JP2001067736A - Exposure device and exposure method - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an exposure device which is capable of executing exposure of arcuate patterns on a recording medium with high accuracy and an exposure method to the recording medium. SOLUTION: This exposure device consists of a continuously rotatable first rotary stage 1, a second rotary stage 2 which is mounted thereon and is continuously rotatable around a shaft different from the revolving shaft of the first rotary stage 1 on a plane parallel with the first rotary stage 1 and a controller which controls the rotation of both rotary stages 1 and 2. The exposure is executed by using an exposure means while rotating both rotary stages 1 and 2 at suitable relative rotating speeds, by which the exposure of desired patterns is executed on the recording medium 4 fixed onto the second rotary stage 2. The first rotary stage 1 may be a rotary stage which may be continuously alternately rotatable forward and backward, in this case, the movement of the rotary st-ages may be confined to the movement least necessary for the exposure and working efficiency may be enhanced.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a recording medium exposure apparatus and an exposure method, and more particularly to a recording medium exposure apparatus having a recording medium positioning means capable of exposing a desired pattern on a recording medium. And a method of exposing a recording medium.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art For example, in an electron beam exposure apparatus,
An exposure apparatus for a recording medium focuses an electron beam emitted from an electron gun by a focusing lens, and performs exposure by the electron beam on a recording medium placed in a vacuum environment. Such an electron beam exposure apparatus converts exposure pattern data designed by CAD or the like into electron beam on / off data, and converts the electron beam focused to a diameter of 0.1 μm or less into the above on / off data. The exposure pattern is turned on and off based on the exposure pattern. A feature of the electron beam exposure apparatus is that exposure and drawing can be performed with much higher accuracy than other exposure techniques such as a light exposure apparatus. For this reason, in an exposure process of a large-scale integrated circuit (LSI), the electron beam exposure apparatus is often used as an exposure apparatus particularly for a highly integrated LSI. In this case, since the LSI is composed of a combination of linear patterns, in the electron beam exposure apparatus, the stage for fixing the recording medium to be exposed and moving it to the position for irradiating the electron beam is X-axis and orthogonal to the X-axis. It is configured to be movable on two axes of Y axis.

On the other hand, apart from this LSI, the use of an electron beam exposure apparatus has begun to attract attention even in a recording medium having a circumferential pattern such as a disk recording apparatus or a hologram lens in order to meet demands for higher density and higher precision. I have. For example, in the case of optical discs, there is no longer any limit to the accuracy of realizing a high-density optical disc using an exposure apparatus that uses light, and an electron beam exposure apparatus may be used instead of this optical exposure apparatus. ing. However, in this optical disk, since the track is formed in a spiral shape, it is necessary to draw a pattern in a circumferential shape. For that purpose, it is necessary that the stage for fixing the recording medium such as the optical disk is not an XY stage but a rotary stage.

Here, an example of the configuration of a conventional rotating stage type electron beam exposure apparatus will be described with reference to FIG. In the figure, 21 is an electron beam column, 22 is a vacuum chamber for performing exposure, 23 is a direct-acting single-axis X stage, and 24 is a spindle motor serving as a rotary stage. A recording medium 25 to be exposed is fixed on a rotating stage of the spindle motor 24, and simultaneously with the rotation of the spindle motor 24, the X stage 23 is finely moved in a radial direction of the recording medium indicated by an arrow, so that the electron beam column 2
By irradiating an electron beam from Step 1, a spiral pattern is formed on the recording medium. The X stage 23 and the spindle motor 24 are respectively controlled by an X stage drive and a spindle motor drive shown in FIG. 6, and the electron beam 21 is turned on and off by blanking control, and is irradiated on the recording medium. A predetermined spiral pattern is drawn on the image.

[0005]

By the way, there are various types of disk recording media such as an optical disk, a magneto-optical disk, and a hard disk, but the head for reading a signal usually moves linearly in the radial direction of the disk. . However, depending on the type of the apparatus, there is a system in which the read head moves using a rotating mechanism as shown in FIG. 7, for example. In FIG. 7B, 31 is a head,
Reference numeral 32 denotes a disk, and 33 denotes a rotation mechanism of the head 31. In the case of such a configuration, the servo signal and the address signal for accessing the data are the same as those shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. Therefore, when the pattern 34 is to be exposed using the electron beam exposure apparatus having the above-described configuration, it is necessary to rotate the spindle motor in accordance with the movement of the X stage in the X-axis direction. It is extremely difficult to perform electron beam exposure with high accuracy, for example, it is necessary to process the exposure timing by a complicated calculation.

In the case of using an XY stage, which is a conventional method, in exposing an arc-shaped pattern, it is difficult to expose the arc-shaped pattern so that lines are smoothly connected. In addition, the XY stage reciprocates many times for the exposure, and in the case of a vacuum stage in an electron beam apparatus, the operating life of the stage is affected. Even when a conventional rotary stage is used, there is a similar difficulty in performing high-precision electron beam exposure, such as fine control of rotation of a spindle motor accompanying movement of an X stage.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above problems, and has as its object to provide a means for realizing a stage for accurately exposing an arc-shaped pattern on a recording medium by an electron beam. The purpose is.

[0008]

In order to achieve the above object, according to the present invention, a second rotating stage is further provided on a first rotating stage.
It carries out electron beam writing by appropriately controlling the rotation of both stages, and specifically includes the following contents.

That is, according to the present invention, there is provided an exposure means for exposing a recording medium, a recording medium positioning means for driving the recording medium according to an exposure pattern,
A recording medium exposure apparatus comprising: a first rotation stage including a motor and a turntable attached to a drive shaft of the motor; and A second rotation comprising a motor and a turntable attached to a drive shaft of the motor, the second rotation being mounted and rotatable on a plane parallel to the first rotation stage about an axis different from the rotation axis of the first rotation stage. An exposure apparatus comprising: a stage; and a control device that controls rotation of the first and second rotary stages. According to the present invention,
For example, by exposing the recording medium by continuously rotating the first and second rotary stages, the recording medium can be conveyed with a reasonable movement, and a high-precision and smooth information pattern can be formed on the recording medium. In addition, the durability of the entire exposure apparatus, especially the stage drive system, can be enhanced.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the exposure apparatus, the first rotary stage performs a reciprocating rotation at a constant angle. ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the movement of a rotary stage can be made into the minimum movement required for exposure, and work efficiency can be improved.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, in the exposure apparatus, one or both of the first and second rotary stages perform intermittent rotation. Similarly, according to the present invention, the movement of the rotary stage can be made the minimum movement required for exposure, and the working efficiency can be improved.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, the exposure apparatus is an electron beam exposure apparatus.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, when exposing a recording surface of a recording medium, the recording medium is controlled by a combination of two arc movements, thereby exposing the recording surface to an arc-shaped exposure. The present invention relates to a method for exposing a recording medium, which is characterized by drawing a pattern.

[0014]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS An embodiment of an electron beam exposure apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows an electron beam exposure apparatus according to a first embodiment. FIG. 1A is a side view of a rotary stage unit of the present electron beam exposure apparatus, and FIG. The figure is shown. In the figure, 1 is a first rotary stage, 2 is a second rotary stage mounted on the first rotary stage, 3 is an electron beam, 4 is a recording medium fixed on the second rotary stage 2, here It is an optical disk. 5 is an exposure pattern to be drawn on the optical disk, and 6,
Reference numeral 7 denotes the rotation directions of the first and second rotary stages, respectively.

The first and second rotary stages 1 and 2
Each is composed of a base rotary drive unit and a turntable unit fixed on a rotary shaft of the rotary drive unit located thereon, and the rotary drive unit is provided with a motor, and the driving force of the motor is The rotation is transmitted to the turntable section via a rotation axis, and the turntable section rotates about the rotation axis. The second rotary stage 2 is provided on the turntable of the first rotary stage 1.
Are fixed so that the rotation axis of the second rotation stage 2 is located at a position eccentric from the rotation axis of the first rotation stage, and the rotation surfaces of both rotation stages 1 and 2 are arranged so as to be parallel.

The exposure pattern 5 is shown as a single circular arc in the drawing, but in practice, a number of exposures are performed around the circular arc and will be described below. One arc is drawn for each cycle of the adjusted rotation of the first and second rotary stages. The movement required for the fine exposure is performed by slightly vibrating the focus position of the electron beam 3.

The operation when exposing the arc-shaped pattern 5 on the recording medium 4 using the electron beam exposure apparatus having such a configuration is performed by rotating the first rotating stage 1 and rotating the second rotating stage. The stage 2 rotates slower than the first rotating stage 1, and the electron beam irradiator irradiates the recording medium 4 fixed on the second rotating stage 2 with the electron beam 3 from the electron beam irradiator in accordance with the rotation of the two rotating stages. Beam exposure is performed.

FIG. 2 shows the state of the electron beam exposure at that time, and FIG. 2A shows the rotation timing of the first rotary stage. FIG. 2B shows the timing of the electron beam exposure, in which the electron beam is exposed for a time corresponding to the length of the arc that becomes the exposure pattern during the cycle of the first rotation stage. Is shown. FIG.
(C) shows the rotation of the second rotary stage. After the exposure of one arc by the electron beam, for example, if the arc pattern is divided into 16 in the circumferential direction, the next arc can be exposed. This indicates that the second rotation stage rotates 1/16.

In this example, the second rotary stage rotates at an angular velocity ratio of 1/16 with respect to the first rotary stage, whereby both the first and second rotary stages rotate continuously. , As shown in FIG.
Expected 16 arc patterns 5 can be exposed. Such mutual rotation control of the first and second rotation stages is performed by a rotation control device (not shown).
In this case, if the first and second rotating stages are continuously rotated at a constant relative rotation ratio as in the present embodiment, for example, a simple gear mechanism can easily control the rotation stage. The apparatus also includes a control mechanism having a simple configuration capable of realizing such a relative rotation ratio.

In this embodiment, in order to expose the arc-shaped pattern 5 onto the recording medium 4, the second rotary stage 2 is rotated slower than the first rotary stage 1. Using this same positioning device, it is also possible to expose, for example, a spiral pattern on an optical disk. In such a case, the second rotating stage 2 is more conversely exposed than the first rotating stage 1. It is also possible to rotate quickly.

In this embodiment, both the first and second rotary stages 1 and 2 make a continuous rotary motion. However, the second rotary stage 2 is moved during exposure of an arc-shaped pattern by electron beam irradiation. Only in the previous example, it is rotated by 1/16, and then stopped until the next arc pattern is exposed.
The intermittent operation may be such that the rotary stage 2 is stopped and then rotates 1/16 before exposure to the next arc pattern. Further, at this time, the first rotary stage 1 rotates at a predetermined speed only during exposure by electron beam irradiation, and then performs non-uniform rotation at a high speed until the next arc pattern is exposed. It may be. By controlling the rotations of the first and second rotary stages 1 and 2 in this way, it is also possible to select the optimal exposure conditions that increase power consumption and work efficiency. Further, it is preferable that the first and second rotary stages can be rotated forward and backward so that a specific exposure pattern can be formed.

Next, a second embodiment of the electron beam exposure apparatus according to the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings. FIG. 3 shows an electron beam exposure apparatus according to the present embodiment. FIG. 3A is a side view of the electron beam exposure apparatus, and FIG. 3B is a plan view thereof. In the figure, 1
1 is a first rotary stage, 12 is a second rotary stage mounted on the first rotary stage, 13 is an electron beam for exposure, and 14 is a recording medium fixed on the second rotary stage 12. Is shown. In the present embodiment, the first rotary stage 11 is not a spindle motor that rotates one turn, but a swing arm actuator that can reciprocate like a pendulum. For example, a swing arm type linear motor or a voice coil motor can be used.

As in the first embodiment, the second rotary stage 12 includes a rotary drive unit provided with a motor and a turntable fixed to a rotary shaft of the rotary drive unit. The fact that the rotation axes of the first and second rotation stages 11 and 12 are eccentric and that both rotation surfaces are parallel is the first point.
This is the same as the embodiment.

FIG. 4 shows the operation and exposure timing of the first and second rotary stages 11 and 12 according to such a configuration. FIG. 4A shows the first rotation stage 1
1 shows a reciprocating operation, and (b) shows an exposure timing. (C) shows the rotation timing of the second rotation stage 12.

The operation of exposing the arc-shaped pattern of the electron beam exposure apparatus having such a configuration is performed by the reciprocating rotation of the first rotary stage 11, as shown in FIG. The electron beam exposure of the first arc pattern is performed on the recording medium 14 fixed thereon, and the exposure is temporarily stopped, and the first rotation stage
Return to the original position by return trip. During the forward and backward movements of the first rotary stage, the second rotary stage rotates, for example, 1/16 of a revolution if 16 arc patterns are required on the recording medium. Next, in the next outward movement of the first rotary stage,
The next arc-shaped exposure pattern is drawn on the recording medium on the second rotating stage by electron beam exposure, and this operation is repeated continuously, thereby forming an arc-shaped exposure pattern as shown by reference numeral 5 in FIG. This completes the electron beam exposure of the pattern.

By incorporating the reciprocating motion of the first rotary stage, the electron beam exposure can be performed intermittently, and the overall exposure time can be shortened. That is, in the first embodiment, after the exposure on the recording medium, there is a waiting time until the first rotating stage rotates 360 ° to return to the original position and start exposing the next pattern. In the present embodiment, only the angle by which the first rotary stage rotates during the exposure needs to be returned to the original position, whereby the waiting time can be reduced.

The return path of the reciprocating motion of the first rotary stage can incorporate a quick return motion, thereby further reducing the exposure time. Further, according to such an exposure method, since exposure is performed in the same direction only on the outward path in the first rotary stage, backlash of the rotary stage system is particularly avoided,
Exposure with higher precision can be expected.

In the above embodiment, the second rotary stage is always rotated, but this can be intermittently rotated. That is, the first rotation stage is rotated by a predetermined rotation amount (1/16 rotation in the above example) only while the first rotation stage is on the outward path, that is, only during the exposure, and is stopped during the return path, and vice versa. Alternatively, the second rotation stage may be stopped during the forward exposure and rotated by a predetermined amount (eg, 1/16 rotation) only during the return travel. Further, the second rotating stage is stopped while the first rotating stage is rotating, and the second stage is moved by a predetermined amount (for example, 1/16) only while the first rotating stage is switched from the forward path to the backward path or from the backward path to the forward path. It is also possible to rotate. In particular, this makes it possible to form an exposure pattern by an electron beam during both the forward movement and the backward movement of the first rotary stage, as shown in FIG. 5, further improving the time efficiency. be able to.

Although not described in the above embodiments, the irradiation position of the electron beam itself can also be controlled, and this is controlled together with the operation of the first and second rotary stages. You can also. For example, when performing exposure while rotating the second rotating stage, if it is necessary to form a desired arc-shaped pattern, the displacement of the arc due to the rotation of the second rotating stage is moved to the electron beam irradiation position. Can be corrected.

Furthermore, the positioning means of the exposure apparatus according to the present invention has been mainly described in the above embodiment mainly on the electron beam exposure apparatus, but the application of the present invention is limited only to the electron beam exposure apparatus. Rather, it can be widely applied when writing a record in an arc shape or a spiral shape on a recording medium.

[0031]

As described above, according to the present invention, an arc-shaped pattern on a recording medium is drawn by rotation of the first rotary stage, and the arc-shaped pattern is formed on the entire circumference of the recording medium by rotation of the second rotary stage. You can draw. Also, the first
By controlling the rotations of the second rotary stage appropriately and in combination, not only the circular pattern but also the X-axis
A linear pattern on the Y-axis or a fine spiral exposure can also be performed.

That is, according to the exposure apparatus of the present invention, since exposure is performed on a rotating stage that operates continuously,
Even in the case of exposure of an arc-shaped pattern, the exposure line can be made smooth and highly accurate. Further, according to the first embodiment of the present invention, the first rotary stage is driven in a simple one-direction, that is, a smooth continuous rotary motion, so that mechanical durability can be improved. Further, according to the second embodiment of the present invention, the exposure can be efficiently performed in a shorter time by performing the forward / reverse alternating rotation.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIGS. 1A and 1B show a first embodiment of an exposure apparatus according to the present invention, wherein FIG. 1A is a side view and FIG. 1B is a plan view.

FIG. 2 is an explanatory diagram showing a relationship between rotation of each rotary stage of the exposure apparatus shown in FIG. 1 and exposure timing.

FIGS. 3A and 3B show a second embodiment of the exposure apparatus according to the present invention, wherein FIG. 3A is a side view, FIG.
Represents

FIG. 4 is an explanatory diagram showing a relationship between rotation of each rotary stage of the exposure apparatus shown in FIG. 3 and exposure timing.

FIG. 5 is an explanatory diagram showing another relationship between the rotation of each rotary stage of the exposure apparatus shown in FIG. 3 and exposure timing.

FIG. 6 is a schematic view of a rotary stage type electron beam exposure apparatus according to the prior art.

FIGS. 7A and 7B show an example of a configuration of a disk device according to a conventional technique, wherein FIG. 7A shows a disk device configuration, and FIG. 7B shows a servo signal pattern.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 1st rotating stage 2 2nd rotating stage 3 Electron beam 4 Recording medium 11 1st rotating stage 12 2nd rotating stage 13 Electron beam 14 Recording medium

Claims (5)

[Claims] 1. A recording medium exposing apparatus comprising: an exposing means for exposing a recording medium to light; and a recording medium positioning means for driving the recording medium in accordance with an exposure pattern. A first rotary stage composed of a turntable attached to a drive shaft of the motor; and a motor and a turntable attached to a drive shaft of the motor. The first rotary stage is attached to a turntable of the first rotary stage. A second rotation stage rotatable on a plane parallel to the first rotation stage about an axis different from the rotation axis of the single rotation stage; and a control device for controlling rotation of the first and second rotation stages. An exposure apparatus, comprising: 2. The exposure apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the first rotation stage performs a reciprocating rotation at a constant angle. 3. The exposure apparatus according to claim 1, wherein one or both of the first and second rotary stages perform intermittent rotation. 4. An exposure apparatus according to claim 1, wherein said exposure apparatus is an electron beam exposure apparatus. 5. The recording method according to claim 1, wherein, when exposing the recording surface of the recording medium, the recording medium is controlled by a combination of movements of two arcs to draw an arc-shaped exposure pattern on the recording surface. Exposure method to medium.