BACKGROUND

During an integrated circuit (IC) design, a number of patterns of the IC, for different steps of IC processing, are generated on a substrate, e.g., a wafer. The patterns may be produced by projecting, e.g., imaging, layout patterns of a photo mask on a photo resist layer of the substrate. A lithographic process transfers the layout patterns of the photo masks to the photo resist layer of the substrate such that etching, implantation, or other steps are applied only to predefined regions of the substrate. The lithographic process is performed by a lithography system, e.g., an extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system. In addition to a radiation source, e.g., an EUV radiation source, the components of the lithography system includes a mask handling system, an exposure device for projecting the photo mask to a wafer, and a wafer table including one or more chucks for aligning and holding the wafers during the projection of the photo mask. Transferring the wafers into a lithography system and also transferring the photo masks into the mask handling system may cause particles and organic material contamination to enter the components of the lithography system. The particles and the organic material contamination in the wafer table, the exposure device, and the mask handling system, may cause non-uniformity in the critical dimension (CD) of the resist patterns generated on the wafer. Therefore, cleaning the components of the lithography system is regularly performed, for example, during a preventive maintenance. It is desirable to use a method and system that more rapidly performs the cleaning of the components of the lithography system.

