Laser Lithography

The main purpose of the LW405C is to expose patterns in photoresist that has been spun on a substrate such as glass or a semiconducting wafer.  The instrument is “maskless” in that no prefabricated masks are necessary; instead, the resist is exposed by scanning a submicron UV laser spot over the substrate surface while turning the laser on and off to expose the desired pattern.

The LW405C laser writer is a direct-write (maskless) lithography system produced by Microtech s.r.l. of Italy.  The tool contains two laser diode assemblies for the efficient exposure of both positive and negative photoresists.  The five objective lenses allow for a broad range of high resolution and high-speed writing applications.  In addition to traditional binary patterns, the system supports grayscale patterning with 256 level control.  A 10 nm interferometric nanopositioning stage allows for 0.8 µm patterning over the full 100 x 100 mm working area of the stage.

Potential applications of this technology include submicron devices for magnetism and spintronics, superconductivity, photovoltaics, integrated optics, micromechanics and MEMs, microfluidics, biosensors, patterned biological substrates, and surface science. We expect that researchers across campus, and from outside campus, will find even more uses for this instrument.

The laser writer is housed in the Class 100 cleanroom in D216 of the Physics Department at Colorado State University.  It was purchased through the NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program (PIs Kristen Buchanan, Stuart Field, and Mingzhong Wu).  The instrument is available to any interested users from within and outside of CSU.  Visit the Specifications,  Resources, and Contact pages for information on the writer, training, and system access.