Improve Large Area Uniformity and Production Capacity of Laser Interference Lithography with Beam Flattening Device

Laser interference lithography (LIL) is a maskless lithography technique with many advantages such as simple optical design, inexpensive, infinite depth of focus, and large area patterning with single exposure. However, the intensity of normal laser beam is Gaussian distribution. In order to obtain large area uniform structure, we have to expand the laser beam much bigger than the wafer and use only the center part of the beam. Resulting in wasting lots of energy and the production capacity decrease. In this study, we designed a beam shaping device which consists of two parallel fused silicon optical window with different coating on both side. Two optical window form an air thin film. When the expanded laser beam pass through the device, the beam will experience many refraction and reflection between two optical window and interference with each other. The transmittance of laser beam will depend on the incident angle. The output intensity distribution will change from Gaussian distribution to a flat top distribution. In our experiment, we combined the beam shaping device with a Lloyd's mirror LIL system. Experiment results indicated that the LIL system with beam shaping device can obtain large area uniform pattern. And compare with the traditional Lloyd's mirror LIL system, the exposure time is shorten up to 4.5 times. In conclusion, this study design a beam flattening device for LIL system. The flat top beam can improve the large area uniformity and the production capacity of LIL. Making LIL more suitable for industry application.