Our lithography process
The lithography process involving DaLI is achieved by selective exposure of photoresist using guided laser beam. No photomask lithography is required. Photolithography process is widely used in semiconductor and printed circuit board production industry, but it can be applied in other fields, such as MEMS, lab on a chip, microfluidics, photomask production, quantum devices, micro optics. In these fields the design of a new device is often iterative, that is why the maskless photolithography process proves useful, offering rapid product development in-house at no cost and waiting for new and expensive versions of photolithography masks.
Illumination resolution far below 1um
Not limited by physical properties of the substrate or its surface
Change pattern design from one run to the next, without incurring the cost of a new photomask
Aspect ratio (height/width of channel) up to 40 achieved
Grayscale illumination
Illumination resolution far below 1um
Not limited by physical properties of the substrate or its surface
Change pattern design from one run to the next, without incurring the cost of a new photomask
Aspect ratio (height/width of channel) up to 40 achieved
Grayscale illumination
Easy transfer of design to substrate
Full PC control and an intuitive lithography software drastically shorten prototyping time and lower the costs, while maximizing flexibility that is required for in-house prototyping, research and development environments. The included CAD library allows designing from scratch or modifications of partially or fully ready patterns even on a standalone PC without the DaLI system connected. Import filters can import design in dxf and bmp formats. One can assign different illumination parameters to individual parts of structures, e.g. the diameter of laser beam, the illumination dose, the illumination resolution, mode, and place of stitching the fields and many more. But one can always simply trust to the default values. By employing an integrated microscope, it is possible to level the substrate to bring its surface into laser focus, determine the location of eventual related patterns or objects, perform various geometric measurements, etc. However, once the values of key illumination parameters are determined, just trigger the illumination with one click and watch the illumination process in the job processor window.
Nanometer precision inside a single illumination field
More than 100000 random dots per second illuminated employing AOD
Substrate size from few micrometers to full 100×100 mm (4 inch)
Nanometer precision inside a single illumination field
More than 100000 random dots per second illuminated employing AOD
Substrate size from few micrometers to full 100×100 mm (4 inch)
5 axis positioning of substrate – automatic leveling supported
Entirely software operated
Few hundred intensity levels
5 axis positioning of substrate – automatic leveling supported
Entirely software operated
Few hundred intensity levels
Temperature controlled by solid state chiller
CAD with DXF and BMP import filters implemented
Design patterns on a standalone PC
Temperature controlled by solid state chiller
CAD with DXF and BMP import filters implemented
Design patterns on a standalone PC
Become more efficient with DaLI
Let your idea become a design, your design be illuminated as a structure, and your structure integrated in the experiment — all within a single day using a tabletop lithography system.
Become more efficient with DaLI
Let your idea become a design, your design be illuminated as a structure, and your structure integrated in the experiment — all within a single day using a tabletop lithography system.
Get to know lithography process steps
Substrate preparation proposes to improve the adhesion of the photoresist onto the substrate, and to prepare a contaminant-free resist film. This can be accomplished by cleaning a substrate to remove contamination, either organic or inorganic, with chemical cleaning, ozone, or plasma stripping. Adsorbed water is removed with dehydration bake — baking at temperatures of 200°C to 400°C for up to 60 minutes. The substrate needs to cool down and be coated immediately as water will reabsorb on the substrate surface, if left in a humid environment. Some substrates have poor adhesion and adhesion promoters should be used.
Coating of photoresist is accomplished by spin coating. A specific uniform film of photoresist is influenced by many controlling parameters, such as spinning speed and duration, spinning acceleration, physical properties of the photoresist and the substrate, method of dispensing and many others. To achieve a stable film, the solvent in photoresist is evaporated by heating up to prescribed temperature and time using an oven or a hot plate. During this step, called soft baking, photoresist’s adhesion to substrate is improved and film thickness slightly reduced. Other properties that influence following photolithography steps are significantly changed as well.
Illumination of a pattern using DaLI is achieved by employing precisely guided UV laser beam. Illumination of the photoresist dot by dot that corresponds exactly to predesigned pattern transfers CAD design to the photoresist without utilizing an intermediate photomask but with precisely controlling energy on each single dot of the pattern and pattern resolution. DaLI is automatically switching among user assigned optical paths that shape UV laser light into beams with nominal diameters 1 µm or 3 µm. Combination of both laser beam diameters (tools) within a single pattern assures high resolution illumination with short illumination times.
The illumination of a photoresist influences its solubility when wetted by the developer. Development process dissolves either exposed (positive tone) or unexposed (negative tone) photoresist areas. In case of negative tone photoresist, a post exposure bake is mandatory prior to development. Development can be done by dipping a sample in developer, spraying, or spinning it over photoresist. Development process latitude and its uniformity is influenced by development methods as well. Each development process is unique, and parameters must be adapted based on photoresist, type of developer, its concentration and many other input variables.
How can we help you?
"The company's sales and installation personnel are enthusiastic and professional. After the installation and acceptance, the manufacturer’s technical engineers helped improve the process and improved the process stability, which provided great help for our research work."
Prof. Chang-Jin Zhang
Center for Strong Magnetic Field Science, Hefei Institute of Material Science
"We deal with microfluidics or, more specifically, dielectric wetting (EWOD). Dali is used to make masks for process of electrodes sputtering on substrates. It's great because Dali allows us to make any electrode geometry and do it relatively quickly. The distance between the individual electrodes is very important and must be as small as possible. In addition, the device itself and its interface are relatively easy to use and you quickly get used to them. And of course, customer support is great."
Urban Tomc
Department of Thermal and Environmental Engineering, Laboratory of Refrigeration and District Energy
"Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics is engaged in research on charge transport, photoconductivity, and initial growth of organic semiconductors on graphene and other 2D nanostructures. Dali is a device that allows us to accurately fabricate metal electrodes on nanostructures, which is crucial for the course of our research. We use the device daily, several days a week. We appreciate its accuracy, compactness, speed, friendly interface, and extensive range of structure design tools."
Assoc. prof. dr. Egon Pavlica
University of Nova Gorica, Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
How can we help you?
"The company's sales and installation personnel are enthusiastic and professional. After the installation and acceptance, the manufacturer’s technical engineers helped improve the process and improved the process stability, which provided great help for our research work."
Prof. Chang-Jin Zhang
Center for Strong Magnetic Field Science, Hefei Institute of Material Science
"We deal with microfluidics or, more specifically, dielectric wetting (EWOD). Dali is used to make masks for process of electrodes sputtering on substrates. It's great because Dali allows us to make any electrode geometry and do it relatively quickly. The distance between the individual electrodes is very important and must be as small as possible. In addition, the device itself and its interface are relatively easy to use and you quickly get used to them. And of course, customer support is great."
Urban Tomc
Department of Thermal and Environmental Engineering, Laboratory of Refrigeration and District Energy
"Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics is engaged in research on charge transport, photoconductivity, and initial growth of organic semiconductors on graphene and other 2D nanostructures. Dali is a device that allows us to accurately fabricate metal electrodes on nanostructures, which is crucial for the course of our research. We use the device daily, several days a week. We appreciate its accuracy, compactness, speed, friendly interface, and extensive range of structure design tools."
Assoc. prof. dr. Egon Pavlica
University of Nova Gorica, Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
How can we help you?
"The company's sales and installation personnel are enthusiastic and professional. After the installation and acceptance, the manufacturer’s technical engineers helped improve the process and improved the process stability, which provided great help for our research work."
Prof. Chang-Jin Zhang
Center for Strong Magnetic Field Science, Hefei Institute of Material Science
"We deal with microfluidics or, more specifically, dielectric wetting (EWOD). Dali is used to make masks for process of electrodes sputtering on substrates. It's great because Dali allows us to make any electrode geometry and do it relatively quickly. The distance between the individual electrodes is very important and must be as small as possible. In addition, the device itself and its interface are relatively easy to use and you quickly get used to them. And of course, customer support is great."
Urban Tomc
Department of Thermal and Environmental Engineering, Laboratory of Refrigeration and District Energy
"Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics is engaged in research on charge transport, photoconductivity, and initial growth of organic semiconductors on graphene and other 2D nanostructures. Dali is a device that allows us to accurately fabricate metal electrodes on nanostructures, which is crucial for the course of our research. We use the device daily, several days a week. We appreciate its accuracy, compactness, speed, friendly interface, and extensive range of structure design tools."
Assoc. prof. dr. Egon Pavlica
University of Nova Gorica, Laboratory of Organic Matter Physics
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Technical information
General
Substrate size, mm
from sub-millimeter to 100 x 100 x 10
Supported photoresists
all common photoresists
Optical Characteristics
Laser wavelength, nm
375 or 405
Laser beam spot size, µm
1 and 3 (software-selectable)
Performance
Writing resolution (beam positioning)
true sub-nanometer
Writing speed (spots per second), Hz
100,000
Minimum structure size, µm
<1
Structure aspect ratio
more than 1:20
Multilayer alignment accuracy, µm
0.5
User Interface
Data input formats
DXF, BMP
Intuitive CAD software for design, alignment, advanced anchoring and exposure control
Integrated optical monochrome or color microscope for inspection and alignment
Technical Data
Operating temperature, °C
21.5 ± 1.5
Operating relative humidity, %
<80, non-condensing
System dimensions (W x D x H), mm
650 x 626 x 522
System weight, kg
77
Electrical supply voltage
110-230 VAC, 50/60 Hz
Power consumption, VA
<120
Hardware/software requirements
Windows 10 / 8.1 / 8, 64 bit, 3 GHz processor with SSE2 or higher, 4 GB of RAM and 16 GB available hard disk space
Chiller data
133 x 483 x 559 mm³ (19” rack, 3U), 15 kg, 250 W cooling / heating capacity
All inclusive
The DaLI system is shipped with the chiller, all connecting cables, coolant hoses and the proprietary DaLI software.