Micro‐Optics for Photolithography

Photolithography is the engine that empowered semiconductor industry to reduce the minimum feature size of the components of a microchip from some 50 microns in the 1960s to below 14 nanometers today. Diffractive and refractive micro‐optical components play a decisive role in modern photolithography systems, e.g. for laser line width narrowing, laser beam shaping (customized illumination), as phaseshift masks, for optical proximity correction, and for diffraction‐based overlay. Wafer‐based manufacturing of high‐quality micro‐optics and their importance for photolithography will be explained.