Nonlinear iterative learning control with applications to lithographic machinery

An experimental demonstration is given of (nonlinear) iterative learning control applied to a reticle stage of a lithographic wafer scanner. To limit the presence of noise in the learned forces, a nonlinear amplitude-dependent learning gain is proposed. With this gain, high-amplitude signal contents is separated from low-amplitude noise, the former being compensated by the learning algorithm. Contrary to the underlying linear design, the continuously varying trade-off between high-gain convergence rates and low-gain noise transmission demonstrates a significant improvement of the nonlinear design in achieving performance.