pm$ 0.1 $\mu\textrm{m}$ and $\pm$ 0.5 arcsec, respectively. From the CD measurement, we obtained 0.4 $\mu\textrm{m}$ resolution features over the full field with routine use, and 0.3 $\mu\textrm{m}$ resolution was attainable under more strict conditions.