Mixed multi-region design of diffractive optical element for projection exposure system.

Abstract: The diffractive optical element (DOE) is widely used to generate various illumination modes in the projection lithography system. The working principle and design methods of the DOE are discussed in detail in this paper. A mixed multi-region design method is proposed to calculate the phase of DOE based on the poor spatial coherence of excimer laser, using the Gerchberg–Saxton (GS) algorithm. The DOEs generating circular, dipole and quadrupole illumination modes are designed and simulated by three different methods: single region design, repeated multi-region design and mixed multi-region design. The performance of these DOEs are compared and analyzed with these three design methods. The mixed multi-region design method is used to design the DOEs generating three illumination modes, the diffraction efficiencies are greater than 85%, and the non-uniformities of illumination are less than 3%. The analysis results indicate that the DOE designed by the mixed multi-region design can achieve higher diffraction efficiency and illumination uniformity of the far-field intensity distribution without modifying the GS algorithm. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]