A beamline for micromachining and micro-characterization at the APS

Beamline 2-BM at the Advanced Photon Source had been designed for developing micromachining techniques based on deep x-ray lithography and also for micro-characterization of optics and samples. With a critical energy of 19.5 keV and a highly collimated beam, the APS bending-magnet source is well suited for fabricating thick photoresist structures (>1 mm) with high precision. The 2-BM beamline was designed to exploit these source characteristics and to provide flexible spectral tuning in order to accommodate different mask/resist thicknesses and to study the effects of the x-ray energy on the lithography process. The beamline will also be used for developing micro-characterization techniques. This includes characterization of microfocusing optics such as zone plates and developing instrumentation for techniques such as x-ray microprobe and microtomography. For this purpose, two monochromators, one using crystals and one using multilayers, will be used to cover the 1-35 keV regime with different energy bandwidths. Beamline design, end-station layout, and recent results will be presented.copyright 1997 American Institute of Physics