A projection apparatus for microlithography for imaging an object field includes an objective, one or a plurality of manipulators for manipulating one or a plurality of optical elements of the objective, a control unit for regulating or controlling the one or the plurality of manipulators, a determining device for determining at least one or a plurality of image aberrations of the objective, a memory comprising upper bounds for one or a plurality of specifications of the objective, including upper bounds for image aberrations and/or movements for the manipulators, wherein when determining an overshooting of one of the upper bounds by one of the image aberrations and/or an overshooting of one of the upper bounds by one of the manipulator movements by regulation or control of at least one manipulator within at most 30000 ms, or 10000 ms, or 5000 ms, or 1000 ms, or 200 ms, or 20 ms, or 5 ms, or 1 ms, an undershooting of the upper bounds can be effected.

Disclosed is a lithography system. The lithography system includes a radiation source for providing radiation energy; a reticle stage configured to hold a reticle; an imaging lens module configured to direct the radiation energy onto a substrate to form an image of the reticle; and a leveling sensor configured to receive a leveling signal from an exposure field of the reticle secured on the reticle stage.

A photolithography method includes instructing an optical source to produce a pulsed light beam; scanning the pulsed light beam across a wafer of a lithography exposure apparatus to expose the wafer with the pulsed light beam; during scanning of the pulsed light beam across the wafer, receiving a characteristic of the pulsed light beam at the wafer; receiving a determined value of a physical property of a wafer for a particular pulsed light beam characteristic; and based on the pulsed light beam characteristic that is received during scanning and the received determined value of the physical property, modifying a performance parameter of the pulsed light beam during scanning across the wafer.

An immersion lithographic apparatus is disclosed that includes a fluid handling system configured to confine immersion liquid to a localized space between a final element of a projection system and a substrate and/or table and a gas supplying device configured to supply gas with a solubility in immersion liquid of greater than 510.sup.3 mol/kg at 20 C. and 1 atm total pressure to an area adjacent the space.

A projection exposure apparatus includes a projection lens, a wavefront manipulator and a wavefront measuring device for measuring a wavefront in the projection lens. The wavefront measuring device includes a Moir grating arrangement having an object grating and an image grating which are designed to be arranged in an object plane and an image plane, respectively, of the projection lens. The object grating and the image grating are coordinated with one another in a manner true to scale in such a way as to generate a Moir superimposition pattern from an imaging of the object grating onto the image plane and the image grating. The Moir grating arrangement is designed in such a way as to simultaneously generate the Moir superimposition pattern for a plurality of field points of an object field in the object plane and/or of an image field in the image plane.

A pattern generating method includes, generating a first bit map from inputted pattern data. Characteristics of a plurality of beams for exposing a pattern on a substrate are analyzed, each of the plurality of beams being designated to correspond to one of a plurality of grids in the first bit map. The pattern data is corrected such that at least one of the plurality of beams is designated to expose at least a portion of the pattern on the substrate. A second bit map is generated from the corrected pattern data. The substrate is patterned using the plurality of beams according to the designation of the second bit map.

An apparatus and method for measuring thermo-mechanically induced reticle distortion or other distortion in a lithography device enables detecting distortion at the nanometer level in situ. The techniques described use relatively simple optical detectors and data acquisition electronics that are capable of monitoring the distortion in real time, during operation of the lithography equipment. Time-varying anisotropic distortion of a reticle can be measured by directing slit patterns of light having different orientations to the reticle and detecting reflected, transmitted or diffracted light from the reticle. In one example, corresponding segments of successive time measurements of secondary light signals are compared as the reticle scans a substrate at a reticle stage speed of about 1 m/s to detect temporal offsets and other features that correspond to spatial distortion.

A projection objective of a microlithographic projection exposure apparatus contains a plurality of optical elements arranged in N>2 successive sections A.sub.1 to A.sub.N of the projection objective which are separated from one another by pupil planes or intermediate image planes. According to the invention, in order to correct a wavefront deformation, at least two optical elements each have an optically active surface locally reprocessed aspherically. A first optical element is in this case arranged in one section A.sub.j, j=1 . . . N and a second optical element is arranged in another section A.sub.k, k=1 . . . N, the magnitude difference |kj| being an odd number.

According to one embodiment, an alignment method includes calculating a position gap of a predetermined point in a device area of a wafer based on a stress applied to the device area, and correcting an exposure condition in a lithography process of the device area based on the position gap of the predetermined point.

According to one aspect of the present invention, a multiple charged particle beam lithography apparatus includes a circuitry configured to divide a lithography region of a target object into a plurality of pixel regions having a mesh shape and being irradiated with multiple charged particle beams; a circuitry configured to group the plurality of pixel regions into a plurality of pixel blocks configured with at least one pixel region; a circuitry configured to correct position deviation in unit of a pixel block for each pixel block of the plurality of pixel blocks; a dose calculating processing circuitry configured to calculate a dose being irradiated on the pixel concerned for each pixel where the position deviation is corrected; and a mechanism configured to write a pattern on the target object by using the multiple charged particle beams so that each pixel is illuminated with the calculated dose.