Intellectual Property Law

US Patent 7618250 - Nanoimprint lithography optical alignment

This patent from ASML Netherlands B.V. teaches diffraction gratings used to align nanoimprint
lithography and enable multilayer patterning. Claim 1 reads:

1. An imprint lithography apparatus comprising:

a template holder configured to hold an imprint template, a substrate table, and an optical encoder, the optical encoder having a radiation output, a first diffraction grating, and a detector, the radiation output arranged to illuminate a second diffraction grating and the detector positioned to detect radiation diffracted by the first and second diffraction gratings to provide an alignment signal.

Full post as published by TinytechIP on November 18, 2009 (boomark / email).