Patent ID: 8436977

Claim:
A lithographic method to apply a pattern to a substrate comprising: illuminating a slit shaped area, elongated along a first direction, of a patterning device with a radiation beam to provide a patterned radiation beam; scanning the patterning device through the radiation beam in a scan direction perpendicular to the first direction; imaging the patterned radiation beam onto a target portion of the substrate using a projection system, comprising a plurality of lenses, a characteristic of the plurality of lenses being an image magnification component along the first direction, and an image distortion component along the scan direction; synchronously scanning the substrate along the scan direction; applying an adjustment to the plurality of lenses, the adjustment being configured to change the image magnification component as the substrate is scanned across a footprint of the radiation beam corresponding to the slit shaped area, a magnitude of the adjustment being a function of a distance between a center of the footprint and a center of the target portion; and applying a supplementary adjustment to the plurality of lenses, the supplementary adjustment being configured to change the image distortion component as the substrate is scanned across the footprint of the radiation beam, a magnitude of the supplementary adjustment being a function of a distance between a center of the footprint relative to and a center of the target portion.