Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a semiconductor machine cleaning system and a semiconductor machine cleaning method. The semiconductor machine cleaning system includes: an acquisition module, configured to determine whether a semiconductor machine has contamination particles thereon, and to acquire position information of the contamination particles; and a cleaning module, configured to clean the contamination particles based on the position information before the semiconductor machine executes a next manufacturing process; where the contamination particles are cleaned by means of pressure extraction.

A wafer table inspection tool described herein is capable of being positioned over a wafer table while the wafer table is positioned in a bottom module of an exposure tool of a lithography system. The wafer table inspection tool is capable of quickly evaluating the condition of surface burls on the wafer table and evaluating cleaning performance of a cleaning operation in which the surface burls are cleaned.

Some implementations described herein provide techniques and apparatuses for inspecting interior surfaces of a vessel of a radiation source for an accumulation of a target material. An inspection tool, including a laser-scanning system and a motor system supported by an elongated supported member, may be inserted into the vessel to generate an accurate three-dimensional profile of the interior surfaces. Use of the inspection tool is efficient, with short setup and scan times that substantially reduce a duration associated with evaluating the interior surfaces of the vessel for the accumulation.

A plurality of hydrogen outlets are arrayed along a direction normal to a surface (such as a surface of a collector) of an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) tool to increase a volume of hydrogen gas surrounding the surface. As a result, airborne tin is more likely to be stopped by the hydrogen gas surrounding the surface and less likely to bind to the surface. Fewer tin deposits results in increased lifetime for the surface, which reduces downtime for the EUV tool. Additionally, a control device may receive (e.g., from a camera and/or another type of sensor) an indication of levels of tin contamination on the surface and control flow rates to adjust a thickness of the hydrogen curtain. As a result, tin contamination on the collector is less likely to occur and will be more efficiently cleaned by the hydrogen gas, which results in increased lifetime for the surface and reduced downtime for the EUV tool.

A method includes driving, while producing a burst of pulses at a pulse repetition rate, a spectral feature adjuster among a set of discrete states at a frequency correlated with the pulse repetition rate; and in between the production of the bursts of pulses (while no pulses are being produced), driving the spectral feature adjuster according to a driving signal defined by a set of parameters. Each discrete state corresponds to a discrete value of a spectral feature. The method includes ensuring that the spectral feature adjuster is in one of the discrete states that corresponds to a discrete value of the spectral feature of the amplified light beam when a pulse in the next burst is produced by adjusting one or more of: an instruction to the lithography exposure apparatus, the driving signal to the spectral feature adjuster, and/or the instruction to the optical source.

An image based correction system compensates for the image quality artifacts induced by thermal ghosting on evolving imaging member surfaces. With thermal ghosting directly tied to previous image content, a feed forward system determines thermal ghosting artifacts based on images previously rendered and generates an open loop gray-level correction to a current image that mitigates undesirable ghosting. For example, the correction system compensates for the thermal ghosting by making the current image “lighter” in areas that will be imaged onto warmer blanket regions, thereby cancelling out TRC differences between different temperature regions. A temperature sensor is used to measure the temperature of the imaging blanket due to the stresses induced by the image. This data is used to learn the parameters of the temperature model periodically during operation, and used in subsequent corrections to mitigate thermal ghosting in spite of changes in blanket properties over use and time.

In a method of cleaning a lithography system, during idle mode, a stream of air is directed, through a first opening, into a chamber of a wafer table of an EUV lithography system. One or more particles is extracted by the directed stream of air from surfaces of one or more wafer chucks in the chamber of the wafer table. The stream of air and the extracted one or more particle are drawn, through a second opening, out of the chamber of the wafer table.

An optical system comprises at least one mirror having a mirror body and a mirror surface, and at least one actuator device coupled to the mirror body and serving for deforming the mirror surface. The actuator device comprises at least one electrostrictive actuator element for generating a mechanical stress in the mirror body for deforming the mirror surface depending on an electrical drive voltage, and at least one electrostrictive sensor element for outputting a sensor signal depending on a deformation of the sensor element. The at least one sensor element is arranged directly adjacent to the actuator element and/or is arranged in such a way that it is configured at least partly for transferring the mechanical stress generated by the actuator element to the mirror body.

A sensor degradation evaluation method according to an aspect of the present disclosure includes an evaluation step of evaluating degradation of at least one of a sensor for coarse measurement that receives interference fringes produced by a spectrometer for coarse measurement and a sensor for fine measurement that receives interference fringes produced by a spectrometer for fine measurement, and the evaluation step includes causing a plurality of kinds of laser light having wavelengths different from one another to be sequentially incident on the spectrometer for coarse measurement and the spectrometer for fine measurement and acquiring a coarse-measurement wavelength and a fine-measurement wavelength on a wavelength basis from a plurality of the received interference fringes, acquiring a degradation parameter on a wavelength basis from the coarse-measurement wavelength and the fine-measurement wavelength on a wavelength basis, and comparing the degradation parameter on a wavelength basis with a threshold.

A method is provided for determining surface parameters of a patterning device, comprising the steps of: positioning the patterning device with respect to a path of an exposure radiation beam using a first measurement system, providing the patterning device at a first focal plane of a chromatic lens arranged in a second measurement system, illuminating a part of a surface of the patterning device with radiation through the chromatic lens, wherein the radiation comprises a plurality of wavelengths, determining a position of the illuminated part of the patterning device in a first and second direction, collecting at least a portion of radiation reflected by the patterning device through the chromatic lens, measuring an intensity of the collected portion of radiation as a function of wavelength, to obtain spectral information of the illuminated area, and determining the surface parameters of the patterning device at the determined position from the spectral information.