7.4: Dose control circuits for digitally addressable VACNF based maskless lithography

This paper presents dose control electronics and a digital addressing method for the vertically aligned carbon nanofiber (VACNF) based massively parallel maskless e-beam lithography system. The Digital Electrostatically focused e-beam Array direct-write Lithography (DEAL) developed by our research group in Oak Ridge National Laboratory incorporates digitally addressable field emission arrays (DAFEAs) of the VACNFs which function as the lithography heads during the exposure of the resist. A logic and memory control circuit (LMC) and a dose control circuit (DCC) have been designed to write a desired pattern and control the dose of electrons, respectively. This paper summarizes our previous works on different versions of the DCCs designed and optimized in the effort of obtaining a fixed and optimum dosage with the smaller circuit area.