Parity decomposition theory of full wavefront aberration measurement using the intensity differences of aerial images in microlithography

The theory of full wavefront aberration measurements is developed using the intensity differences of aerial images, which are the projected images of one-dimensional measurement patterns consisting of single-or multibars. The key concept is the parity decomposition about the optical axis for two optical components: illumination pupil and wavefront aberration. An additional mathematical treatment, which is a perturbative approach with regard to aberration, is applied to the partially coherent imaging formula. The intensity difference of the two peaks has terms that are linear to the odd and even aberration with rigorously canceled squared aberration terms. The full wavefront aberration measurement is realized from simultaneous linear equations about the intensity difference. The validity of this approach is numerically confirmed under practical lithography conditions. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America