Developing a Soft X-Ray Projection Lithography Tool.

To achieve circuit integration densities required for future (late 1990's) generations of semiconductor devices, advanced patterning technologies must be developed to reduce minimum linewidths to 0.2 microns and below. Because of its inherently shorter wavelength, X-Ray Lithography (XRL) is regarded as one of the most promising methods for achieving volume production of circuits having such small features. One of the approaches using x-rays, called X-Ray Lithography, offers the advantages of being an image reduction method using reflective optics. Using this technique, AT&T Bell Laboratories has demonstrated diffraction-limited imaging with 140angstrom radiation from a synchrotron radiation source.