An exposure apparatus exposes a substrate with illumination light via a liquid. A liquid immersion member of the exposure apparatus has a lower surface, a plurality of collection ports, and a plurality of supply ports. The lower surface has an opening through which illumination light passes. The collection ports are arranged at the lower surface to surround the opening, and the supply ports are arranged at the lower surface and between the opening and the collection ports to surround the opening, such that the liquid is supplied via the supply ports onto the substrate while the substrate is arranged opposite to a plane-convex lens of a projection optical system and such that the liquid is collected via the collection ports from the substrate.

A catadioptric projection optical system for forming a reduced image of a first surface (R) on a second surface (W) is a relatively compact projection optical system having excellent imaging performance as well corrected for various aberrations, such as chromatic aberration and curvature of field, and being capable of securing a large effective image-side numerical aperture while suitably suppressing reflection loss on optical surfaces.

An objective having a plurality of optical elements arranged to image a pattern from an object field to an image field at an image-side numerical aperture NA>0.8 with electromagnetic radiation from a wavelength band around a wavelength includes a number N of dioptric optical elements, each dioptric optical element i made from a transparent material having a normalized optical dispersion
n.sub.i=n.sub.i(.sub.0)n.sub.i(.sub.0+1 pm)
for a wavelength variation of 1 pm from a wavelength .sub.0. The objective satisfies the relation $\frac{.Math.\underset{i=1}{\overset{N}{.Math.}}{n}_i\left(s_i-d_i\right).Math.}{{}_0{\mathrm{NA}}^4}A$
for any ray of an axial ray bundle originating from a field point on an optical axis in the object field, where s.sub.i is a geometrical path length of a ray in an ith dioptric optical element having axial thickness d.sub.i and the sum extends on all dioptric optical elements of the objective. Where A=0.2 or below, spherochromatism is sufficiently corrected.

Provided are an exposure system that simply manufactures an alignment film corresponding to an optical element where a focal length continuously changes, a method of forming an alignment film using the exposure system, a method of manufacturing an optical element using the alignment film, and an optical element. The exposure system includes: a light source; a beam splitter that splits light emitted from the light source; a beam combiner that combines the light split by the beam splitter and includes a first surface allowing transmission of light and a second surface reflecting light; focusing elements that is provided upstream of the beam combiner; and a polarization conversion element, in which one or more of the focusing elements have a focal length continuously changes in a direction orthogonal to an optical axis and away from the optical axis, and a ratio of a maximum value to a minimum value of the focal length is more than 1.1.

The disclosure relates to an optical system, for example a lithography system, comprising an aperture stop having an aperture with an edge for delimiting a beam path of the optical system on its outer circumference. The optical system also includes a heat stop arranged upstream of the aperture stop for partially shading the aperture stop. The edge of the aperture stop is excluded from the shading.

The present invention provides a projection optical system including a first concave reflecting surface, a first convex reflecting surface, a second concave reflecting surface, and a third concave reflecting surface, wherein the first concave reflecting surface, the first convex reflecting surface, the second concave reflecting surface, and the third concave reflecting surface are arranged such that light from an object plane forms an image on an image plane by being reflected by the first concave reflecting surface, the first convex reflecting surface, the second concave reflecting surface, the first convex reflecting surface, and the third concave reflecting surface in an order named.

A catadioptric optical system operates in a wide spectral range. In an embodiment, the catadioptric optical system includes a first reflective surface positioned and configured to reflect radiation; a second reflective surface positioned and configured to reflect radiation reflected from the first reflective surface as a collimated beam, the second reflective surface having an aperture to allow transmission of radiation through the second reflective surface; and a channel structure extending from the aperture toward the first reflective surface and having an outlet, between the first reflective surface and the second reflective surface, to supply radiation to the first reflective surface.

A method of providing a catadioptric projection includes: providing a first partial objective for imaging an object field onto a first real intermediate image; providing a second partial objective for imaging the first real intermediate image onto a second real intermediate image, in which the second partial objective includes a concave mirror; providing a third partial objective for imaging the second intermediate image onto an image field, the third partial objective including an aperture stop; providing a first folding mirror and a second folding mirror; and providing an antireflection coating onto a surface of at least one lens that is directly adjacent to the concave mirror or that is separate from the concave mirror by a single lens, in which the antireflection coating is designed to have reflectivity of less than 0.2% for a wavelength between 150 nm and 250 nm and for an angle-of-incidence range between 0 and 30.

An exposure apparatus exposes a substrate with illumination light via a liquid. A liquid immersion member of the exposure apparatus has a lower surface, a plurality of collection ports, and a plurality of supply ports. The lower surface has an opening through which illumination light passes. The collection ports are arranged at the lower surface to surround the opening, and the supply ports are arranged at the lower surface and between the opening and the collection ports to surround the opening, such that the liquid is supplied via the supply ports onto the substrate while the substrate is arranged opposite to a plane-convex lens of a projection optical system and such that the liquid is collected via the collection ports from the substrate.

The present disclosure relates to a method for characterizing a light source. The method includes providing a light source to be characterized, collecting light emitted from the light source by using imaging optics, the imaging optics generating a pupil of the collected light emitted from the light source, generating an image of a pupil of light emitted only from a first surface area of the light source at a detector using the imaging optics, laterally shifting the light source and the imaging optics relative to each other and after the lateral shift, generating an image of a pupil of light emitted only from a second surface area of the light source at the detector using the imaging optics. The imaging optics includes a field stop between the light source and the detector to select a portion of the light source's surface from which light is imaged at a time.