A lithographic apparatus is a machine that applies a desired pattern onto a substrate, usually onto a portion of the substrate. A lithographic apparatus can be used, for example, in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). Driven by the growing demand of manufacturing modern integrated circuits with ever shrinking sizes, lithographic technologies that can offer higher resolution and better reliability are under a fast-paced and extensive development. One of such advancing lithographic technologies is the extreme ultra-violet lithography (also known as EUV or EUVL), which allows for sub-10 nanometer (nm) scale resolution. In parallel to the continuous endeavor to further reduce the resolution of photolithography, multiple patterning which appears as a class of technologies have been under extensively development. Multiple patterning technologies have been used to significantly enhance feature densities of existing lithography technologies, thereby effectively reducing the resolution. For example, double, triple or quadruple patterning can be used to respectively double, triple or quadruple the number of features that is expected by only using existing lithography technologies.
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