Patent ID: 7728313

Claim:
A maskless lithography system for direct, nano-scaleable structuring of a substrate disposed in a vacuum chamber using a charged particle beam, and a high voltage present within the vacuum chamber, comprising: a mounting table for supporting the substrate when the substrate is structured; a beam source for generating the charged particle beam; an addressable pattern generating system which is configured as a plate system; and a data transmission system configured to transmit a structure pattern to be produced to the pattern generating system as a set of pattern data generated via computer, wherein said data transmission system comprises electro-optical converters and opto-electrical converters; wherein said data transmission system is an opto-electrical free-space optical beam connection system and is configured to distribute the pattern data, which has been optically converted by the electro-optical converters via light exit locations and light entry locations and in adjustably oriented free-space optical beams between the light exit locations and the light entry locations, to the opto-electrical converters, with the light entry locations residing inside the vacuum chamber and being arranged in an array, and the opto-electrical converters being associated with the pattern generating system with respect to the transmitted pattern data; the opto-electrical converters are spatially disposed directly within the plate system; the number N of the electro-optical converters is adapted to the rate of pattern data to be transmitted, based on their predetermined conversion rate; and optical deflection arrangements are disposed in the free-space optical beams inside the vacuum chamber.