Experimental evaluation of an electron-beam pulse modulated blanker (160 MHz) for next-generation electron-beam raster scan systems

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The simplicity of raster scan architecture has several benefits for mask-making production tools, the most important being accuracy. Nevertheless, building patterns on a grid resolution determined by the writing address of the raster scan mask generator places limitations on pattern edge locations, or equivalently, on throughput. A method of getting around this throughput bottleneck is pixel-level dose modulation, i.e., graybeam. In this article, a new driver technology in combination with the MEBES(R) 4500 blanker operating at 160 MHz is experimentally evaluated for real-time dose modulation by pulse width variation. Measurements of the rise and fall time of the blanker driver using various input data vectors (i.e., combinations of various pulse width signals) and a beam current modulation transfer function for the blanker are presented. Contributions from electronic artifacts such as electronic jitter are measured. Finally, these measurement results are used to determine the preliminary performance of a graybeam system.