Lithographic printing system with placement corrections

Abstract

The technology disclosed relates to methods and devices that compensate for displacements in a pattern or deformations of a workpiece. In particular, this relates to using timing to compensate for displacements along a first axis along the scanning direction while using resampling, interpolation or a similar method to compensate for displacements along a second axis that is substantially orthogonal to the first axis. The scanning direction may be an actual direction of movement of the scanning head or it may be a direction perpendicular to an orientation of an image projected onto a workpiece.

We claim as follows: 
     
         1 . A method of correcting for deformations from an ideal rasterize pattern when projecting an image onto workpiece, the method including:
 rasterizing pattern data to an ideal grid;   representing displacements across the area that correct deformations from the ideal pattern data as displacement vectors; and   delivering data to a modulator having numerous pixels oriented along at least a transverse direction, using timing of the data delivery to compensate for the displacements in a scan direction and calculating pixel data values that compensate for the displacements in the transverse direction.