the finite number of steps in the exposure grid, the writing field is of the order of 100 micrometre – 1 mm. Larger patterns require stage moves. An accurate stage is critical for stitching (tiling writing fields exactly against each other) and pattern overlay (aligning a pattern to a previously made one). Electron beam write time The minimum time to expose a given area for a given dose is given by the following formula: where is the time to expose the object (can be divided into exposure time/step size), is the beam current, is the dose and is the area exposed. For example, assuming an exposure area of 1 cm2, a dose of 10−3 coulombs/cm2, and a beam current of 10−9 amperes, the resulting minimum write time would be 106 seconds (about 12 days). This minimum write time does not include time for the stage to move back and forth, as well as time for the beam to be blanked (blocked from the wafer during deflection), as well as time for other possible beam corrections and adjustments in the middle of writing. To cover the 700 cm2 surface area of a 300 mm silicon wafer, the minimum write time would extend to 7*108 seconds, about 22 years. This is a factor of about 10 million times slower than current optical lithography tools. It is clear that throughput is a serious limitation for electron beam lithography, especially when writing dense patterns over a large area. E-beam lithography is not suitable for high-volume manufacturing because of its limited throughput. The smaller field of electron beam writing makes for very slow pattern generation compared with photolithography (the current standard) because more exposure fields must be scanned to form the final pattern area (≤mm2 for electron beam vs. ≥40 mm2 for an optical mask projection scanner). The stage moves in between field scans. The electron beam field is small enough that a rastering or serpentine stage motion is needed to pattern a 26 mm X 33 mm area for example, whereas in a photolithography scanner only a one-dimensional motion of a 26 mm X 2 mm slit field would be required. Currently an optical maskless lithography tool is much faster than an electron beam tool used at the same resolution for photomask patterning. Shot noise As features sizes shrink, the number of incident electrons at fixed dose also shrinks. As soon as the number