By Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication
Direct write lithography, or maskless lithography, involves exposing a substrate coated in a photosensitive resist to UV light which directly exposes a desired image into the resist film. In the case of a chrome-coated plate, the pattern can be etched to create a photomask. Direct write lithography is popular due to the flexibility and cost-effectiveness associated with being unrestricted by a substrate geometry. This is useful in R&D where it is desirable to test many iterations before proceeding with creation of a photo mask. MCN’S direct write lithography tools are the Heidelberg MLA-150 (with Autoloader) &the Intelligent Micropatterning (IMP) SF100 XPRESS. The MLA-150 has resolution down to 600nm, and then IMP system features three resolutions – 1µm, 2µm, 5µm. The write area size is variable.
