Michael,

I'm wondering if you should just skip UV and go to a scanning electron microscope. Hitachi was demonstrating SEM's for inspection at the Semicon West show in San Jose a couple of months ago. I think that you would easily make the resolution that you need and have room to keep going. However I don't think that you could get the through put that you can from a conventional vision machine. I just got a used JOEL SEM that I want to check out. I barely have it out of it's crate so I really can't speak to it's capabilities but it seems like the way to go for really small parts.

Bob Connors
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab