The shrinking of IC devices has followed the Moore's Law for over three decades, which states that the density of transistors on integrated circuits will double about every two years. This great achievement is obtained via continuous advance in lithography technology. With the adoption of complicated resolution enhancement technologies, such as the phase shifting mask (PSM), the optical proximity correction (OPC), optical lithography with wavelength of 193 nm has enabled 45 nm printing by immersion method. However, this achievement comes together with the skyrocketing cost of masks, which makes the production of low volume application-specific IC (ASIC) impractical. In order to provide an economical lithography approach for low to medium volume advanced IC fabrication, a maskless ion beam lithography method, called Maskless Micro-ion-beam Reduction Lithography (MMRL), has been developed in the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The development of the prototype MMRL system has been described by Dr. Vinh Van Ngo in his Ph.D. thesis. But the resolution realized on the prototype MMRL system was far from the design expectation. In order to improve the resolution of the MMRL system, the ion optical system has been investigated. By integrating a field-free limiting aperture into the optical column, reducing the electromagnetic interference …

Direct imaging of extrasolar planets is an important, but challenging, next step in planetary science. Most planets identified to date have been detected indirectly--not by emitted or reflected light but through the effect of the planet on the parent star. For example, radial velocity techniques measure the doppler shift in the spectrum of the star produced by the presence of a planet. Indirect techniques only probe about 15% of the orbital parameter space of our solar system. Direct methods would probe new parameter space, and the detected light can be analyzed spectroscopically, providing new information about detected planets. High contrast adaptive optics systems, also known as Extreme Adaptive Optics (ExAO), will require contrasts of between 10{sup -6} and 10{sup -7} at angles of 4-24 {lambda}/D on an 8-m class telescope to image young Jupiter-like planets still warm with the heat of formation. Contrast is defined as the intensity ratio of the dark wings of the image, where a planet might be, to the bright core of the star. Such instruments will be technically challenging, requiring high order adaptive optics with > 2000 actuators and improved diffraction suppression. Contrast is ultimately limited by residual static wavefront errors, so an extrasolar planet …

This dissertation describes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of protons performed in a precession field of 132 {micro}T. In order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), a pulsed 40-300 mT magnetic field prepolarizes the sample spins and an untuned second-order superconducting gradiometer coupled to a low transition temperature superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) detects the subsequent 5.6-kHz spin precession. Imaging sequences including multiple echoes and partial Fourier reconstruction are developed. Calculating the SNR of prepolarized SQUID-detected MRI shows that three-dimensional Fourier imaging yields higher SNR than slice-selection imaging. An experimentally demonstrated field-cycling pulse sequence and post-processing algorithm mitigate image artifacts caused by concomitant gradients in low-field MRI. The magnetic field noise of SQUID untuned detection is compared to the noise of SQUID tuned detection, conventional Faraday detection, and the Nyquist noise generated by conducting biological samples. A second-generation microtesla MRI system employing a low-noise SQUID is constructed to increase SNR. A 2.4-m cubic, eddy-current shield with 6-mm thick aluminum walls encloses the experiment to attenuate external noise. The measured noise is 0.75 fT Hz{sup -1/2} referred to the bottom gradiometer loop. Solenoids wound from 30-strand braided wire to decrease Nyquist noise and cooled by either liquid nitrogen or water polarize the …