A lensless approach to EUV and soft X-ray microscopy
Semiconductor features such as transistors used in computer chips have reached the nanometer scale, yet metrology tools still have to follow the advances in the industry to study this new generation of chips.
Short-wavelength microscopy using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light or soft X-rays could offer a solution, but it is not compatible with conventional imaging optics. This Mikroniek article presents a lensless microscope built by researchers from Delft University of Technology. It uses coherent EUV light to make an image at the scale of 100 nm. With further refining of this technique, they expect to drastically improve the resolution, possibly down to wavelength scales. (Image courtesy of Sven Weerdenburg, TU Delft).
