Extending immersion lithography down to 1x nm production nodes

摘要

In this paper we report on the performance enhancements on the NXT immersion scanner platform to support the immersion lithography roadmap. We particular discuss scanner modules that enable future overlay and focus requirements. Among others we describe the improvements in grid calibrations and grid matching; thermal control of reticle heating with dynamic systems adjustments; aberration tuning and FlexWave-lens heating control as well as aberration- and overlay-metrology on wafer-2-wafer timescales. Finally we address reduction of leveling process dependencies, stage servo dynamics and wafer table flatness to enhance on-product focus and leveling performance. We present and discuss module- and system-data of the above mentioned scanner improvements.