Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Toshio Hirokawa

Norio Uchida

Nobutaka Kikuiri

Osamu Kuwabara

Disclosed is an X-ray exposure apparatus comprising a chamber, filled with X-ray low attenuation gas for guiding X-rays, generated from an X-ray source, to an X-ray window, a gas supplying portion, provided to supply X-ray low attenuation gas into the chamber and having a portion with a small-diameter passage cross section formed at least at a part thereof, a gas discharging portion, provided to discharge gas from the chamber and having a portion with a small-diameter passage cross section formed at least at a part thereof, and a flow-rate controller for controlling a flow rate of the gas to be supplied to the gas supplying portion to thereby control pressure in the chamber, whereby pressure in the chamber is made equal to or slightly higher than atmospheric pressure by setting the small-diameter portion of the gas supplying portion smaller than that of the gas discharging portion.

X-ray exposure apparatus

An X-ray radiation apparatus comprises a synchrotron 11 that generates X rays, an X-ray reflecting mirror 13 that reflects X rays emitted from the synchrotron 11, a mirror driving mechanism that enlarges the X-ray illumination area by oscillating the mirror 13, a beryllium window 14 that is connected to the synchrotron-side housing base containing the mirror 13 by means of a bellows 17 and that allows the X rays reflected by the mirror 13 to be taken out of the vacuum environment, and a window driving mechanism 18 that moves the window 14 along with the movement of the X-ray illumination position by oscillating the window 14 in synchronization with the oscillation of the mirror 13. With this arrangement, the X rays coming from the window 14 pass through the X-ray mask 15 and fall upon the specimen 16 to replicate the mask pattern into the specimen.

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Kawasaki, Japan

Toshio Hirokawa