High speed hydraulic scanner for deep X-ray lithography

 From our research and development in hard x-ray lithography, we have found that our conventional leadscrew driven scanner stages do not provide adequate scan speed or travel. These considerations have led us to develop a scanning system based on a long stroke hydraulic drive with 635 mm of travel and closed loop feedback to position the stage to better than 100 micrometers. The control of the device is through a PC with a custom LabView interface coupled to simple x-ray beam diagnostics. This configuration allows us to set a variety of scan parameters, including target dose, scan range, scan rates, and dose rate. Results from our prototype system at beamline X-27B are described as well as progress on a production version for the X-14B beamline. Received: 25 August 1997/Accepted: 3 September 1997