Confront Contact Printings Mask Damage Problem

# Confront Contact Printing's Mask-Damage Problem

The original 1957-era photolithography process pressed the mask directly against the photoresist-coated wafer during exposure, a method generally known as contact printing.

That direct contact meant every exposure physically touched the mask surface to the wafer surface, and any particle caught between them could scratch the mask, embed in the resist, or both.

As production volumes grew, this mask-wafer contact became the single biggest source of defects and the single biggest limit on how many wafers a given mask could expose before it had to be replaced.

THE CONTACT-PRINTING PROBLEMMethodmask pressed directly against the resist-coated waferRiskany trapped particle scratches mask and wafer alikeConsequencemask damage accumulates with every exposure cycle

Diagram above: the contact-printing problem.

WHY THIS LIMITED PRODUCTIONMask lifetimea damaged mask had to be remade, at real cost and delayYield dragtransferred defects lowered working-die yieldConclusionvolume production needed exposure without physical contact

Diagram above: why this limited production.

Take confront contact printings mask damage problem further

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