投影対物器械を製造する方法及びこの方法によって製造される投影対物器械

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a method for manufacturing a projection objective appliance and the projection objective appliance manufactured by this method.SOLUTION: A method for manufacturing a projection objective appliance includes a step of defining an initial design for a projection objective appliance and a step of optimizing the design using a merit function having a plurality of merit function components AB, IRRAD EFP, each of which reflects a specific quality parameter. One of that merit function components defines a maximum irradiance requirement requiring that a normalized effective irradiance value representing an effective irradiance AB, IRRAD EFF normalized to an effective irradiance in an image surface of the projection objective appliance does not exceed a predefined irradiance threshold value IRR TV on each optical surface of the projection objective appliance except for a last optical surface directly adjacent to an image surface of the projection objective appliance. Optical surfaces positioned within caustic regions and/or critically small effective sub-apertures on optical surfaces are thereby systematically avoided.