Patent Number: 
Section: claims

1. A method for electron-beam writing to a medium comprising:positioning the medium within an e-beam writing machine so that the medium is supported by a stage and is exposed to an e-beam source; andwriting a pattern to the medium using a plurality of independently-controllable beams of the e-beam source, in which the pattern comprises a plurality of parallel strips, and further in which each of the parallel strips is written using multiple ones of the independently-controllable beams to cause multiple beam exposure to areas within each of the parallel strips. 2. The method of claim 1 in which the strips are not separated by stitches. 3. The method of claim 1 in which each of the independently-controllable beams comprises a Gaussian beam. 4. The method of claim 1 in which each of the independently-controllable beams are applied in a zigzag configuration. 5. The method of claim 4 in which each of the independently-controllable beams has a zigzag pattern that overlaps with at least one adjacent beam. 6. The method of claim 1 in which a writing velocity of the independently-controllable beams is increased by a factor of N, where N is an integer equal to a number of the independently-controllable beams that write to a single one of the strips. 7. The method of claim 1 in which the medium comprises a semiconductor wafer. 8. The method of claim 1 in which medium comprises a photomask. 9. The method of claim 1 in which each of the strips comprises a single, respective e-beam dosage. 10. The method of claim 1 in which the independently-controllable beams are applied using at least one of: e-beam deflection and relative movement of the medium to the e-beam source. 11. An electron-beam writing system, the system comprising:a stage upon which a medium may be placed;a writing mechanism to write upon the medium placed upon the stage, the writing mechanism comprising an electron beam source operable to produce N independently-controllable beams, where N is an integer larger than 1; anda computer-based control system operable to:write a pattern upon the medium in a plurality of parallel strips, each of the strips being written using multiple ones of the N independently-controllable beams to cause multiple beam exposure to areas within each of the parallel strips. 12. The system of claim 11 in which the independently-controllable beams comprise Gaussian beams, and in which the computer-based control system writes with the Guassian beams using movement in x- and y-directions. 13. The system of claim 11 in which each of the independently-controllable beams are applied in a zigzag configuration. 14. The system of claim 11 in which each of the independently-controllable beams has a zigzag pattern that overlaps with at least one adjacent beam. 15. The system of claim 11 in which the independently-controllable beams are applied using at least one of: e-beam deflection and relative movement of the medium to the electron beam source. 16. A method for electron-beam writing to a medium, the method comprising:positioning an e-beam source to write a plurality of strips onto the medium using N independently-controllable beams; andwriting to each of the strips using multiple ones of the N independently-controllable beams, variations among the respective independently-controllable beams being averaged by writing to each strip using a unique subset of the N independently-controllable beams, further in which the strips are not separated by stitches, and further in which the strips are part of a complete pattern that does not require stitches. 17. The method of claim 16 in which each of the independently-controllable beams comprises a Gaussian beam. 18. The method of claim 17 in which each of the independently-controllable beams is written in a zigzag path in each strip using at least one of deflection and relative movement of the medium and the e-beam source. 19. The method of claim 16 in which the independently-controllable beams each comprise a patterned beam with an array of M×M non-independent sub-beams, the independently-controllable beams being overlayed with an offset relative to each other and an angular offset relative to a direction of scanning so that a projection of the independently-controllable beams on the medium has a pattern in which adjacent pixels are from different ones of the independently-controllable beams. 20. The method of claim 16 in which a motion of the independently-controllable beams uses straight-line scanning and wherein, for each of the plurality of strips, the independently-controllable beams are applied simultaneously.