Study on the recognition of the marks for low-energy microcolumn lithography

Electron beam lithography has been paid great attention as a future lithography technology for the patterning of extremely fine structures. Generally e-beam lithography means high-energy e-beam lithography where the kinetic energies of electrons are rather high(10-100 keV). Although high-energy c-beam technology is mature and being used in the semiconductor industry, low-energy microcolumn lithography(LEML) has many great advantages as a next-generation technology, which explains the active research on the subject these days. In this study, we developed a new method to recognize the registration marks in LEML. With this novel method, there is no need to supply a bias to the mark electrodes, which remarkably simplifies the fabrication process of IC devices.