A Versatile, Low-Cost UV Exposure System for Photolithography

Research and fabrication of micro devices hold the key to low power devices, sensors and lab-on-a-chip systems which are in much need today for diagnosis, IOT etc. Cost of setting up a fabrication laboratory and conducting photolithography is high due to need of expensive equipment. We present a design of low-cost UV exposure system which can be used for both high resolution and low resolution photolithography. In first part, we present the study of irradiance distribution patterns of different UV LED arrangements. We use uniformity as a criterion for selecting the arrangement that gives the best illumination uniformity in largest area. The maximum, minimum and average exposure energy and uniformity have been presented. Using these results, we present an optimal system design for UV photolithography. The novelty of our work is simulating the UV exposure system for different parameters for making an optimal choice for a versatile system (high energy & low energy), different uniformity for different resolution to save power and have better control.