Abstract: An apparatus for determining a condition associated with a pellicle for use in a lithographic apparatus, the apparatus including a sensor, wherein the sensor is configured to measure a property associated with the pellicle, the property being indicative of the pellicle condition.

Abstract: Methods and systems are described for reducing particulate contaminants on a clamping face of a clamping structure in a lithographic system. A substrate such as a cleaning reticle is pressed against the clamping face. A temperature differential is established between the substrate and the clamping face either before or after clamping occurs to facilitate transfer of particles from the clamping face to the substrate.

Abstract: A system designed to couple a patterning device to a support structure having a plurality of burls includes a camera module, an actuator, and a controller. The camera module is designed to capture image data of a backside of the patterning device. The actuator is coupled to at least one burl of the plurality of burls and is designed to move the at least one burl. The controller is designed to receive the image data captured from the camera module and determine one or more locations of contamination on the backside of the patterning device from the image data. The controller is also designed to control the actuator to move the at least one burl of the plurality of burls away from the one or more locations of contamination on the backside of the patterning device, based on the determined locations of contamination.

Abstract: A document anonymization system transforms structured documents, such as security policies, that contain user-specific and other sensitive data, producing encoded logic problems in the format or language of one or more constraint solvers; the logic problems do not contain any of the sensitive data. The system may perform a one- or two-stage anonymization process: in a first stage, the electronic document is analyzed according to its document type to identify parameters likely to contain sensitive data, and the associated values are replaced with arbitrary values; in a second stage, after the anonymized electronic document is converted into logic formulae representing the data, the system performs replacements of string constants in the logic formulae with arbitrary strings to further anonymize the sensitive data.