International Business Machines Corporation

Ken Tze-Kin Chan

William A Enichen

Maris A Sturans

John George Hartley

Donald E Davis

Guenther O Langner

Edward V Weber

Cecil T Ho

An X-ray mask includes one or more X-ray transparent mask windows and at least one pattern-to-mask alignment mark etched into the mask substrate from the same side as the mask windows. The pattern-to-mask alignment marks can be etched at the same time as the mask windows and are detectable from the front surface of the mask substrate by an electron beam lithography system prior to creating the circuit pattern. The alignment marks are detected by the absence of backscattered electrons at the pattern-to-mask alignment marks.

Registration and alignment technique for X-ray mask fabrication

A pattern is aligned and exposed with a lithography system so that chips larger than the deflection field can be formed by exposing M.times.N fields in a mosaic pattern. The method corrects the deflection field to compensate for the orientation of a previous pattern on a substrate and compensates for errors due to height caused by the beam landing non perpendicular to the target. Two basic procedures disclosed are called '3-mark' which are only applicable to 2.times.2 arrays of fields, and 'M.times.N' which covers the general situation, but with slightly less accuracy.

Registration of patterns formed of multiple fields

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Wappingers Falls, NY, United States of America

Ken Tze-Kin Chan