Patent ID: 8426832

Claim:
A stencil for charged particle beam lithography comprising: a first character projection (CP) character having an adjacent first blanking area, wherein the first blanking area is large enough to permit illumination of a minimum desired portion of the first CP character with a charged particle beam without illuminating another character, wherein dimensions of the charged particle beam illuminating the stencil are determined by a charged particle beam system, wherein the charged particle beam system comprises a charged particle beam source and a first aperture plate, and wherein the first aperture plate is the only aperture plate between the charged particle beam source and the stencil; and a second CP character having an adjacent second blanking area, wherein the second blanking area is large enough to permit illumination of a minimum desired portion of the second CP character with the charged particle beam without illuminating another character, and wherein at least a portion of the first blanking area overlaps the second blanking area, and wherein the first character, the first blanking area, the second character and the second blanking area combined comprise less than three times the size of the illuminating charged particle beam in at least one of the x or y dimensions.