Simultaneous determination of electron beam profile and material response using self-consistent iterative method

We develop a novel iterative method to accurately measure electron beam shape (current density distribution) and monotonic material response as a function of position. A common method is to scan an electron beam across a knife edge along many angles to give an approximate measure of the beam profile, however such scans are not easy to obtain in all systems. The present work uses only an electron beam and multiple exposed regions of a thin film of photoresist to measure the complete beam profile for any beam shape, where the material response is characterized externally. This simplifies the setup of new experimental tools. We solve for self-consistent photoresist thickness loss response to dose and the electron beam profile simultaneously by optimizing a novel functional iteratively. We also show the successful implementation of the method in a real world data set corrupted by noise and other experimental variabilities. (C) 2016 The Japan Society of Applied Physics