A method of manufacturing a semiconductor device includes: providing a first photoresist pattern on a wafer; measuring an overlay of the first photoresist pattern; generating a first overlay model function by a first overlay regression analysis of the measured overlay; and generating a second overlay model function by a second overlay regression analysis of a difference between the measured overlay and the first overlay model function.

An exposure apparatus that projects a pattern of an original onto a substrate via a projection optical system and exposes the substrate is provided. The apparatus comprises an aberration correction member arranged on an optical path of exposure light between the original and the substrate, and a driver which drives the aberration correction member. The aberration correction member includes a first optical element including a first surface having a three-fold rotational symmetric aspherical shape with respect to an optical axis of the exposure light, and a second optical element spaced apart from the first optical element along the optical axis and including a second surface facing the first surface and having an aspherical shape that complementarily corrects an aberration generated by the first optical element.

A method for localizing an abnormality in a travel path of an optical component in or for a lithography apparatus includes: a) moving the optical component in at least one first degree of freedom; b) detecting a movement (R.sub.z) of the optical component and/or a force acting on the optical component in at least one second degree of freedom; and c) localizing the abnormality as a function of the movement detected in b) and/or the force detected in b).

A method of determining a configuration of a projection system for a lithographic apparatus as an implementation of a quadratic programming problem with a penalty function. The method includes: receiving dependencies of one or more optical properties of the projection system on a configuration of a plurality of manipulators of the projection system; receiving a plurality of constraints which correspond to physical constraints of the manipulators; finding an initial configuration of the manipulators; and iteratively finding an output configuration of the manipulators. The iteration includes repeating the following steps: determining a set of the plurality of constraints that are violated; determining an updated configuration of the manipulators, the updated configuration of the manipulators being dependent on the set of the plurality of constraints that are violated and a penalty strength; and increasing the penalty strength. These steps are repeated until a convergence criterion is met.

Embodiments described herein provide a system, a software application, and methods of a lithography process that provide at least one of the ability to decrease the stabilization time and write an exposure pattern into a photoresist on a substrate compensating for the change in the total pitch over a stabilization time. One embodiment of the system includes a slab, a stage disposed over the slab, a pair of supports disposed on the slab, a processing apparatus, and a chiller system. The pair of supports support a pair of tracks and the stage is configured to move along the pair of tracks. The processing apparatus has an apparatus support coupled to the slab and a processing unit supported by the apparatus support. The processing unit has a plurality of image projection systems. The chiller system has at least one fluid channel disposed in each track of the pair of tracks.

An overlay correcting method capable of optimizing correction of an overlay within a scanner correction limit of a scanner of a scanner system, and a photolithography method, a semiconductor device manufacturing method and the scanner system which are based on the overlay correcting method are provided. The overlay correcting method includes collecting overlay data by measuring an overlay of a pattern; calculating correction parameters of the overlay by performing regularized regression using the overlay data, the regularized regression being based on a correction limit of the scanner such that the correction parameters fall within the correction limit of the scanner; and providing the correction parameters to the scanner.

An optical imaging arrangement includes an optical projection system, a support structure system and a control device. The optical projection system includes a group of optical elements supported by the support structure system and configured to transfer, in an exposure process using exposure light along an exposure light path, an image of a pattern of a mask onto a substrate. The group of optical elements includes a first optical element and a second optical element and the control device includes a sensor device and an active device. The sensor device is functionally associated to the first optical element and is configured to capture mechanical disturbance information representative of a mechanical disturbance acting on the first optical element in at least one degree of freedom up to all six degrees of freedom.

The present disclosure relates to a method for performing an additive manufacturing operation to form a structure by processing a photopolymer resist material. A laser beam is directed at a tunable mask. At least one emergent beam is collected from a plurality of emergent beams emerging from the tunable mask. The at least one emergent beam is collimated to create a collimated beam. Each emergent beam from the tunable mask has a plurality of beam lets of varying or identical intensity, and each beam let emerges from a unique subsection or region of the tunable mask. The collimated beam is focused into a laser beam which is projected as an image plane onto or within the photopolymer resist material, such that the same optical path length is created between the tunable mask and the focused image plane for all optical frequencies of the focused laser beam. The focused laser beam illuminates a select pattern of subsections on the tunable mask for a finite duration of time to cause simultaneous polymerization of select portions of the photopolymer resist material corresponding to the select pattern.

An exposure apparatus includes a projection optical system configured to project a pattern of a mask onto a substrate, a substrate stage configured to hold and move the substrate, and a controller configured to control exposure of the substrate held by the substrate stage, wherein the controller obtains an amount of deviation of an image of the pattern projected onto the substrate with respect to the pattern of the mask based on telecentricity information, which is information on telecentricity for respective image heights of the projection optical system, and height information, which is information on the height of a surface of the substrate, and corrects deviation of the image based on the obtained amount of deviation to expose the substrate.

The alignment apparatus performs alignment of an object in a first direction along a surface of the object, based on a position of a predetermined target formed on the surface, and includes a holding unit that holds the object to be moved, an acquisition unit that acquires an image of the predetermined target formed on the surface of the object held by the holding unit, and a controller that drives the holding unit to realize a relative distance between the object and the acquisition unit in a second direction perpendicular to the surface of the object, a relative tilt between the object and the acquisition unit, or the distance and the tilt, the distance and the tilt being determined based on a correlation degree between the image acquired by the acquisition unit and a template, and detects a position of the predetermined target in the first direction based on the correlation degree.