Smart Photolithography

We introduce here an approach for determining the exposure time in photolithography. A script was developed in LabVIEW that (i) measures (via UV sensor) the intensity (or power) of UV light to which a sample is exposed at different times, (ii) calculates the total energy delivered onto the sample, and (iii) switches off the UV lamp as soon as the sample (a photocurable material) has received the targeted total energy of UV light. In comparison to standard approaches to photolithography in which the lamp is switched off after a given amount of time pre-selected by the user, our approach determines experimentally the energy received by the sample and switches the UV lamp off when the sample has received the intended UV energy -- independently of how long it took for the lamp to produce that amount of energy.