Patent 7672047 was granted and assigned to Carl Zeiss SMT on March, 2010 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A catadioptric projection objective for imaging a pattern provided in an object plane of the projection objective onto an image plane of the projection objective comprises: a first objective part for imaging the pattern provided in the object plane into a first intermediate image; a second objective part for imaging the first intermediate imaging into a second intermediate image; a third objective part for imaging the second intermediate imaging directly onto the image plane;