Using Orientation Zernike Polynomials to predict the imaging

performance of optical systems with birefringent and partly

polarizing components
Johannes Ruoa , Michael Totzeckb
a Carl

Zeiss SMT AG, D-73446 Oberkochen, Germany

b Carl

Zeiss AG, D-73446 Oberkochen, Germany

ABSTRACT

Orientation Zernike Polynomials have been shown to provide a complete and systematic description of polarized
imaging using the polar decomposition of the Jones pupil. We use this concept to predict the polarization
performance of high NA lithography lenses.
Keywords: polarization, hyper NA, Jones pupils, polar decomposition, wave front aberrations, lithography,
projection systems

1. INTRODUCTION
A well controlled wavefront is a prerequisite for a high resolution optical imaging system. In particular optical
systems for microlithography have to provide an extremely stable and constant performance on customer side,
with regard to specication, manipulation, set-up and tool-to-tool matching. These conditions have to be fullled
also for polarized imaging, which is in particular relevant for the hyper-NA immersion scanners. In order to
provide the maximum performance a set of values is needed that is tightly connected to the origin of imaging
degradation in the optical system but has nevertheless a simple relationship to the polarized imaging performance.
Typically, the polarization properties of a non-depolarizing imaging system are encoded in a complex electromagnetic transfer function, such as the Jones pupil. Following the seminal work of Lu and Chipman1, Geh
et al.2 showed that, in current lithography lenses, these rather unintuitive Jones pupils can be decomposed into
pupil maps corresponding to the basic physical eects of wavefront, apodization, diattenuation, and retardation.
Apodization, which describes the transmission variation across the pupil, and wavefront aberrations are wellknown quantities from scalar imaging that are sucient to describe imaging at moderate NA. Diattenuation,
which is the polarization-induced transmission splitting, and retardation, which is the polarization-induced phase
splitting, start to become important when polarized light or high NA values are used in the imaging process.
Having this particular Jones-pupil decomposition at hand, we can use the well known scalar Zernike polynomials to describe the wavefront and apodization maps. However, in order to quantify the diattenuation and
retardation maps, we have to construct a new set of Zernike-like base functions, the so-called orientation Zernike
polynomials,3, 4 which are adapted to the vector-like nature of these pupils.
In Section 2 we shall briey recapitulate the basic ideas behind the above mentioned Jones pupil decomposition
as presented in Geh et al.2 In Section 3 we present the concept of an orientator, which is the mathematical
object that describes the orientation of a polarization state or the principal axes of a linear retarder, and which
serves as a basis for the derivation of the proposed set of orientation Zernike polynomials. Section 4 discusses
the relations between retardation and polarized wavefronts and Section 5 is devoted to some applications.
E-mail: j.ruo@smt.zeiss.com

International Optical Design Conference 2010, edited by Julie Bentley, Anurag Gupta,
Richard N. Youngworth, Proc. of SPIE-OSA Vol. 7652, 76521T 2010 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/10/$18 doi: 10.1117/12.871896
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2. JONES PUPIL AND ITS POLAR DECOMPOSITION

The propagation of a plane wave through any nondepolarizing optical element can be completely characterized by
a change in the propagation direction, and changes both in amplitude and phase of the electric eld components.
Hence, after passing through the optical element the new Jones vector E = (E1 , E2 )T can be computed from
the original state E = (E1, E2)T by matrix multiplication E = JE with a complex valued 22 matrix J, the socalled Jones matrix, which contains the full information about the polarization properties of the optical element
under consideration. For optical systems the Jones matrix usually is a function of pupil and eld coordinates.
For a given eld point, the collection of Jones matrices for all pupil coordinates is called a Jones pupil.
Starting point for the above mentioned decomposition is the so-called polar decomposition theorem from
linear algebra, which states that any complex n n-matrix M can be written as a product of a Hermitian matrix
H (or H ) and a unitary matrix U. Applying this theorem to our Jones matrix J, it reads
J = HU = UH .

(1)

Noting that any unitary matrix U can be written in the form

U = eiP ,

(2)

with another Hermitian matrix P. Hence we can write Eq.(1) as

J = HeiP = eiP H .

(3)

Since Hermitian matrices have real eigenvalues, this representation is similar to the polar representation of a
complex number c = r exp(i) with modulus r > 0 and phase . Hence the representation H exp(iP) can be
considered as a generalized polar representation of a complex matrix J with an amplitude matrix H (or H ) and
a phase matrix P. Now it is obvious that the matrix H is responsible for the polarization dependent apodization
part of J and P is responsible for the polarization dependent phase changes, viz. retardation eects. However,
this separation is not so clean, since, in general, H can have elliptical eigenvectors and therefore also may contain
phase changing elements. Nevertheless, we can consider H to represent a generalized partial polarizer with real
eigenvalues and elliptical eigenstates and U to represent a generalized retarder with pure phase eigenvalues and
dierent elliptical eigenstates.
Another dierence with respect to the polar representation of a complex number is that, in general, the
matrices H and U do not commute, and therefore H and H are dierent. However, when polarization eects are
weak, H and U do commute to a sucient approximation, and the ordering does not matter.
As is well known, a Hermitian matrix always has real eigenvalues and orthogonal eigenvectors, thus both H
and P can be diagonalized according to

H = VH DH VH
,

P=

VP DP VP

(4)
(5)

with unitary transformation matrices VH and VP containing the eigenvectors and the diagonal matrices DH and
DR containing the real valued eigenvalues. The unitary retardation matrix U can then be diagonalized according
to
U = VP DU VP = VP eiDP VP .

(6)

It further can be shown that an arbitrary unitary 2 2-matrix can be parameterized by four independent
parameters. However, in the combination VDV occurring in (4) through (6), the matrix V can be written using
only two independent parameters:


cos
sin ei
.
(7)
V=
sin ei
cos
Hence, the eigenvectors, which are given by the two columns of the transformation matrix V are




cos
sin ei
E1 =
,
,
E2 =
sin ei
cos

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(8)

representing mutually orthogonal elliptical polarization states. Writing the diagonal transmission matrix DH as


1+d
0
,
(9)
DH = t
0
1d
with t denoting an overall transmission amplitude and d representing the polarization dependent amplitude split,
and the phase matric DU as
 i

0
i e
,
(10)
DU = e
0
ei
with denoting an overall phase and representing the polarization dependent phase split, we can nally write
the polar decomposition of an arbitrary Jones matrix J as
J = tei Jpol (d, p , p ) Jret (, r , r ) .

(11)

Herein, p and r denote the orientation angles of the corresponding polarization eigenstates of the partial
polarizer Jpol ( H) and generalized retarder Jret ( U ) and p and r are related to their respective ellipticities.
In Geh at al2 it has been shown that the elliptical retarder can, by means of a Poincare decomposition, be
represented as combination of a linear retarder and a rotator. Similiarly the elliptical partial polarizer can
futher be decomposed into a combination of two linear retarders and a linear polarizer. Now, in lithographical
projection systems, the ellipticy is usually very small and can therefore be safely neglected. But even in cases,
where the ellipticity cannot be neglected it can always be separated out and treated independently from the
linear retardation and diattenuation maps. In what follows we therefore will no longer pay attention to a
possible ellipticity of the eigenstates and focus, besides apodization and wavefront, only on the linear retardation
and diattenuation maps.
Setting p = r = 0, the matrices Jpol and Jret represent a linear partial polarizer and retarder with respective
orientation angles p and r with the functional forms given by




cos p
sin p
1+d
0
cos p sin p
Jpol (d, p ) =
0
1d
sin p
cos p
sin p cos p


d sin 2p
1 + d cos 2p
,
(12)
=
d sin 2p
1 d cos 2p
  i



0
sin r
e
cos r
cos r sin r
Jret (, r ) =
0
ei
sin r
cos r
sin r cos r


i sin sin 2r
cos i sin cos 2r
.
(13)
=
i sin sin 2r
cos + i sin cos 2r
Note that the angles p and r enter the Jones matrix of the rotated elements always together with the factor 2,
which means the Jones matrix is -periodic in these variables. In other words a 180 -rotation leaves the retarder
or polarizer invariant. This property is responsible for the fact that one cannot use ordinary vector Zernike
polynomials to describe retardation or polarization maps, since the latter are no true vector elds, which would
be invariant under 360 rotation.
We should also mention that when talking about transmission and diattenuation, usually the intensity based
quantities T and D are considered, which are related to the amplitude based parameters t and d from Eqn. (9)
by


T = t2 1 + d2 ,
(14)
2d
.
(15)
D=
1 + d2
Using the above described decomposition, we can generate from a Jones pupil its respective apodization, wavefront, diattenuation and retardation pupils. The apodization, i. e. the scalar pupil transmission, as well as the
phase can be expanded into the well known scalar Zernike polynomials. As already mentioned the retardation
and diattenuation maps are vector-like quantities as they possess magnitude and orientation. They therefore have
to represented by an appropriate vector-Zernike description, which takes care of their rotational -invariance.
This is accomplished by the so-called orientation Zernike polynomials, which shall be dened in the next section.

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3. ORIENTATORS AND ORIENTATION ZERNIKE POLYNOMIALS

In order to properly dene the proposed set of orientation Zernike polynomials is is very convenient to use the
concept of orientators. Orientators have been rst introduced by Heil et al.3 and then put on a more rigorous
mathematical basis by Ruo and Totzeck.4 Here, we briey review their basic properties.
An orientation is a direction modulo 180 . Orientations appear in polarization optics as the direction of the
polarization ellipse as well as the direction of diattenuation and retardance for instance as the orientation of
the bright and fast axis, respectively. An orientation with orientation angle can be represented by a vector
with doubled angle 2. By including a scalar quantity a (representing, i. e. , an amplitude, phase or ellipticity)
we obtain an orientator O that is denoted by


cos 2
.
(16)
O(a, ) = a
sin 2
The case a = 1 shall be abbreviated by O(). Let us repeat the basic properties, which are easily proved using
relation (16):
Two orientators enclosing an angle of 45 are orthogonal to each other.
An orientator and its negative (inverse) element enclose an angle of 90 .
These relations immediately follow from the representation of orientators with orientation angle as vectors with
corresponding doubled angle 2. This vector is then invariant under 360 rotation and its inverse is obtained
by 180 rotation, which are the required mathematical properties of true vectors. Since two orthogonal vectors
enclose an angle of 90 , two orthogonal orientators must enclose an angle of 45 .
Coming back to the linear partial polarizer and retarder, we nd that their respective Jones matrices as given
in Eqns. (12) and (13) can be written as
Jpol (d, ) = I + d O()

(17)

Jret (, ) = cos I i sin O()

(18)

for the partial polarizer and

for the retarder with I denoting the unit matrix and O() a matrix formed by two orthogonal orientators
 



cos 2
sin 2
= O(), O
O() =
.
(19)
sin 2 cos 2
4
If the diattenuation is weak then the product of two partial polarizers J1 and J2 is given by the weighted sum of
their corresponding orientators:
Jpol (d1 , 1 )Jpol (d2 , 2 ) I + d1 O(1 ) + d2 O(2 ) .

(20)

Similarly one obtains for a sequence of two weak retarders

Jret (1 , 1 )Jret (2 , 2 ) cos 1 cos 2 I i sin 1 O(1 ) i sin 2 O(2 ) .

(21)

Since the retardation is assumed to be small such that quadratic terms in i can be neglected, we can go one
step further and expand cos and sin to obtain an expression similar to the diattenuation case:
Jret (1 , 1 )Jret (2 , 2 ) I i 1 O(1 ) i 2 O(2 ) .

(22)

These relations are very useful and important, since they assure that the total polarization properties of an
optical system with weak polarization properties of each of its optical components can be found by just summing

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OZ5

OZ5

OZ6

OZ6

Figure 1. Correspondence between the orientation Zernike polynomials OZ5 and OZ6 and their representation in matrix
form.

up the individual contributions. In particular, this also holds for the representation of these quantities in terms
of orientation Zernike polynomials.
To fully appreciate the advantages of this formalism, we now nally introduce the orientation Zernike polynomials, by directly relating them to the vector Zernike polynomials. Again, we only briey present the main
formulae, the more elaborate derivation can be found in Ruo and Totzeck.4
Let an arbitrary orientator eld O be given as a function of pupil coordinates r and restricted onto the
unit disc. Choosing the vector representation we can expand it into vector Zernike polynomials according to


1
n

cos 2(r, )
m
m
=
O(a(r, ), (r, )) = a(r, )
cm
n, Rn (r) () ,
sin 2(r, )


(23)

n=1 m=n =0

m
with coecients cm
n, , the radial dependence Rn (r) known from the scalar Zernike polynomials, and the two
mutually orthogonal vector components


cos m
,
(24)
m
=
0
sin m

 

cos (m + /2)
sin m
.
(25)
m
=
1 =
sin (m + /2)
cos m

These two vectors can be considered as the double angle vector representation of two corresponding orientators
Om
 :
 m 
= m
Om
(26)
0 () := O
0 () ,
2

 m

+
= m
Om
(27)
1 () := O
1 () .
2
4
Finally, the orientation Zernike polynomials (OZP) can be dened by including the radial function Rnm :
m
(r, ) := Rnm (r)Om
OZn,
 () .

(28)

Like the vector Zernike polynomials, OZPs possess three independent indices, which can be used to order them
according to their symmetry properties. However, as for the scalar Zernike polynomials, which possess two

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indices, it is more convenient to use a linear numbering system. The labeling system, we will use is chosen to
be as close as possible to the Fringe numbering system, which nowadays is the most common numbering scheme
used in optical lithography.
m
Loosely spoken, we label a given OZn,
by OZj , if, when considered as a retardation pupil, it will give rise
to a polarized wavefront represented by the scalar Zernike polynomial Zj in Fringe notation, when the input
polarization state is x-polarized. However, this correspondence is not unique, as there are two distinct OZPs,
which lead to the same wavefront, therefore we will dierentiate between these two cases by introducing a sign in
the OZP labelling. The dierence between OZj and OZj will become obvious when looking at the Jones-matrix
representation, which can be schematically be written as:


Zj+1
Zj

OZj =
,
(29)
Zj+1 Zj


Zj+1
Zj

OZj =
.
(30)
Zj+1
Zj

Hence, both OZj and OZj have the same diagonal elements, but dier in sign in the o-diagonal elements.
These relationships are exemplarily depicted in Fig. 1 for OZ5 and OZ6 . For the OZP which are related to
the rotationally symmetric Zernike polynomials Z1 , Z4 , Z9 , . . . , the Jones-matrix representations contain either
only diagonal or only o-diagonal matrix elements:


0
Zj

OZj =
,
(31)
0 Zj


0 Zj

,
j = 1, 4, 9, 16, . . .
(32)
OZj =
Zj 0
Finally in Fig. 2, we show the rst nine OZPs, arranged in a table according to their symmetry properties
with respect to rotation, denoted by the M -quantum number. OZPs with M = 0 are invariant under rotation,
whereas OZPs with M = 1 exhibit no rotational symmetry at all, hence they return to the same image only
after rotation by 360 . OZPs with symmetry class M = 0 are invariant under rotations by integer multiples of
360 /M . It worthwile noting that although OZj and OZj just dier by the sign in the o-diagonal components
of the Jones-matrix representations, they belong to dierent symmetry classes. Whereas the scalar Zernike
polynomials with square indices Z1 , Z4 , Z9 , . . . are rotationally symmetric, the corresponding OZPs belong the
M = 2 class, that is they are invariant under 180 rotation. Instead, the rotationally symmetric OZPs are
given by OZ5/6 , OZ12/13 , . . . , which correspond to the 2-wave or astigmatic scalar Zernike polynomials. But this
just reects the well-known fact that a rotationally symmetric retardation distribution leads to an astigmatic
wavefront when illuminated with linearly x or y-polarized light.

4. CORRESPONDENCE TO WAVEFRONTS
The eect of linear retardation or diattenuation on incoming light depends its polarization state. If the light
is linearly polarized along the fast/slow axis of the retarder or the bright/dark axis of the partial polarizer,
then the only eect on the light ray is a change in phase or amplitude, whereas the polarization state remains
unaltered. Things change, however, when the polarization state and the fast/slow or bright/dark axis enclose an
angle which is dierent from 0 and 90 . In this case, the output polarization state will be altered. In particular,
a linear polarization state becomes rotated by a certain amount when passing a partial polarizer, and elliptical,
when passing a linear retarder.
These eects have to be kept in mind whenever one wants to study the impact of diattenuation or retardation
on the imaging behavior of a lithography lens. If the polarization of the illumination and all the diraction
orders due to the mask structures are nearly parallel to the lens retardation, then its impact is dominated by
pure wavefront eects, and the imaging eects are similar to those created by scalar aberrations for unpolarized
light. For the same conditions, the diattenuation can be treated as an additional scalar apodization. If, however,
some diraction orders pass through regions, where the orientation of the retardation or diattenuation encloses

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M=2
M=3

M=1

M=4

M=0

Figure 2. OZP table arranged according to the M -symmetry properties. The colors code the radial dependence, which is
given by the polynomial Rnm .

a signicant angle with the polarization (in the worst case 45 ), then the change of the polarization state can
have an additional impact on the imaging and has to be considered as well.
Figure 3 shows the resulting wavefronts, when polarized light passes through a lens with the retardation
given by 10 nm OZj with j = 5, 6. For purely x-polarized light the resulting wavefronts are described by
the scalar Zernike polynomials Z|j| , since that is how the orientation Zernike polynomial OZj was dened. For
instance, 10 nm OZ5 lead to 5 nm Z5 and 10 nm OZ6 lead to 5 nm Z6 wavefront. Switching to y-polarized
illumination only changes the sign of the resulting wavefront. In addition to the retardation induced wavefronts,
the resulting IPS (intensity in preferred state) is plotted, as well. In this analysis the preferred state is always
the input polarization state. As already mentioned, in the case, where the orientation of the retardation axis
comprises an angle to the polarization state of the incoming light, the polarization state will be changed, and
a previously purely x-polarized light wave will now contain a small y component. Hence, the intensity in the
preferred state, which is the x polarization, will be reduced by the amount which is transferred into the orthogonal
y-polarization state. For OZ5 , the orientations of the fast axes are parallel or orthogonal to the x polarization
along the coordinate axes, hence the IPS along these axes is 100%. In the diagonals the orientation of the fast
axis is tilted by 45 or 135 with respect to the x-polarization state, therefore the IPS is smallest along these
lines. For high-NA imaging, IPS loss usually corresponds to contrast loss in the aerial image, since the preferred
polarization is usually chosen such that it leads to maximum contrast. The fraction of the light, which, due to
polarization eects, is shifted into the orthogonal polarization state, cannot fully interfere and therefore will lead
to an additional background, resulting in contrast loss.
Turning now to tangential (TE) or radial (TM) polarization, it turns out that the resulting wavefront caused
by a single OZP can no longer be described by a single scalar Zernike coecient. However, the wavefront will
possess the same M -fold symmetry as the underlying retardation. Hence, the wavefront caused by the rotationally
symmetric OZ5 for TE or TM polarized light is given by Z4 (plus an irrelevant Z1 ) leading to a defocus of the
image. Note that in this case IPS = 100% across the whole pupil, since the TE-polarized illumination pupil is
in the retardation eigenstate for each pupil point.
Now the dierence between OZ5 and OZ5 , which were indistinguishable for linear x or y polarization,
becomes obvious. In contrast to OZ5 , which leads to a rotationally symmetric wavefront, OZ5 possesses a
four-fold symmetry and gives rise to a wavefront containing four-wave Zernike polynomials such as Z17 and Z28
and some higher orders. The corresponding IPS exhibits even an eight-fold symmetry. As can be seen from
Fig. 3, when the retardation is proportional to OZ6 , it does not create any wavefront aberrations, since at each
pupil point the orientation of the input polarization and the principal retardation axes enclose an angle of 45 .
Hence, the angle of the input polarization is orthogonal to the retardation orientation, and therefore there is no
net wavefront eect. The only impact is a change in the polarization state, which is apparent from the fact that

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OZ5

a)

OZ5

OZ6

OZ6

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

retardation

1
1

1
1

1
1

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

x-pol.

wavefront

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
1

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

c)

8
6

1
1

b)

10

2
0

0
5

5
100
99.5
99

IPS

98.5

1
1

1
1

1
1

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

d)
TE-pol.
wavefront

1
1

e)

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
1

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

0.5

98
0

97.5
5

5
100
99.5
99

IPS

98.5

1
1

1
1

1
1

1
1

98
0

97.5

Figure 3. Resulting wavefronts and intensity distributions for dierent retardation pupils when illuminated with polarized
light. Row a) Retardation plots corresponding to 10nm OZ5 and OZ6 . Row b) Induced wavefronts when illuminated by
x-polarized light. Row c) Corresponding intensity distributions of the x-polarized component. Row d) Induced wavefronts
when illuminated by tangentially (TE) polarized light. Row e) Corresponding intensity distributions of the TE-polarized
component.

the IPS is everywhere less than 100% (except the origin) with a Z4 -like ngerprint. For OZ6 the situation is
similar to the OZ5 case, although instead of Z17 and Z28 , we now nd Z18 and Z29 .
From these considerations it becomes apparent that the imaging impact of retardation OZP strongly depends
on the input polarization. Only for x or y-polarized input states, a one-to-one correspondence with scalar Zernike
polynomials can be immediately established and the imaging impact of the polarized wavefront is essentially the
same as that of a scalar wavefront on unpolarized light. However, this is strictly true only if the retardation axes
are parallel to the input polarization state, otherwise IPS loss will occur, leading to an additional contrast loss,
which has no counterpart in unpolarized low-NA imaging.
As a nal remark we should note that retardation in general also leads to contrast loss for unpolarized

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diattenuation [%]
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
0

OZ 5
OZ 5
10

20

30
step #

40

50

60

retardation [nm]
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
0

OZ 5
OZ 5
10

20

30
step #

40

50

60

Figure 7. Lens surface resolved OZP spectra of the RCR design for OZ5 and OZ5 .

are located close to pupil positions and therefore have large subapertures and little eld variation. In addition
to the above mentioned OZP, we also nd OZ4 and OZ5 as dominant OPZs as well as some other higher
order coecients, which are entirely due to the presence of the two folding mirrors, which obviously break the
rotational symmetry of the system.

5.2 Budget breakdown

In order to guarantee optimal imaging performance of the optical lens, the polarization impact has to be accurately controled. From imaging consideration one can deduce the maximum level of retardation and diattenuation
that can be tolerated without having signicant image deterioration. For wavefront errors, the commonly used
specication framework is given by the Zernike polynomials and the total wavefront errors are specied by xing
maximal values for each of a certain set of Zernike polynomials, say from Z2 to Z36 and a value for the residual
high frequency errors. In the same way, we can specify the maximally allowed levels of retardation and diattenuation of the total projection optics by specifying the single OZPs, ranging from OZ1 up to some OZmax and, if
necessary, some value for the residual high frequency errors.
Having specied the total amount of allowed polarization impact in terms of OZPs, we can then try to use the
additivity of single OZP coecients to create subbudgets for each lens elements. The maximally allowed level
of polarization impact of each lens element then, for instance, puts constraints on the levels of stress induced
birefringence allowed for a particular lens element, or the maximally allowed coating variations.
To be able to perform such kinds of budget breakdown, it is required that the polarization eects are weak
enough so that the linearity is assured and Eqns. (20) and (22) hold, which means that the total polarization
impact of all lens elements can be obtained by just summing up the OZP coecients of each lens element.
To check the validity of this approach we rst decompose the polarization pupils of each lens element surface into its OZPs. In Fig. 7 the values of OZ5 and OZ5 are shown for each lens element surface, both for
diattenuation and retardation. Herein, it is assumed that the polarization eects are entirely due to the AR
coatings on the lens surfaces and the HR coatings on the three mirror surfaces. So, no bulk material induced
eects are taken into account. From these plots, it is dicernable that almost all surfaces have OZ5 contributions,
although of quite dierent levels, whereas only two surfaces have an OZ5 contribution. These stem from the

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Retardation [nm]

15

(a)1

10

retardation [nm]

(c)

0.5

0
4

0.5

1
1

10
5
0
5

x=0

x = 0.16137

x = 0.32275

3
OZ #

x = 0.6455

x = 0.48412

(b) 1

10

1
1

1
1 1

1
1 1

1
1 1

1
1 1

Figure 5. a) Retardation distribution of the clear aperture together with the position of ve dierent subapertures with
shrinking aperture radius. b) Retardation plots corresponding to the chosen subapertures. c) Corresponding OZP spectra.
The dierent colors denote dierent eld positions for each OZP coecient. In order to illustrate the eld dependence
more clearly, nine eld positions have been sampled.

seen from the bar graph in Fig. 4c. Moving now along the x-axis leaves OZ3 unaltered, but gives rise to the
appearance of OZ2 , representing the x-tilt with a linear dependence on the x coordinate. The value of OZ1
shows a quadratic behavior with x, which comes from the fact that the amplitude of the retardation distribution
inside the clear aperture, given by OZ5 , is quadratic in the pupil radius r. In addition to the oset OZ1 , we also
see the appearance of OZ1 , which is the constant oset with fast axis along the diagonal. It is needed to change
the orientation of the fast axis, making it to point into the direction, which is given by the vector pointing from
the origin of the full aperture to the origin of the subaperture.
Figure 5 shows the behavior of the OZP coecients when shrinking the subaperture radius and moving
it towards the pupil edge. As already mentioned the value of OZ5 depends quadratically on the subaperture
radius, hence we see it quadratically disappear, when shrinking the subaperture down to zero radius. The
vanishing of OZ5 goes hand in hand with a quadratic growth of OZ1 , since for shrinking subaperture size, the
retardation distribution within this subaperture becomes more and more constant, as can be seen in Fig. 5b.
Hence, eld lenses with small subaperture sizes mostly induce the low order OZP coecients OZ1 as well as
OZ2/3 , whereas lenses situated close to the pupil plane with large subapertures show the full ngerprint of the
retardation distribution within the lens. Moreover, the eld dependence of the latter is usually small, since the
subapertures do not move signicantly across the clear aperture. An exception might be when the retardation
within the lens strongly depends on the ray direction as is the case for the intrinsic birefringence of certain
crystalline materials such as CaF2 . The eld lenses, in contrast, can exhibit a strong eld dependence, when the
retardation strongly varies across the lens elements.
With these preliminary examples in mind, we can now turn to a realistic lithography projection lens and
demonstrate how the OZPs provide a convenient tool to analyze optical designs during a concept study in terms
of their polarization impact. To this end we examine the retardation and diattenuation maps induced by the
AR and HR coatings on the lens elements and mirrors of a catadioptric RCR design with 1.3 NA taken from
WO 2005/111689. We have chosen an RCR design because it provides a characteristic polarization ngerprint
which is useful for illustration purposes. Figure 6a shows a sketch of an RCR lens design, Fig. 6b shows the
diattenuation and retardation pupils for ve eld points, and Fig. 6c shows the corresponding OZP coecients.
Both the retardation and diattenuation induced by the coatings on the lens elements and the pupil mirror are
rotationally symmetric. Hence, for a eld points located on the optical axis, the only induced OZP coecients

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Using Orientation Zernike Polynomials to predict the imaging

performance of optical systems with birefringent and partly
polarizing components
Johannes Ruoa , Michael Totzeckb
a Carl

Zeiss SMT AG, D-73446 Oberkochen, Germany

b Carl

Zeiss AG, D-73446 Oberkochen, Germany

ABSTRACT

Orientation Zernike Polynomials have been shown to provide a complete and systematic description of polarized
imaging using the polar decomposition of the Jones pupil. We use this concept to predict the polarization
performance of high NA lithography lenses.
Keywords: polarization, hyper NA, Jones pupils, polar decomposition, wave front aberrations, lithography,
projection systems

1. INTRODUCTION
A well controlled wavefront is a prerequisite for a high resolution optical imaging system. In particular optical
systems for microlithography have to provide an extremely stable and constant performance on customer side,
with regard to specication, manipulation, set-up and tool-to-tool matching. These conditions have to be fullled
also for polarized imaging, which is in particular relevant for the hyper-NA immersion scanners. In order to
provide the maximum performance a set of values is needed that is tightly connected to the origin of imaging
degradation in the optical system but has nevertheless a simple relationship to the polarized imaging performance.
Typically, the polarization properties of a non-depolarizing imaging system are encoded in a complex electromagnetic transfer function, such as the Jones pupil. Following the seminal work of Lu and Chipman1, Geh
et al.2 showed that, in current lithography lenses, these rather unintuitive Jones pupils can be decomposed into
pupil maps corresponding to the basic physical eects of wavefront, apodization, diattenuation, and retardation.
Apodization, which describes the transmission variation across the pupil, and wavefront aberrations are wellknown quantities from scalar imaging that are sucient to describe imaging at moderate NA. Diattenuation,
which is the polarization-induced transmission splitting, and retardation, which is the polarization-induced phase
splitting, start to become important when polarized light or high NA values are used in the imaging process.
Having this particular Jones-pupil decomposition at hand, we can use the well known scalar Zernike polynomials to describe the wavefront and apodization maps. However, in order to quantify the diattenuation and
retardation maps, we have to construct a new set of Zernike-like base functions, the so-called orientation Zernike
polynomials,3, 4 which are adapted to the vector-like nature of these pupils.
In Section 2 we shall briey recapitulate the basic ideas behind the above mentioned Jones pupil decomposition
as presented in Geh et al.2 In Section 3 we present the concept of an orientator, which is the mathematical
object that describes the orientation of a polarization state or the principal axes of a linear retarder, and which
serves as a basis for the derivation of the proposed set of orientation Zernike polynomials. Section 4 discusses
the relations between retardation and polarized wavefronts and Section 5 is devoted to some applications.
E-mail: j.ruo@smt.zeiss.com

International Optical Design Conference 2010, edited by Julie Bentley, Anurag Gupta,
Richard N. Youngworth, Proc. of SPIE-OSA Vol. 7652, 76521T 2010 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/10/$18 doi: 10.1117/12.871896
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diattenuation [%]
1
0.5
0
0.5
1
0

OZ 5
OZ 5
10

20

30
step #

40

50

60

retardation [nm]
0.5
0
0.5
1
1.5
0

OZ 5
OZ 5
10

20

30
step #

40

50

60

Figure 7. Lens surface resolved OZP spectra of the RCR design for OZ5 and OZ5 .

are located close to pupil positions and therefore have large subapertures and little eld variation. In addition
to the above mentioned OZP, we also nd OZ4 and OZ5 as dominant OPZs as well as some other higher
order coecients, which are entirely due to the presence of the two folding mirrors, which obviously break the
rotational symmetry of the system.

5.2 Budget breakdown

In order to guarantee optimal imaging performance of the optical lens, the polarization impact has to be accurately controled. From imaging consideration one can deduce the maximum level of retardation and diattenuation
that can be tolerated without having signicant image deterioration. For wavefront errors, the commonly used
specication framework is given by the Zernike polynomials and the total wavefront errors are specied by xing
maximal values for each of a certain set of Zernike polynomials, say from Z2 to Z36 and a value for the residual
high frequency errors. In the same way, we can specify the maximally allowed levels of retardation and diattenuation of the total projection optics by specifying the single OZPs, ranging from OZ1 up to some OZmax and, if
necessary, some value for the residual high frequency errors.
Having specied the total amount of allowed polarization impact in terms of OZPs, we can then try to use the
additivity of single OZP coecients to create subbudgets for each lens elements. The maximally allowed level
of polarization impact of each lens element then, for instance, puts constraints on the levels of stress induced
birefringence allowed for a particular lens element, or the maximally allowed coating variations.
To be able to perform such kinds of budget breakdown, it is required that the polarization eects are weak
enough so that the linearity is assured and Eqns. (20) and (22) hold, which means that the total polarization
impact of all lens elements can be obtained by just summing up the OZP coecients of each lens element.
To check the validity of this approach we rst decompose the polarization pupils of each lens element surface into its OZPs. In Fig. 7 the values of OZ5 and OZ5 are shown for each lens element surface, both for
diattenuation and retardation. Herein, it is assumed that the polarization eects are entirely due to the AR
coatings on the lens surfaces and the HR coatings on the three mirror surfaces. So, no bulk material induced
eects are taken into account. From these plots, it is dicernable that almost all surfaces have OZ5 contributions,
although of quite dierent levels, whereas only two surfaces have an OZ5 contribution. These stem from the

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diattenuation [%]
2
sum of single OZPs
exact solution

1.5
1
0.5
0
0.5
1

1 1

2 2 3 3 4 4

5 5 6 6 7 7

8 8 9 9 1010 1111 1212 1313 1414 1515 1616

OZ #
retardation [nm]

3
sum of single OZPs
exact solution

2
1
0
1
2
3

1 1

2 2 3 3 4 4

5 5 6 6 7 7

8 8 9 9 1010 1111 1212 1313 1414 1515 1616

OZ #

Figure 8. Comparison of OZP spectra resulting from adding up the individual coecients of each surface with the
coecients which are obtained by expanding the polarization pupils of the whole system.

two surfaces of the folding mirror, which break the rotational symmetry of the system. As one can see, they
completely dominate the overall retardation of the system, which therefore has no rotational symmetry. For the
diattenuation, the impact of the folding mirror is of the same order as of the most critical surfaces, and therefore
the total diattenuation distribution still bears some rotational symmetry.
Finally, in Fig. 8 we compare the OZP specta resulting from adding up the individual coecients of each
surface with the coecients which are obtained by expanding the polarization pupils of the whole system, shown
in Fig. 6. As can be seen, the dierences are negligible, which clearly justies the above described approach of
breaking down the total polarization budget into individual subbudgets in terms of OZPs. It should be mentioned
that this approach will certainly start to fail, when strongly polarizing elements are part of the optical system.
However, our purpose here is to quantify the polarization properties of lithographic systems, which in general
do have weak polarizing properties, as is the case for many other optical systems.

6. CONCLUSIONS
We have demonstrated that the concept of orientation Zernike polynomials is a natural extension of the well
known scalar Zernike polynomials to describe the polarization performance of optical imaging systems. The
complete Jones pupil of a moderately polarizing optical system can be parametrized by two sets of scalar Zernike
polynomials and two sets of orientation Zernike polynomials. In general, a very limited set of Zernike coecients is
necessary to completely describe the polarization performance of an optical system. Moreover, orientation Zernike
polynomials provide a very powerful means to characterize and quantify the imaging impact of polarization eects.
This can be used for budget breakdowns and to monitor the polarization performance of both single lens elements
and the whole optical lens. Hence, in the same way as scalar Zernike polynomials are used to assess the wavefront
quality, OZP can be used to control the polarization aberrations, which, when taken together, serves to create a
holistic picture of the imaging performance of any optical imaging system.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Paul Graupner and Thomas Schicketanz for valuable input.

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REFERENCES
1. S.-Y. Lu and R. A. Chipman, Homogeneous and inhomogeneous Jones matrices, J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 11,
pp. 766773, 1993.
2. B. Geh, J. Ruo, J. Zimmermann, P. Graupner, M. Totzeck, M. Mengel, U. Hempelmann, and E. SchmittWeaver, The impact of projection lens polarization properties on lithographic process at hyper-NA, Proc.
SPIE 6520, p. 65200F, 2007.
3. T. Heil, J. Ruo, J. T. Neumann, M. Totzeck, D. Krahmer, B. Geh, and P. Gr
aupner, Orientation Zernike
Polynomials: a systematic description of polarized imaging using high NA lithography lenses, Proc. SPIE
7140, p. 714018, 2008.
4. J. Ruo and M. Totzeck, Orientation Zernike polynomials: a useful way to describe the polarization eects
of optical imaging systems, J. Micro/Nanolith. MEMS MOEMS 8, p. 0314104, 2009.

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