Blanking aperture array type charged particle beam exposure

摘要

A charged particle beam-exposure method in which a subject is exposed to a pattern via a charged particle beam having an on/off exposure characteristic. A blanking aperture array has n open/close devices which individually/correspond to respective scan positions of the charged particle beam and operate to control the on/off exposure characteristic of the charged particle beam. The method includes: (1) selectively designating bit positions of successive n-bit width data blocks of the pattern, each n-bit width data block stored within a row of the pattern; (2) successively reading each n-bit width data block; (3) forming successive rows of unit pattern data from the successively designated and read n-bit width data block, each successive row corresponding to a successively designated and read n-bit width data block; (4) storing the successive rows of unit pattern data to form unit pattern data in bit matrix form having m columns and n rows; and (5) sequentially supplying the successive rows of unit pattern data to the blanking aperture array to control the on/off exposure characteristic of the charged particle beam.