photolithography

Photolithography is used in chip manufacturing and the production of LCD displays and plasma displays. In photolithography, the circuit template, which is located on a photomask, is projected onto the wafer using lasers or other exposure techniques.

To achieve the highest possible resolution of the chip structures, ultraviolet light from lasers is used for exposure because it has the lowest dispersion. In addition, short wavelengths stand for high resolving power. The shorter the wavelengths, the better the resolution. Thus, in order to expose extremely fine structures, argon fluoride lasers and krypton fluoride lasers with 193 nm and 248 nm are used in photolithography. The UV light is referred to as deep ultraviolet( DUV).

Even higher resolutions are achieved with Extreme Ultraviolet( EUV). The wavelengths of EUV lithography are between 100 nm and 10 nm. With the resulting structure widths of about 2 nm, tiny chips can be produced in nanotechnology.