Patent ID: 9429854
Filing Date: 2016-08-30
CPC Classification: G01B,G03F,H01L,Y10T

Claim Text:
1. An exposure method of exposing an object with an illumination light via a projection optical system and a liquid, the method comprising: forming a liquid immersion area under the projection optical system with the liquid by a nozzle unit provided to surround an lower end part of the projection optical system; placing the object to face an alignment system by a stage so that a mark of the object is detected by the alignment system, the stage being movable in at least a first direction and a second direction orthogonal to each other within a predetermined plane perpendicular to an optical axis of the projection optical system and having a holder to hold the object, and the alignment system being arranged away from the projection optical system; placing the object to face the projection optical system by the stage so that the object is exposed with the illumination light via the projection optical system and the liquid of the liquid immersion area; in an encoder system having one of a grating section and a head provided at the stage and the other of the grating section and the head provided on an outer side of the nozzle unit with respect to the projection optical system, by a plurality of the heads that face the grating section, measuring positional information of the stage; and controlling a movement of the stage while compensating for a measurement error of the encoder system that occurs due to the head, based on measurement information of the encoder system, wherein in each of a detection operation of the mark and an exposure operation of the object, the positional information of the stage is measured by the encoder system.