Ion beam exposure of resists

Problems caused by the statistical variation of the number of exposing ions in ionbeam lithography are discussed. Using Poisson statistics, the minimum dose required for exposure as a function of resist sensitivity and minimum feature size is calculated. It is found that, although ion-beam resists show a very high sensitivity of 10¹¹ to 10¹³,cm^–2, it would be possible to use still more sensitive resists and obtain submicron linewidth resolution.