Vibration Control Gets Active

Dr. Ronald Spangler

Designers of precision manufacturing machinery are wrestling with increasingly tight alignment tolerances among the imaging components in their systems. These challenges are particularly acute in the semiconductor industry, where the size of devices manufactured on a chip continues to shrink at an exponential rate.

This trend requires the resolution of photolithography tools to grow correspondingly finer. According to Rayleigh's resolution equation – R = k₁λ/NA – this is attainable either through shorter-wavelength light (λ) or through higher-numerical-aperture lenses. Semiconductor toolmakers are pursuing both paths…