Large-Area Zone Plate Fabrication with Optical Lithography

Zone plates as condenser optics for x-ray microscopes offer simple optical designs for both illumination and spectral resolution when used as a linear monochromator. However, due to the long write times for electron beam lithography, both the availability and the size of zone plates for condensers have been limited. Since the resolution provided by the linear monochromator scales almost linearly with the diameter of the zone plate, the full potential for zone plate monochromators as illumination systems for x-ray microscopes has not been achieved. For example, the 10-mm-diameter zone plate has demonstrated a spectral resolution of E/Delta E = 700 [1], but with a 26-mm-diameter zone plate, the calculated spectral resolution is higher than E/Delta E = 3000. These large-area zone plates are possible to fabricate with the leading edge semiconductor lithography tools such as those available at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University at Albany. One of the lithography tools available is the ASML TWINSCAN XT:1950i with 37-nm resolution [2]. A single 300-mm wafer can contain more than 60 fields, each with a large area condenser, and the throughput of the tool can be more than one wafer every minute.