Aberration adjusting method, device fabrication method, and charged particle beam lithography machine

1. An aberration adjusting method of a charged particle beam optical system, said method comprising:

an aberration measuring step of measuring N aberrations of the charged particle beam optical system;

an aberration sensitivity acquiring step of changing M control amounts to control optical elements included in the charged particle beam optical system, obtaining variations of the N aberrations by executing the aberration measuring step, and obtaining aberration sensitivities of the M control amounts; and

a control amount deciding step of deciding the M control amounts on the basis of the N aberrations and the aberration sensitivities of the M control amounts to set the N aberrations to target aberrations,

wherein the aberration is a displacement of each image height of charged particles beams,

the control amount is an amount for controlling a position of the charged particle beams, and

M<N, in which M and N are positive integers.

2. The method according to claim 1 , further comprising an aberration confirming step of executing the aberration measuring step again after the control amounts decided in the control amount deciding step are set in the optical elements.

3. The method according to claim 2 , wherein if the aberrations do not satisfy allowances in the aberration confirming step, the aberration sensitivity acquiring step, the control amount deciding step, and the aberration confirming step are executed again.

4. The method according to claim 1 , wherein the aberration is represented by a Zernike coefficient.

5. The method according to claim 1 , wherein, in the control amount deciding step,

suppose that Ci is the aberration, CTi is the target aberration, and Ti is the allowance, a residual function ei after adjustment is defined by:

ei =( Ci−CTi )/ Ti,

 to minimize a maximum absolute value of the residual function ei after adjustment (i=1, . . . , n), a dummy variable T(|ei|)<T (i=1, . . . , n)) is introduced, formulation to a linear programming problem to minimize the dummy variable T is executed, and, on the basis of the aberration sensitivity, the control amounts to control the optical elements are decided.

6. A device fabrication method comprising:

fabricating a device by using an aberration adjusting method of claim 1 .

7. A charged particle beam lithography machine for exposing a substrate through a charged particle beam optical system, said machine comprising:

an aberration measuring unit adapted to measure N aberrations of the charged particle beam optical system;

an aberration sensitivity acquiring unit adapted to change M control amounts to control optical elements included in the charged particle beam optical system, to obtain variations of the N aberrations by using said aberration measuring unit, and to obtain aberration sensitivities of the M control amounts; and

a control amount deciding unit adapted to decide the M control amounts on the basis of the N aberrations and the aberration sensitivities of the M control amounts to set the N aberrations to target aberrations,

wherein the aberration is a displacement of each image height of charged particles beams,

the control amount is an amount for controlling a position of the charged particle beams, and

M<N, in which M and N are positive integers.

8. A device fabrication method comprising steps of:

exposing a target exposure substrate by using a charged particle beam lithography machine of claim 7 ; and

developing the exposed substrate.