Abstract: Methods and apparatus for etching ultra fine lines of impurities on semiconductors and other materials. A cold diverging ion beam is generated, made to converge, encoded using a mask to correspond to an image, and then used to etch impurities on the substrate. An ECR plasma source is used to generate a warm plasma. A cooled neutral target gas is penetrated by the warm plasma ions so that the plasma ion charge is transferred to the cool target gas to provide cool ions, which are then extracted to provide a cryogenic ion beam. The ion beam is made converging and then encoded by the mask. The ion beam also may be transformed into an atom beam in a charge exchange cell.

Abstract: Apparatus and methods for submicron lithography of semiconductor materials, circuits and other objects. A source of multiply charged ions is applied to a thin layer of electrically conductive material. The recombination of ions and free electrons in the layer produce soft x-ray radiation which used to irradiate an object. The object may include a semiconductor substrate, an x-ray sensitive resist, and an x-ray absorbing mask for forming semiconductor circuit devices. The soft x-rays are produced by careful selection of the type and energy of multiply charged ions and the thickness of the thin electro-conductive layer, which may be a light element metal.