Photomasks contain geometric information that will be transferred to substrates or pre-structured surfaces. Conventional mask aligner lithography in the sense of shadow printing of the photomask suffers from limited achievable resolution. Photomask and substrate are typically separated by an air gap causing diffraction effects and hence affecting the minimum structure size. Even though contact lithography offers a resolution in the wavelengthscale, yield problems and contamination of the photomask are its drawbacks. Using proximity lithography, these problems can be avoided since it profits from a contact-free exposure process. To overcome the resolution limitation of the shadow printing mode more advanced diffraction based photo masks need to be used.

Date Published: 20 October 2016
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 10032, 32nd European Mask and Lithography Conference, 1003204 (20 October 2016); doi: 10.1117/12.2248545

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10032:
32nd European Mask and Lithography Conference
Uwe F.W. Behringer; Jo Finders, Editor(s)