Abstract: | Within the direct inclusion method the proximity effect is already taken care of when one calculates the kinoform relief, whereas conventionally the proximity effect is compensated for after one has calculated the relief. In particular, when proximity effects are considerable, that is, for small structures, the direct inclusion method is shown to give significantly better results than the conventional two-step method. Provided that the proximity effect is correctly modeled, it is shown that for an 8 × 8 array illuminator nearly perfect uniformity can be achieved even for a kinoform with very small structures. |