Tomoyuki MATSUYAMA

Projection Lens Development Department, Nikon Corporation, 201-9 Miizugahara, Kumagaya 360-8559, Japan

(Received January 31, 2003; Accepted May 6, 2003)

In this paper a newly proposed polynomial series for aberration expression is reviewed. The new series can be utilized to express aberration distribution of a high NA and wide field optical system like a microlithographic projection lens. Moreover, the new aberration functions can be used for the microlithographic lens manufacturing process because they can express each aberration component of a rotationally symmetric system with a small amount of decentering error and astigmatic (toric) error.

Key words: microlithographic lens, aberration functions, Zernike polynomials, wavefront aberration, tolerancing