Since the discovery of microcolumn by Chang in 1980, there have been
immense interest arising in miniaturized microcolumn because of its
various applications like direct e-beam lithography, low cost device,
low voltage-SEM, and portable-SEM due to its high throughput
performance. The compact size allows microcolumns to be assembled into
arrayed form, which significantly improves the imaging performance or
throughput of lithography capability. We have fabricated and
investigated three different designs of microcolumns, all of which
employing the modified source lens, different working distance and with
& without objective lens. The image quality and probe current of all
newly fabricated microcolumns were investigated. The electrostatic
lenses were fabricated by MEMS technique. The 2D-CNT field emitter was
used as the source emitter for these columns. Our result suggested that
among all three microcolumn structure, ultraminiaturized microcolumn
showed highest probe current 9.5 nA. An ultraminiaturized microcolumn
can be a promising candidate for the next generation lithography tool as
the design is more suitable for wafer-scale integrated microcolumn than
Conventional microcolumn.