An illumination optical unit for projection lithography illuminates an object field. The illumination optical unit has an optical rod with an entrance area and an exit area for illumination light. The optical rod is configured so that the illumination light is mixed and homogenized at lateral walls of the optical rod by multiple in-stances of total internal reflection. At least one correction area serves to correct a field dependence of an illumination angle distribution when illuminating the object field. The correction area is disposed in the region of the exit area of the optical rod. This can result in an illumination optical unit, in which an unwanted field dependence of a specified illumination angle distribution is reduced or entirely avoided, even in the case of illumination angle distributions with illumination angles deviating extremely from a normal incidence on the object field.

In an optical system for a projection exposure apparatus, the angle space of the illumination radiation of the projection optical unit at the reticle is twice as large in a first direction as the angle space of the illuminating radiation of the illuminating optical unit.

An exposure apparatus according to the present invention includes an illumination optical system including a first optical modulation unit having a plurality of optical modulation elements, a second optical modulation unit having a plurality of optical modulation elements, and an imaging optical system forming optical images on a predetermined plane by using lights from the first optical modulation unit and the second optical modulation unit, and a projection optical system projecting the optical image formed on the predetermined plane onto a substrate.

An optical system includes an illumination optical unit configured to guide illumination radiation along a path to an object plane. The illumination optical unit includes comprising a first facet mirror; a second facet mirror disposed downstream of the first facet mirror along the path; and a condenser mirror. The optical system also includes a projection optical unit configured to image a first article in the object plane onto a second article in an image plane. The image plane is a first distance from the object plane. The condenser mirror a second distance from the object plane. The second distance is greater than the first distance

System and method for monitoring of performance of a mirror array of a digital scanner with a use of a lateral shearing interferometer (operated in either static or a phase-shifting condition) to either simply identify problematic pixels for further troubleshooting or measure the exact magnitude of the mirror's deformation.

A method includes identifying a contamination region of a collector in a light source, positioning a subset of a plurality of movable light-blocking elements around a periphery of a circular aperture of the light source to compensate for the contamination region, and transmitting light from the light source through the circular aperture.

An apparatus comprises an array of light emitting diodes (LEDs), each LED in the array having an asymmetric optical characteristic. The asymmetric optical characteristic of a first subset of LEDs in the array is oriented at an angle of 90, 180, or 270 with respect to the asymmetrical optical characteristic of a second subset of LEDs in the array. The apparatus may be the array of LEDs or an illumination system comprising a light source comprising the array of LEDs. Methods of manufacturing the apparatus are also provided.

The present invention allows more freely setting of the polarization direction of illumination light on an illumination surface of an exposure device. A beam transmission system (121) that transmits, to an exposure device (130), a linearly polarized optical beam (L) output from a free electron laser device (10) includes: an optical beam splitting unit (50) configured to split the optical beam (L) into a first optical beam (L1) and a second optical beam (L2); and a first polarization direction rotating unit (51) configured to rotate the linear polarization direction of the first optical beam (L1).

A method for restoring an illumination system installed in an EUV apparatus is provided.

A light intensity distribution on an irradiation target plane is adjusted to a desired distribution using a light source device that includes a light-emitting diode (LED) array. A light source device that includes an LED array in which a plurality of LED chips is arranged and forms on a predetermined plane a light intensity distribution obtained by superimposing light intensity distributions of light from the plurality of LED chips includes a pair of lens arrays including a plurality of lenses configured to collect light from the plurality of LED chips, wherein a distance between the pair of lens arrays is changed, thereby changing the light intensity distribution to be formed on the predetermined plane.